David stared blankly at every customer's face. Normally he was congenial with customers and took care to remember the regulars' names, or the new regulars, as his corner changed the minute he realized the Truth, but that day, he was simply trying to stop himself from crying out to the people, from telling them that their lives were lies. Yet they continued scurrying to wherever they were going, certainly and determinedly oblivious to the fact that they didn't exist. He considered this fact for a moment. For awhile, he refused to attempt to truly comprehend what this whole thing meant. He was simply angry, frustrated, and confused. But he could not feel this way without being certain that he eventually had to face the truth: He was Nothing.
Funny how it never seemed like he was Nothing. Well, of course it never seemed like he was Nothing, that's how life was designed. Life was the perfect farce, and when he learned the truth, it became flawed. He was a flaw, a bump in the road, a bubble in existence. He was a flaw who never felt like a flaw until he realized his love was poisoned.
It was a miracle they even met. She was a part of the system of child labor, a girl who sewed buttons onto shirts for ten hours daily. She passed by his corner going to and from work, going home to a small family. Normally, David did not eye women when he was working; he didn't like to be distracted from the task at hand. Never mind the fact that rarely was a girl interested in him, for he was but a poor boy selling newspapers. She stood out, though; she was perfectly ordinary yet perfectly unordinary at the same time. Thinking back, rarely ever did he understand how a girl so plain-looking, so skinny and frail and dirty and homely, could stand out so.
Despite the way she looked, she had a very confident air about her, and David felt that she was a very wise person. He didn't know why he thought she would be wise because really, there was no way to know-- Jack was very smart even though sometimes he didn't look it. David grinned at the thought of Jack's face had he heard that. Thinking he was smiling at her, for she was indeed staring at him out of large, dark, vibrant eyes, the only things on her body that still seemed to be alive, she bravely and shamelessly smiled back, clearly thinking to approach him.
David's grin faded a bit, realizing that she was looking at him, and he turned away to sell papers to an old woman carrying piecework to the factory. He was never one for forward girls; it just didn't seem right to him. It was far too awkward. However, something inside of his gut told him not to look away. It told him that if he didn't speak to this girl, if he let her go, he would be making a terrible mistake. A person who favored reason over instinct, especially when dealing with girls, he tried to ignore it. He couldn't be distracted by a silly girl this early in the day. The instinct gnawed its teeth, forced him to listen, forced him to look at her.
Mouth half-open, he watched as she moved insistently towards him through the throngs of people, yet she said nothing when she arrived in front of him. Bereft of all thought, he said the first thought that entered his mind. "Like to buy a pape, miss?"
She replied easily, "I haven't any money, sorry." David nodded dumbly. He couldn't comprehend why he felt so empty. Why he felt so out of control. Normally he was very good at talking; normally he didn't have to worry about nerves, or whatever force it was that prohibited him from speaking.
"D'you live around here?" he asked finally, gazing into her expectant eyes.
"Yes, I live just a few blocks away. I work in the factory over there," she gestured to the smallest one. His eyes followed the length of her arm to the building at the end of her hand and back up to her face. He felt strangely attracted to her, although he knew nothing about her. This contradicted all he had previously thought about the rules of attraction. He had no reason to like a strange girl who was so foreign, so disturbingly forward, and not even one bit physically attractive. The last reason was terribly shallow, he realized, but ignored that fact in favor of finding as many reasons as possible not to like her. "And you are a newsie all day? I saw you in the paper last summer during the strike."
He nodded. Maybe she just liked him because he was some famous strike leader. True, he gained more notoriety after the strike, but that really didn't matter at all to him. He just kept going, he just kept trying to be normal. The fame died down, though, and really, he was just like everyone else. "Yeah, I'm surprised you still remember that photo. I don't even remember what I looked like."
She studied him a moment before asking, "Why would you be surprised?" David blinked, confused by her question. It wasn't accusatory; it was a question out of curiosity.
"I'm not sure. I just figured a lot of people would forget about us. It's been almost a year now." Nodding, she smiled slowly, and this time it spread across her face languidly. In that moment, he found, oddly, that she was almost pretty-- or at least, less... ugly. But he didn't have time for girls; he was only sixteen years old. The time for that would come soon enough. "I'm David, by the way. What's your name?"
"Anna. It's Anna."
Seized with longing, David walked. He walked a path he couldn't remember, he walked a path that was simultaneously so foreign and so familiar. Eventually he was able to grasp where he was going; he was going to his old selling corner. He was going to where they met. Calmly and with ease, he navigated the streets without tripping and falling or running into someone or getting lost. He was nearly there. It was nearly time.
When he reached his old corner, or what he thought was his old corner, he realized that there was something terribly wrong. It was no longer there. He was met with something he had never seen before. The edges of the street around him dissolved into nothing; the factory where she worked was nowhere to be found. Instead, there was simply an open white space, a huge and incomprehensible depth of nothing but white. A part of the city had just disappeared. David looked around to see if anyone else noticed, but everyone else milled about, avoiding the jagged edge right beside his corner, acting as though nothing had happened.
She was destroying his life and everything he knew. She was doing more than that-- she was erasing his entire existence.
Note: This is a working title. I'm barely editing this story, so it will be lacking.