The girl just sat there, staring at the table in front of her. It was piled up with an array of empty bottles, filled ashtrays and some candles. They cast a drowsy light out to the room, like some mist from a horror movie or was it the lingering smoke, the drugs, the alcohol that blurred her perception?

She quietly shook her head and continued sipping mechanically the weird Brazilian cocktail she was holding. Thoughts were thundering inside of her, even banging against her stomach. It gave her a feeling of nausea but she knew it wasn’t time to puke yet.

How did she get into such a mess in the first place?

She painfully tried to recall the previous days. It was a hard task, considering she had lost the notion of time. Her world had been spinning according to her own crazy schedule and she had been fine with it. But now..

She had had some lsd, that was for sure. And some shrooms. And lots of alcohol and smokes. Maybe even some coke, she couldn’t remember. Jesus, she must be a laugh to look at now.

Not that it mattered. She wasn’t trying to impress anyone.

Ironically, someone didn’t share her opinion.

The boy was lounging in a chair opposite from her. He had been peering at her face for the past couple minutes or hours or days?

He thought her strangely mesmerizing with black crayon smudged around her eyes, the somewhat clinging tee-shirt she was wearing as well as her old, tattered jeans, sewed up with several safety pins. He briefly eyed her mass of black and coloured bracelets with the big stopwatch on her wrists before turning his gaze back to her face.

As human instincts go, she –of course- glanced at him at that precise moment. He faintly blushed before shakily standing and walking slowly to her, you know, to prove that he wasn’t watching just because he thought she was attractive and was merely looking around for someone to strike up a conversation with. He managed to step over several sleeping bodies without giving sharp kicks and dodge the table that seemed to come running towards him before letting himself down on the couch.

The girl stared inquisitively at him but didn’t say a word, being too far off in la-la-la land to be able to even muster an intelligent thought.

The boy was pretty though. Not beautiful, not cute, nor handsome. Just pretty.

His messy, straight hair fell in front of big, black eyes that were obscured by drug-heavy eyelids but framed with long lashes that seemed to cut into his soft skin. His skinny tie was hanging loosely around his collar and thin arms peeked out from under his rolled-up shirt sleeves.

Had he been there all along?

- I’m Noah, he simply said, sticking out his hand to her.

- Kate, she half-smiled.

- I’ve been feeling weird lately, Kate, he continued in a confidential tone.

The girl smiled genuinely this time and leaned back in the sofa, adopting his position of a bent knee facing the other –body language to keep distance- and hands innocently hiding lips that wanted to be kissed.

- How weird?

- I’ve been having dreams.. Noah whispered with a sigh. I think I’m actually living in them.

- Tell me.

- Maybe not, he responded, shaking his head.

- Have anything better to do right now? Kate asked with an amused air.

Noah bit his thumb, slowly gathering his thoughts.

- No, he admitted. See, I supposedly got into a fight. I was at this big shitty fair with awful music and suddenly, everyone was pounding on each other. I walked home in the rain and I realised my shirt was covered with blood. My sister opened the door, took one look at me and told me to go in the washing machine to clean up before my mother got back from work. What I thought strange was that I don’t even have a sister. The rest seemed perfectly normal which I guess is bad. She looked like a ghost though.

- Freud would get a kick out of this, Kate remarked pensively, with no hint of teasing in her voice. I had a weird one too. I was a knight for King Harrod’s family but he was sick and they got imprisoned by his brother. They were locked up in a sordid chamber with bars on the windows. The queen would weep and take care of their three kids. His brother had real knights with horses, all wearing black masks. I had a white one as the other guardians of the king had but we looked pretty stupid, being by foot and all. Anyway, I started painting the castle walls in blue and white, waiting for war to start. This one chick cheated, using a gun when we were in the Middle Ages. She shot one of my friends in the back of his neck.

Kate cringed at the memory. It had quite shaken her while she was experiencing the dream.

Noah calmly took her hand.

- I also had one around those times. I was a prisoner and was with several others in a large cell with dirty windows instead of walls. We were very high up so we couldn’t escape. There was straw on the ground and we didn’t have any privacy as we had to shit in there as well, with people able to watch us every minute. Then, there was some time lapse and one of the walls would become blurry. If you stepped into it, you ended up in a stone stairway and in our era. Like, a hop into future. And I couldn’t figure out which one I was supposed to be in. If the past was simply a hallucination on my part or if the future was some sort of psychic intuition.

- I had a dream where I was running away from a serial killer. I often have those. I suddenly ended up running into a huge tree-house and jumped down a slide to get out of it as the people living there became creepier by the minute. I found myself in a big, green plain and the killer was there. He challenged me, throwing ninja stars and I responded with plastic triangles. I kept changing ages too. I didn’t know where to stand.

