Not glancing up or down, or even through the partially open window, she sat awaiting the nothingness of the time being and the time to come. She expected nothing out of the ordinary---only the indefinite darkness and the lapping of the waves, of that day. No words had escaped her tongue, let alone her mouth, for that entire evening. Oh, and how beautiful the sea shimmers in the lighting of street lamps; no matter how high or how low the sun would be during the day, it could not compare to the façade of beauty that was provided by these ugly human creations.
"All of this," she mused, "is just a small light on the ugliness of humankind. But oh, how I have hope for those pathetic wretched souls!" She thumbed through her copy of The Beautiful and Damned until she came across the quote the seemed to fit perfectly with her thought:
"To be able to face people and to endure the constant reminder of Gloria that all existance had become, it was necessary for him to have hope. So he built hope desperately and tenaciously out of the stuff of his dream, a hope flimsy enough, to be sure, a hope that was cracked and dissipated a dozen times a day, a hope that would be brown and sinew to his self-respect."After she lied the book down on her lap, there began a rapping at her window. She jumped to her feet, jimmied the window open, and peeked over the edge, only to find a person with whom she had never held more than a one-minute conversation with. She shot a puzzled look in his direction, but to no avail; it had been much too dark for him to see anything but what lied directly underneath the street lamps. There were a few minutes of silence between the rapping at her window and his first spoken word but once he started talking, it was as though he went through every possible scenario in his head before even attempting to speak.
"Come down," he said in cool yet stern voice, "I want to see you."
Still as confused as ever she replied, "We've never held a real conversation, how can you be asking me to leave the safety and comfort of my home to steal away with a stranger?"
He had obviously expected this, for he retaliated with, "That's exactly why. If you come down here, we can change the stranger situation. You might come to find that I'm actually not a bad guy."
At this, she sighed and silently came down from her second-story bedroom. "I don't know you," she started, "but I'm willing to figure you out."
He smiled a toothy smile, took her by the hand, and ran as fast as he could make her. When they finally stopped to take a breath, she was the first to speak. "Where are we?" She asked as her cheeks flushed red, "I'm truly lost as to our location."
Giggling, he said, "You know, you don't have to talk all fancy with me. We're at this place and I know that you'll love it."
She smiled at her own words and said nothing more; speaking, as she did, made her feel silly in the presence of this stranger who she was growing so akin to. Under those street lamps, the girl and her stranger were the most stunning beings in the entirety of the universe. She was falling hard, and nothing but the daylight could save her.
She and her stranger spent the falling nights together, almost routinely. That is, until she asked him to stay until sunrise---he hissed at the request but had eventually succumb to her wishes. She was elated to be with him as the sun rose from the horizon; he was devastated because he knew that the sunrise to come would be the last one of his days. He knew that he could always hide under the ever-shining street lamps without a care; but to watch the sun come up and try not to flinch as it burnt him alive, was another thing completely.
They sat on her rooftop, hand in hand, as the sun began to creep over the hills far ahead of them. She kissed his cheek as she watched his face change from indifferent to sheer pain and terror. He closed his eyes and grabbed at her shoulders.
"Listen," he muttered, in an almost inaudible voice, "in the night... I am who you have seen me as I am. But in the presence of the sun... I burn like an infant with a fever. Like a bonfire after a bad break-up. I burn...alive."
She was near tears at this point, but still did not know whether to believe her stranger or not. The only thing she could think to do was to hold him close until the sun had risen to its peak. Afterwards, she had planned to tell him that he was mistaken and that the sun was more his friend than enemy, that they could go on if he pleased; but instead, he shattered into a million shards of glass which pierced her skin ever so violently.
Tears welled up in the pit of her eyes, not only for the pain of the shards, but for the pain of having hope in something that never really existed. Under the street lamps, he was someone that he never was. In the bitter sunshine, he became the person he had been hiding all along---the person that she never did want to see again because she felt that those terrible shards of glass would soon return into the form that she know all too well.
Her nights ended the same as they had before she met her stranger, before he was ever a thought in that naive little brain of hers. The indefinite darkness and the constant lapping of the waves. The bitter beauty underneath street lamps and the million shards of glass...
He threw another rock at her window but this time... she doesn't answer.
