Sunday 13th of March 2022 (2 weeks later)
Faye:
The light is dull, the early winter morning grey and cloudy. I have a cigarette between my teeth and smoke in my lungs, which I guess is helping against the cold, but I don't know. I don't feel cold. Not really. But I am, apparently; I can feel the goosebumps along my neck and my hands are starting to feel numb.
I wonder how long I've been out here for. Time is a very strange thing. Maybe it's been hours. Who knows, though. Maybe it's not been that long - it is winter, after all. Winter is cold. It won't feel like spring-time for another month, at least.
I wonder how many times I have to say "this is real" for me to finally believe it. How many times I will repeat that phrase today. How many times I will have to repeat it in the future.
I don't like it. It's getting too repetitive now. This annoys me. I annoy me.
I take the cigarette out of my mouth and inspect it. My lipstick has stained the top, as usual, and the end is still smoking, being carried off in the wind.
I wonder if it would hurt. If I would be able to feel it. It would if I was real. Maybe that's a way to test it.
It's nearly finished now, so it wouldn't be a waste or anything. Would I have to press it for a few seconds for it to leave a mark, or would it be instant?
I turn my left hand so it's facing palm-up, take another drag of the cigarette. My ears have begun to ring, making a high pitched sound that I half-think is the wind.
I wonder, for a second, if I'm dreaming. If I am, surely I wouldn't be able to feel a thing? Maybe it would wake me up.
Or maybe it wouldn't. Maybe I'm stuck. Maybe that's a good thing, though. If this isn't real, I can just stay here. The only thing I'd have to think about would be if I'd be able to feel the cigarette against my hand.
Am I being stupid? Probably, yes. Imagine not being able to tell what's real and what's not. It's funny, almost. I find it funny.
I spend another few seconds - or minutes, I can't tell - watching the cigarette get smaller and smaller, and then I take a final drag.
YOU ARE READING
First Light
Romance"I love you. I feel as though we were never strangers, you and I, not even for a moment." - Friedrich Nietzsche, from a letter to Mathilde Trampedach c. April 1876 Have you ever felt a weird sense of familiarity with someone you just met? As if you...