- I had to kill people with a crossbow once. It was quite strange. Although it was way before Battle Royale came out, Noah lightly laughed. There were some sickening weapons in there. I felt so unclean but I had to kill or I’d die. I think the human sense of survival is a bit overrated considering the number of suicides.

- Very true, Kate quietly laughed. I had a cooking spree in one of them. I was supposed to make pudding with some bag of powder. Quite strangely, as I kept on melting the batter for it to make pudding, it would come out as folded pancakes.

- I once dreamt that I had bought half a kilogram of coke for fifteen bucks. It was light pink and tasted like sour sugar. This tall guy tried to steal it away from me in these nasty bathroom stalls then I somehow got back to my place. He had followed me or something and I began fighting with him so he’d bugger off. My room started swirling. I couldn’t make out if I were awake or not.

Kate absently stroked his fingers. They were thin and rather long. They seemed made for music. He closed his eyes but opened them again when she started speaking.

- I was on a train that travelled through space. It stopped at some Earth stations on the way. I stepped out and got lost in the city. When I finally found my way back, I saw my alter lying on the ground, dead. It was a bizarre shade of pink and it was bleeding. I stared at it for ages before someone told me the love of my life was leaving and when he flew out of the train, I just floated behind him and mingled my soul with his. It was true perfection. Complete osmosis.

- Did you get to see him? Noah asked with a strange look.

- Not really. That’s what’s so bad about this dream.

- I don’t think so. I mean, it’s better for you to find out on your own who your true love is.

- Well, I don’t know. I’d stop being disappointed this way.

- If you changed your way of doing things, you’d probably get a different true lover.

- You’re right, she smiled, turning to him.

- Don’t you adore how deep conversations can be when you’re high? Noah asked, tipping his head back.

As always, any sort of meaningful interaction with a stranger made him doubt about his so-called securities. He had friends but he never got on the same level of trust he did than with persons he barely knew, which was quite ironic.

Opening up had always been an issue for him except towards passing people and it made him fidget to think that he’d like to meet up with Kate later on. In this case, he just couldn’t go on and spill his guts out to her so he figured he’d better shut up and shift the conversation back to something less personal.

- As much as they can be nerve-wracking stupid, he concluded.

- I agree, Kate said as solemnly as before.

Seeing she was still serious, he let go of her hand and took an ashtray –converted to a candle holder- from the table. He dipped his fingers in the soft, burning wax and just stared at them. He felt dumb doing something like that but his mind couldn’t register any other indifference-broadcasting action.

He was interrupted by some ash being shaken onto the plate. Kate had lighted a cigarette and was mutely asking him if he wanted one. He gratefully took it even though his throat was hoarse with smoke.

- Thanks.

After the word was uttered, he realised his voice sounded several octaves lower with a husky tone to it. It was what his ex-girlfriend used to call his ‘sultry voice’.

He hoped Kate wouldn’t interpret it that way. He wasn’t actually trying to hit on her even if he thought she was mind-blowing sexy. But mind-blowing was the keyword. And he associated it with what drugs did to your head.

At least the cigarette was keeping his mouth busy as well as his hands.

Kate sighed. She was beginning to feel sleepy, probably due to all the shit she had been taking these past days. She had had no sleep either, for some reason.

As Noah grew quiet, she felt herself slip into a semi-conscious state.

- Noah..?

- Yeah? He softly replied.

- How did we get this far?

He understood the double meaning of her words. This far in getting fucked and this far in life while getting fucked.

- I don’t know. I often wonder about it too.

- I think we were made to meet each other.

- Maybe.

- I don’t trust anyone but strangers I won’t ever see again. But you, I want to.. Kate muttered as she fell asleep.

Noah quietly looked down at her. Her dark hair was lightly curling around her face and her skin seemed transparent in the candlelight. He protectively curled his arm around her and led her head to his lap.

- What are you up to, mate? One of the boys stirred in his sleep.

- Nothing. Sleep.

The boy sat up, rubbing his eyes open.

- Hitting it up with Kate, I see? You shouldn’t. I’ve heard she’s a hard case to deal with.

- What do you mean? Noah tiredly asked.

- She’s kind of weird, full of particular notions and stuff like that.

- Interesting.

- I swear, she has strange things going on. Like some sort of evil intuition or special powers. She has rituals and examines her dreams. If she talked with you, that means there’s something lingering in her head.

- Go back to sleep, I’ll deal with the witch, Noah sarcastically replied.

His friend rolled back to his other side and quickly enough, his respiration became regular again.

Noah smiled to himself then leaned down. He stared at Kate for a while.

- So, you recognised me?

He felt her tense up but she didn’t wake. He then brushed her lips with his, breathing in what should’ve been her air.

- I promise I won’t shut you out, he vowed.