somebody that I used to know Smoking on Company Time.

What could I say? It was novel. I took out my phone and opened my notes, chuckling again as I saw her long azure nails whenever the screen turned black. “First full cig,” I wrote, “reflection looks like her.”

Her. I paused at the word choice. Looking back up at the mirror, and leaning over my sink, I got a good look, deep into her eyes. Who was she? Did she exist at some point? Maybe, maybe not. With skips, it was of equal likelihood that she could be a ghost or an invention. Maybe these cigarettes were supposed to be some kind of work of art. Who knew. That wasn’t my job to know. My job was just to test it out.

And so it occurred to me, because I was trying to record all the mental effects, that maybe I should write down that she looked familiar.

I walked out of the bathroom, and took the cigarettes with me down the stairs. I opened my front door, and decided to take a short stroll around my house, just walking through my mismanaged gardens I’d let overgrow. Suddenly, for some reason, I decided that I didn’t want to be cooped up in that place.

There was a feeling I was trying to ignore, and I thought maybe a change of scenery could make it go away.

I took out my phone, and made a note: “Woman feels familiar. Beginning second cigarette.”

I lifted the thing to my mouth, and took a pull. The blue smoke that came out of my nose dissipated into the late afternoon sun, which was soon to set over the trees, making the shadows long and the air chill.

Her. I thought it again. The documentation never specified any emotions that subjects felt towards the blue lady they slowly began to perceive themselves as. Was this an entirely personal experience? It was strange. Of course, with stress tinting my thoughts, I began to instinctively bring the cigarette to my mouth.

Familiar. She seemed intimately… familiar. Which was odd, because I definitely didn’t know any blue women, nor was I very versed on the ‘20s. So it must have been something else. Something in her face, then.

I caught myself looking at her face in the reflection on my phone. Yes, that was it.

She faintly resembled someone I used to know.

A crush, actually. From high school.