For an instant I saw before me the young girl this used to be.

I don’t know how these things died without benefit of a bullet to the brain pan. They seemed to exist in an eternal twilight of longing.

I heard them tearing at it. It was the sound of mortality.

I knew then I was going to die in the street without ever seeing Holly again. All because I tried to help an old woman, proving for all eternity that no good deed goes unpunished.

I turned to her, my whole body hard with tiredness and regret.

She smiled at him like a freshman invited to the senior prom. It made my blood boil.

During our time together in this place Holly didn’t outright avoid me or treat me rudely. But she wasn’t—how do women like to put it? She wasn’t emotionally available to me.

Her voice was small and distant, like she’d already left the room.

His eyes were like two wafers of slate, grey and lifeless.