Holy shitpies. I've written something.

This is meant to be a more climactic end to Things I Don't Need, but you don't really need to read it to understand this. One-shot angsty pseudo-philosophical stuff. I may write another chapter or two to clear some things up, but I need to stop writing Johnny for awhile...he's quite a downer.

Thanks to da peoples who reviewed TIDN!

---silec

She was curious. That was all. That and nothing more had brought her there that night. It was not that she had remembered him, or that sugar-coated, long lost love had drawn her heart to that one place and time, it was only that she had had a memory, and was curious.

And it wasn't a memory, so much, as it was a memory of a memory. A faint residue in her mind. She didn't know when it had happened, or why she started to feel so odd when she added up the total on the cash register. First printing hardcover. Seven dollars and seventy-seven cents.

Winter had come earlier than it should have. So while most of the trees still kept their leaves, it was cold. Her car was shit. No heating vents, no insulated seat cushions. The fucking windows were broken, too, so she could see her breath over the steering wheel. The urban sky was starless and orange-black by the time she got there.

While the other houses in the neighborhood looked normal enough, this one was more than a little strange. The windows were boarded up, and the sidewalk leading up to the front door was stained with a rusty trail. Devi hugged her coat to her chest and sat on the roof of her car. She closed her eyes, trying to remember. She could see herself walking up that sidewalk and going through a doorway that once did not have a large two-by-four nailed across it. She could hear the smooth slide of metal against clothing. A sinking feeling in her stomach. But nothing else.

There came a scraping sound from a house next door. Somebody had opened up a window on the second floor. A blinding fluorescent lamp turned on in the room, flooding the dark sidewalk with bright light. A dim silhouette of a person was revealed. It stared at Devi, then waved at her, slow and suspicious. She waved back.

The shadow whipped away from the window and slammed it shut. A few seconds later, it stepped from the house. The porch lights flicked on.

"You don't live here. You shouldn't be here," he said. He was a teenager, as far as Devi could tell. His voiced wavered, possibly in fear, possibly in the face of looming, impending puberty. His face and bare shins were becoming red from the frigid air. "You really have to leave."

She looked at the boy for a moment, pondering his request, and chose to ignore him. She turned her attention back to number seven seven seven, uncaring, unblinking. He walked further from his home, leaving the door open. Flickering blue images were reflected upon the otherwise unlit walls inside.

"Listen to me, you have to go now. Please?" The boy stopped just a few feet from Devi's car. She held her chin between her fingers and let out a long, wispy breath.

"Do you know who lives here, kid?" she asked, still not looking back at him.

"Nobody lives there anymore. Everyone says that it's all safe now, but you can't trust them, no, no." Devi glanced at him and noticed with horror that his eyes had expanded to the size of dinner plates.

"What do you mean?"

"There used to be this scary man that lived there..." he whispered in a shrieking voice. "And I think maybe there might still be some horrible things in there..." His freakishly huge eyes darted left, then right. "Like politicians, and moose, and sponges, and rabies...and probably some other stuff, too. It's not safe." The corners of his face strained. "Please go," he pleaded.

Devi smiled. She liked this boy. It would be fun, she thought, to take him to see a Japanese horror film some day. "I can't go just yet."

She brushed her hair, blue for now, away from her eyes. Everyone had been telling her lately that she was an adult now, and that she had to keep a serious appearance. To buy herself a moderately priced SUV and a pair of loose, comfortable jeans and learn to act like one. Eventually she would have to accept that there was no longer anyone who truly appreciated her company. And on that day she would be likely to put a gun to her head.

Devi searched the boy's face, still begging her, though she wasn't listening. There was a person underneath the oily skin and bone. But she couldn't see that boy. She could only tell that he had fear enough for the both of them. And she came to a realization.

Everybody leaves. No one ever stays long enough to let you really see them, or for them to see you. You can spend your life with them and only know what they want you to.

But inside every deceiving, over-emotional sack of meat, there was a person. She could see the one inside the boarded up windows, past the glinting metal and the smell of copper on her boots. She could see a starry night a long, long time ago.

"What did you say your name was?" she asked.

"I...I didn't. My name is, um...Squee." Devi nodded. She touched his fingertips with her own.

"Well, Squee, I think I'm ready to leave." He got up from his seat on the trunk and brushed off his shorts. "Why did you come here, anyway?"

It took her a few minutes to answer. "I had a good friend that used to live here."

Squee peered at Devi from his porch. Just before shutting the door, he replied, "So did I."