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Those smooth white roots, crossed over one another, hiding the secrets between them deep with a double-layer of shadow. Her body was tight, uninviting, unforgiving. Her eyes, those ones I had seen so warm, so bright, so irresistible, were like black ice. That ice that blends with the rest of the dark road so you never see it coming. But it makes you lose your hold on the ground, makes you swerve and weave. Makes you fly off the road to be torn to nothing by the unforgiving trunks of trees with crossed roots.

This was Aya. "Sorry." My heart fluttered. "I overslept."

She continued glaring. "It's seven o'clock at night, Tama. You don't sleep that late."

I shook my head. "I'm sorry. What else do you want me to say?"

I waited, almost holding my breath to see if she'd stand up and walk out. I'd been late before. She'd done it before. Without a word, she had risen, broke the silent exchange of our eyes and stormed out the door like a sudden angry gust of wind. Finally, she sighed and turned her glare to the dark green linoleum on the floor. Her hand pried itself from the handle of her cup and she gestured to a seat across the table. "Take a seat."

I did as I was told, leaning back in my chair. I tried my best to act careless, the kind of emotionless cold she wasn't. As cold as she was, there was a heat of emotion to it. I wanted to do better. I was emotionless. I was stone. I sniffed. "So how have you been?"

Without looking at me, she sipped her coffee. "I've been good." Her gaze wandered from face to face, black strands of hair puncturing the perfect white mask of her face. "How about you?"

"Can't complain." This was our conversation. If we weren't arguing, we didn't exactly know what to say to each other. These were scripted answers. These were answers we'd seen on TV. Conversation: As seen on TV. I almost burst out laughing. "You look nice."

"You think so?" It wasn't a question. Her voice, the smooth, sultry tone of it, hadn't changed. If anything, it had grown somewhat deeper, somewhat fuller. It had grown a sexual undertone. She knew what being a woman meant now, and it came out in her voice.

"Still working for the newspaper?" Of course she was. Things never change.

"Of course." She blew absently on her coffee, her red lips forming an almost perfect "O". Brown waves moved slowly across the surface of the drink. "You still working for the post office?"

It was a game. Which of us would crack first. "Yeah. Still."

"Good to know things haven't changed much."

I couldn't take it anymore. I let out a low growl of frustration. "Aya, why did you even say we should meet? You've got nothing to say and I've got less." My hands shook violently and my voice held more anger than I had intended.

Still, she didn't even give me a glance. "That's nothing new, is it?" Her voice hadn't lost a single drop of cool.

Mine, on the other hand. "You just have to be a smartass about it, don't you?"

She sniffed. "And it's nothing new that we're ending up fighting. It's a nice little script we've got going."

I felt my hands tighten into fists. I knew what I was about to say I would regret. I knew it would be the start of a whole new sequence of nightmares. I would reenact it again and again in my sleep. "Nothing's ever new when it comes to you."

The coffee cup slammed hard against the polished surface of the table. The brown liquid exploded upward and scattered fragments of itself all across the smooth dark green around it. A few drops splattered against her clear white skin, but she didn't even flinch. Her expression showed that her insides were hotter than the coffee. Her eyes burned like black coals and her face was twisted into a scowl that turned my angry heart to ice.

When she spoke, her voice quivered as violently as her body. "And that's so important?" Her fists were so tight I wondered if her nails were digging into her hands. Her voice raised as she spoke, and people began to lower their poetry and their philosophy and their foreign language books, turning to the woman that yelled despite the attention, that shouted despite the world. "Well, guess what, Tama. If you think your life's going to suddenly change and you're suddenly going to become a different person, you've got another thing coming. We don't live a different life each day. We live with as much variety as we can squeeze into our lives, and wanting any more is fantasy. The more you believe it, the more miserable you will become when it doesn't come true. And it won't. Believe me, Tama. It won't."

And with that, she flew from the table, her words echoing off of every corner of the café, the sound of the bell on the door dwarfed by the words. It was as if she disappeared. It was as if she was just part of a dream. As if this was one of my nightmares.

I shook off the shock and flew after her, the whole café watching me as I left. And as the door dinged shut again, the alternative, mellow tones of the background music took over the atmosphere again. Tones that said, "Forget about it. Go back to your lives. I will always be here. Nothing will change so much that I will ever disappear."

The city was full of dark forms, but none of them were Aya. It was like I was surrounded by black fire that moved and shifted and pushed me out of the way. My head throbbed savagely. I watched the ring of black draw closer and closer, until it threatened to strangle me, until it threatened to hold me still until the life left my body. And all at once a thought popped into my head.

My feet switched into gear and I was off. The black fires of the city-hell parted to let me through, muttering and cursing with words I couldn't hear. I ran. My body knew exactly what to do, exactly what to think like this. When I ran again, my life had purpose and the world swept by in a hurricane of lights. My feet beat the ground and that was the only sound I needed. A steady drumbeat like an army marching to war. All that was me was bent to one purpose, which drew ever closer.

The wall that hugged the river was barren. The sidewalk that supplicated itself at the feet of that wall was dark and silent. It was that time of night where the sun was gone behind an unforgiving horizon and the electric streetlights flickered to life. The night was their time to shine. A million little electric stars couldn't match the sun's light. All they could do was shed fat yellow teardrops that splattered in a fuzzy pool below them. The streetlights were like people. Bent forward, crying onto themselves.

And between those pools was Aya. Deep in the black between the lights I could see her. Leaning out over the wall, looking into the night that covered the swirling expanse of the river. My run slowed to a jog and then to a walk and then to a stop. I was about four feet away from her. The wind howled between us, chilling and angry. Somewhere in that wind was her sigh, mournful, shallow.

"Tama." She turned. Her white shirt was darkened at points from her sweat, her hair was tangled and fell in black slivers over her face and blended with the deep shadow of her eyes. Her eyes, which moved like the river under the night sky. And shined like the moon reflected brilliantly in the waves, "You followed me again." She sniffed. "How predictable."

The bite of the irony in her voice was physical. It was real. "I can't just let you go like that."

Her eyes tightened and narrowed until they were glaring black slits with moonlit edges. "You did before."

"I." Try as I might, I couldn't defend myself. My head throbbed all thought away.

Her steps echoed painfully off the walls of my head, fractured my skull. We were an inch apart. The wind blew wildly, ripped through the space between us. Her eyes locked with mine and I felt like I would double over with pain. "This is your fault, Tama."

And with that, she turned and stormed away. My hand shot out too late. All I felt was the air settle back into place after she disturbed it. I watched her dash into the shadow, consumed by the black flames of the city's nighttime inferno. The inferno electric lights did nothing to combat.

I collapsed to my knees. The pavement ground into my legs, gouging through the skin. But I didn't feel the pain. All I could feel was the throbbing, which had turned to a pounding. And each pound sent a shockwave of pain through my body until I begged through the pain for a god or anyone to send me unconscious. It felt like someone was rattling the cage of my mind, trying to tear it to pieces. Like someone was trying to get out. Like something was trying to free itself. Like there was something in my head.

And it was about to come out.