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A girl slumped into a chair like someone had simply draped her there, her legs dangling over the sides like suicidal beings contemplating 'the jump.' Her wide, chestnut eyes seemed to stare at everything, seemed to take the entire room in from that corner, when in reality they were focused on nothing at all. Her fingers lay placid and still over a cheap, battery powered cod play that looked as if it had been drug through the dirt more than once. In every rare occasion one of the slender digits would slowly move upward and then fall back to the plastic making a slight 'tap' sound. She sat still in that corner for hours, as if she was forcing some intimidating number of loose puzzle pieces to form a picture.

Perhaps she knew something I didn't. I had been there in that poorly lit fraternity all evening, still, I failed to see her enter. No one had ever seen her pale face before, or her long, matted locks of blonde hair. And as the night stretched further into oblivion, people stopped paying attention. I, however, was still infatuated yet I couldn't push myself to speak to her. Her absolutely subtle beauty intimidated me, as it did the other guests. They had just found an easier way to deal with her presence by ignoring her, where as I couldn't.

She sat in infinity, her clothes seemed to wrinkle in every place that it counted, like she had been sleeping in them for a week. A cheap looking t-shirt with an even cheaper pin-up model smoking a cigarette parading about above a pair of dark blue jeans that needed scrubbed in the worst kind of way. A hole sat quietly in both knees of both pant legs. I wondered how they got there. Perfection flowed around her, and even the blemish on her high cheek bone and the scar above her eye brow, they made her all the more immaculate.

Often times, to my dismay, some unknowing young man might prance up to me in an attempt to make friends or to ask me to dance. Some random request. To each I shook my head, and sent him on his way as quickly as I could in the off chance that the mysterious girl might do something, say something, or leave.

Around midnight a terrible thing happened in the house. And then it moved up, onto the roof of the house, and then, finally, onto the lawn. One of the many randoms around the dorms had given up any hope of ever being happy again. It's not as if he had made any attempt, though. I remember the day he stopped talking. And then the day he started missing class. And even the day I saw him in the student union, alone, blindly staring beyond the television. I gazed at him for some time, wondering if he was all right, wondering if I should sit next to him.

I don't believe many people here knew his name, even the ones that went to class or roomed with him. I can say that I don't even remember. Just that he was mousy, shaggy, stubbly. He slipped in and out of crowds unnoticed, ate alone, read out in the court yard. I suppose he thought he could rely on himself wholly, and I suppose he was wrong.
Around midnight he had silently decided that that night, and every other night from that point, should not exist to him. Or that he should not exist to them. He slithered through the crowd of people drinking and bantering, slipped toward the balcony on the third floor of that nameless fraternity, and jumped. I don't believe he hesitated for a moment. He just went blank, and dropped.

A scream came from the lawn. And then a few more. By that point the majority of the room had either gone to see what was going on or moved towards the windows to peer out. The shock of the situation was thick and clung to everyone. My eyes shot around the room, searching for an explanation or a lead of any kind. I suddenly remembered the shady girl and spun around. She had left her seat and was padding out of the room, as slowly and effortlessly as a large, sleepy cat. For the first time that evening, I noticed that she had no shoes on. The soles of her feet were dirty and black and left a trace of dirt on the carpet and then onto the linoleum toward the back door. On the back of her t-shirt were two wide slits that looked like a very young child had cut out with an oversized pair of scissors. I couldn't turn away from her. Behind me someone screamed, "Someone call an ambulance!"

Chaos echoed through out the room and the girl suddenly glanced back at me. And she smiled. I gazed in awe, as the smile was something pretty or humble, but it felt cold, sad, and empty. She moved onto the patio. I followed, sprinting after her. You'd expect that I would have screamed for her to come back, but I couldn't. Even now, as my curiosity over flowed menacingly, I couldn't speak. So all I did was ran, and ran, and no matter how fast or how long I ran she was still ahead of me. Always in the front, the foreground, untouchable. She moved around to the side of the massive white house while I was still sprinting through the back, dodging lawn chairs and the fallen victims of cheap beer.

The air was cold, it being mid-October, my breath floated into nothing and my lungs burned as I pulled the stuff in faster and faster. My eyes stung and my skin had already developed the distinct roughness that comes with goose bumps. I suppose I began running too quickly, because the second she came into sight again I was exhausted. With the cold filling my lungs and my vision blurry I slowed down to try and pulled myself back together. I blinked furiously and when I paused doing so I double over and fell onto the clod, hard ground. She had glanced behind her again and made that same, vague smile that came through the darkness and sat in front of me. Through the rips in her shirt, two enormous wings stretched and then relaxed again. I couldn't blink and my breath was drawn in so tight that my lungs felt they were going to burst. Nothing moved, yet, at the same time it felt as if the entire world was spinning so fast that eventually everything would be thrown off into space.

Now, as her "true" image lay before me, I felt even more like I was sitting in a dark room and many things were going on around me that I just couldn't see. Thousands of thoughts came to me and I made an attempt to sort through them all and find the reasonable ones. And all she did was walk. Pacing into nothing, it seemed as if her feet would never touch the ground.

Feedback submitted by ANTHONY HULSE at HULSEHULSEY@aol.com on 9th May 2002

Hi Rhiannon, I hope I've spelt that right. I enjoyed your story immensely and you must have an imaginative mind to come up with something so well crafted. This could do with a rewrite as there were one or two errors but nothing serious. That the narrator was so besotted by this girl had me slightly perplexed but being an angel I suppose she had an aura about her. Anyway I enjoyed this and admire your style. You have many years ahead of you and as the old cliche goes; the world is your oyster. I only wish that I started to write at a younger age. Congratulations on being appointed writer of the month, you deserve it. l I look forward to reading more of your work.
Thank you.
Anthony Hulse. (Hulsey)