Bars

She wasn’t seeing double – not yet. Or at least she was seeing things happen, then happen again a split second later. She wasn’t sure if that was better or worse; she’d never heard any of her friends talk like that was a thing. She didn’t even know it could be a thing.

Wait, where were her friends? She twisted around, looking for them. She saw two strangers high five, one sitting on a ‘97 Pontiac, the other walking by with his girl in hand. The dude walking by had a weird mullet. It had to have been fake. She turned to tell that to her friends, but they weren’t there. Right, they were gone, and she was drunk. At least she was outside. Or was that a good thing?

The dude sitting on the Pontiac, after a furious level of in-phone typing, finally left and she managed to walk straight over to where he was and sit down. The hood was still warm to the touch, but everything else was cold. She texted her friends and shivered. All she had on was a cut-down sleeveless shirt and flip-flops and denim shorts. She’d thought this night would begin, middle and end in cramped rooms with her friends, yet here she was on a sidewalk, alone. She texted them again, half-scared. There were some serious creepers giving her an eyeful.

While she waited for her friends to respond – like she prayed they still could – the music blew out from the speakers from one of the bars. It was all music she loved and wished she was inside dancing to. Shit, she wasn’t even sure how she had managed to get outside. Why was this happening? There were no memories, and that scared her. How close had she been to something bad happening?

Some guy walked by and asked her to stop sitting on the hood. She nodded quickly and moved over to some nearby concrete steps. It was getting much colder now, and her eyes were just beginning to stare wide at any entrance she might want to feel safe inside when her phone started buzzing.