Sometimes you don't have to speak.

He walked home and curled his cigarette into fourths, then eighths , then shards of incandescent paper. Michelle decided they should walk down the street at midnight and hear each other talk and hear the loudness pummeling from the stereo speakers. It was music they didn't understand or care to comprehend, mostly crackly bits of scattered guitar and an unsteady wail, humming out to already absent minds. Radio waves aren't so frequent in these tiny towns.

 

The stale light of a convenience store cast a weary glance on the ambling adolescents, making them seem chiller and older for the harshness of it. Michelle picked up a rock and tried to playfully kick it around the group, but no one was interested. The night drank in its predators.

 

"Hey did you see Ironman?"

"uhh no, but I want to soon I guess."

" You should it's so sick"

A crippled sort of laugh cracked out of Andrew's lips, but he didn't feel much like conversation. He sweated just a little bit and with a gasp felt an aching wind chill the back of his neck. It was one of those moments when you can feel the cold entering your empty throat and your brain starts to feel like raw meat, useless and strange and something you wouldn't want to display to anyone else. He could never tell when these episodes would recur, so he did his best to hide them when he was around other people. It was a strange feeling, being so lonely yet still so ill at ease with anyone who tried to break the barriers of his solitude.

 

Soon the cars stopped rushing by and the sky faded into a deeper black, and all at once they wondered why they were out here, haunting the streets after dark like a band of lost gypsies. They had homes to go to and families who shared their blood and their memories. But some impulse, some innate knowledge in the natural order of things, pushed them to spend these hours together, even when they had nothing to say and no way of entertaining each other. In the temporary limbo between childhood and adulthood smoke uncurls its weary band around those first viewing the delicate scales of black in their hearts, and young people look for each other to dull the ache of that first strange pull.

 

"Same time tomorrow?" he muttered.

"Sure" she said, "what else are we gonna do?"

 

And he really couldn't think of anything.

Reviews

[Lady Lazarus.]

It was a strange feeling, being so lonely yet still so ill at ease with anyone who tried to break the barriers of his solitude.

this line is incredible.
i really enjoyed this.the style,rhythm and gentle flow of each sentence was beautiful.

[MagicHearted Knight]

It is really amazing stuff. I enjoyed the flow it takes.