Nightmare Fuel 2016, Day the Thirteenth - "Romantic"

We're near the close of the first fortnight of this project. Here's a bit of romance for Thursday the Thirteenth.


"Romantic"

I'm a romantic. I believe in love at first site.

First site wasn't at the party, the way she thought. No, it was sooner, from the rooftop deck atop the campus library. The way the sun caught her lavendar-dyed hair, the hint of cleavage (magnified from above), just the way she carried herself. I knew she was the one for me. And I knew I could engineer a meeting.

Everything can be engineered these days, even romance. Even spontaneity. The right picture, the right search parameters, Facebook and Twitter and Instragrams… it was so easy to make it right for her. To engineer the right meeting at the right party to give her the same chance of love at first site.

And it worked. Like a charm. I'll spare the details, but I when I awoke beside her the next morning I knew we were at the start of something special. Her room was all strange, occult-looking artworks, ceramic bowls of salt or hard-to-identify herbs, the smell of some kind of incense. I knew I'd be back.

I am, after all, a romantic.


She played the game the way they all do. Coy for a day, not returning my texts, but that was OK.

The next day she didn't return them either. Or the next. But that's OK too,.

I am a romantic, and I know the value of the sweeping romantic gesture. Of course a girl like that won't respond to a text. A girl like that needs to be seranaded outside her window, like Juliet.

Romantic.

I didn't do the played-out boom-box over my head routine, but I did sing, and I did read my original poetry. I said I was romantic.

Even in the bitter cold. After all, it isn't romance without suffering.

Finally, she opened the window, looked down at me, shook her head. Sadder than I expected.

"I didn't want to do this, but you won't leave me alone. You can stay outside, but I'm tired of looking at your body." With that she muttered some words in a language I don't know, tossed a pinch of some odd powedery substance through the air and….


I was


gone


There's no other way to describe it. One moment I'm a young romantic, the next I'm… some kind of ghost.

But that's OK, because I'm still here, still by her window as frost gathers around my ghostly shape.

I'll still wait for her, until she realizes that we're meant to be.

Isn't that romantic?