He couldn’t quite understand why he was there or what his intention was. But she had told him to show up. So he did. Willingly. But he still wasn’t sure why. She had told him to do this before and he had always let fear overtake him. He would show up. But this time he did. His thoughts raced about what to do or what to say. He wasn’t even sure anymore. Where were his feelings for her that had so many times erupted in a sea of love, animosity, and hate? They were once so powerful. They had overtaken every logical process and action. She had done this to him. Or rather, he did this to himself and she was simply the capstone that finished the arch of his everly dawning heart. What would be the point in doing this now that the ghost has been given up and his feelings have turned into sand? Everything.

How calm and collected he had been, how the muscles in his face urged him to twitch and to scratch. To let out some form act. Of action. A cry for help. A letter of recognition from the others that follow the social contract. Anything. How was it this that absorbed his time and effort in such a space. In such a place.

He glanced around to his surrounding area. He saw figures and shades. Husks of human beings. Those he saw only as decoration. As part of some great eather intoxicating this place. He thought of the books he read. How purpose and action too derivative function over all else. Post structural dialogue plays itself out. Emotions manifested in a form consumable to those of the aether. How he saw the world was what he thought best, though he knew his life, his view, his being, was not much a real statement of truth, but simply another cog in the manifold of a race bound together. His acts. His individualism. None of it holds meaning on the scale in which he thought. And then she walked in.

Oh forever to the tomb! What glory graces this bastardly place. How an angel can rupture and hemorrhage even the most strong willed of apathies. How it all came back in a rush. How his disposition shifted quick to. How oozing love and hatred stirred his loins and his very soul. Why would she do this, why would such a grand and horrid moment take place in the comedy of circumstance? And it was for him of all she had in sight. How she swayed with beauty in every step. How the tilt of her head shown upon such flowery detail. How the love child of all things of awe would grace this place.

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To bar anything but regret was to allow such pitiful feelings he did not deserve. His memory clouded, and his judgement impinged upon. What repercussions of the night before had in store would only be known as the night plays out. His pockets empty. His heart and belly full.

“You showed up.” she said. He nodded his head. Looking her up and down, taking in every glowing angle and color of her being.

“Y-yeah.” he muttered. He started looking at his corduroy shoes. The heat from his feet slid up his legs. Sweat started secreting from his back and his forehead. “How have you been?”

She smirked and leaned against the bar. “I’ve been thinking a lot lately. My thoughts are not my own, even this thought itself, is not of my own construct. I may be changing the way it is described, or specific use of words, but the point, the end result, is the same. The mind is like a sea, filled with water, the information, from your experienced and perceived life. You are but a captain of a boat in that floating sea. You do not determine the height of the waves, the direction of the wind, or the color of the water. You can attempt to be the Ahab of your own mind, but in the end what lurks in the deep is the true you, the subconscious that will eat what little awareness you have, eventually. When they say you are what you eat, this is true, but eventually what you eat will eat you.” She turned to him. “Y’know what I mean?”

“Y-yeah.”