Snippet 2 - Rain on the City

You don’t wake up - at least, you don’t if you’re a fairly normal person, which I like to think I am - thinking that you’re going to walk into what, for lack of a better term, I’ll call a ghost story. I certainly didn’t; I stayed in that morning, reading a book, then went out with friends in the evening. It started at the movies (which, as so often when I was going out, were the first place we went), as far as I can tell, so I guess that’s probably where I should start the story off too.

I first saw her when we were leaving, amongst the crowd making its way out of the theater. I’m not sure if that was just convenient or if she was tied to it somehow. So many things about her aren’t clear. I don’t know which would be worse - the idea she might be anywhere, or that I might have met her any of the dozens of times I’ve gone to that theater. That I might have given my girlfriend to her, when we went out.

Either way, I next saw her again outside Dissonance - the best club in the city, at least the section of it I know, in my opinion. It was raining that night, and we were discussing whether or not we should all just head back to my place.

I wish we had.

She was framed by the entrance to an alley, the flickering streetlight making a staccato outline of her. Seen like this, I felt almost sorry for her; she was trying to look tough, all in black and wearing a spiked collar, her hair cut short. But at the moment all that did was show the purpling bruise spreading across half her face, standing out like some sort of strange tattoo against her pale skin, and I wondered how she got it, what she was doing standing out here in the rain when she clearly had money enough to spare if she’d visited a movie. Taken all together, she looked more like someone dressed up in her parent’s clothes, though her own fit well - all paper defiance, as much a show for herself as anyone else.