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She smiled at him as she closed the door…that sweet smile trying to conceal the love busting at its seams. Alex smiled too, almost too nervous to look her in the eyes, but there was a moment where both stood, transfixed. Maybe for a fraction of a second, their eyes met, pupils lined up as ways inside, a window to the hormones and endorphins being pumped through their brains, a screen through which they view the dizzying effects they have on each other in this moment, lasting lifetimes to them, too lovestruck to communicate anything else except a feeble, “See you around.”

Soon after stepping off the front porch, the inviting early summer breeze blew in the direction of Alex’s home…he felt as though he could be taken with it.



Oxytocin

Dopamine

Seratonin



…A few of the chemicals charging through Alex’s brain as he floated down the street, the wind at his back caressing his scalp and flowing under his arms, picking him up with strong invisible fingers. The greens, reds, and yellows of the streetlights became beautiful glowing suns, casting ever changing colored shadows on the ground. The neon crackled and buzzed in its shapen glass tubing outside countless shops on either side of the street, giving everything an unearthly glow. After walking in a stunned silence for a while, he almost forgot to turn down the corner to get closer to his street. It was around 1 in the morning, and he still had a ways to go. Alex put on some music, his headphones, and the beaming grin that he hadn’t removed since leaving the house. Her house. He had never been in love like this before, and he never wanted to fall out of it either.

The sweeping electronica stimulating his ears made him pick up his pace, walking briskly down the sidewalk. His eyes cast at the beautiful lights on the ground, the intricacies of the sidewalk, everyday beauty he had never noticed until tonight. He turned his eyes up towards the starless sky; the light emanating from downtown setting a pale yellow hue over the squat, crude, concrete buildings of the South Side, pushing away the darkness into a never ending twilight. Alex walked in this dreamlike limbo, and he could almost feel her walking beside him. His eyes closed as he felt her walk alongside him, her presence so strong he wanted to open his eyes and turn to her; but he knew if he did, she would not be there, so he walked blindly for a while as if she was beside him all along.

But below the sweeping harmonies tantalizing his eardrums, he heard something. A voice, not light and soft like hers, but deep and harsh. Alex opened his eyes just in time to see the presence he thought was her zoom into the distance in the form of two kids on bicycles. Were they talking to him? Alex popped a headphone out of one ear and watched the two boys flashing in and out of his vision as they passed through the spots of light on the ground from the streetlamps high above. The wind at his back started to turn cold and sour, bringing the familiar stench of rot and neglect into his nostrils. Alex picked up his pace a little bit, for it was almost 2 now and he would be much safer if he were off the streets.

He still had a ways to go, so he popped in the headphone again and started to jog. He held his eyes shut as the wind at his back grew colder…he just wanted to get home and see her face again in the comfort of his computer screen. He wanted to tell her how she made him feel in a long, drawn out message full of spelling mistakes and mismatched punctuation from his shaking fingers driven by pure ecstasy. He wanted her to know so bad. His eyes shut tighter as he kept jogging, only seeing the purest black, making an endless canvas on which he could paint her face a thousand times and marvel in its beauty. All he saw was her. He could make out every strand of hair, every crease in her lips, and her eyes. Those gorgeous eyes, her deep black pupils surrounded by an iris of the most emerald green. He traveled through the canyons of rods and cones that make up her sense of sight, all directed towards him. He flew into the canyons made by the iris, turning from green to bright gold and then to a deep brown. Her eyes seemed to grow even brighter…her pupils started to contract…the whites of her eyes shining with lights brighter than any described in Heaven.

The glare grew so blinding that Alex’s eyes flew open, but the light persisted. He shielded his face and turned the other way, purple circles dotting his vision. Headlights, bright LED headlights…it must be a fancy car. The headphones were still filling his ears with pounding music, and Alex could hardly comprehend the situation he was in. He heard voices and shouts; someone was talking to him but he couldn’t see from all the light. He squinted in time to see one word heading at a high speed towards his face:



Louisville



The impact knocked Alex to the street, and he felt 5 more of equal or greater force slam into his body and rattle his bones. He could feel his ribs splinter like young twigs being trampled by the boot of a lumberjack. He screamed in pain but the beating continued. Alex rolled over on his stomach and pushed himself up onto his feet and ran. He ran until he exhaled fire and all the muscles in his legs tore. He hopped fences and guardrails and parked cars, all the while the music in his ears was making an immense, building crescendo. The cacophony of noise and the thudding of the boots behind him just made Alex run even more.

His legs gave out a few short minutes later. His knees hit the asphalt with a loud scraping noise, tearing his flesh from the bone. Alex’s chest expanded and contracted in sharp gasps. Flecks of blood fell from his mouth and nose and onto the ground. His music had reached a peak, the deep thud of the bass covering up the sound of the footfalls nearing his position. The pummeling commenced shortly after, and Alex was too tired to even scream. He slumped to the ground in a pool of his own blood, and lay there motionless. A pair of bloody sneakers came into his view as one of his attackers stepped in front of him and looked at his broken body. Alex didn’t even flinch when he felt the cold barrel of the gun at the back of his head. The music, still pounding in his ears, finally reached a break, just as the trigger of the gun was pulled.

In the fraction of a second it took for the bullet to go from Alex’s brain stem, travel through his skull, and exit right between his eyes, Alex saw something. As the blinding white light of the gun-blast started to recede, he saw a small black dot. That dot became surrounded by a sea of emerald green. When all was black and silent, all Alex could see was her. She had on that smile that she had given him earlier that night…the smile that is a dead giveaway that you are in love. Her hand was outstretched, beckoning him…so he closed his eyes and took it.

The smoke of his burning filled the sky, choking the yellow hue of the city with its spiraling tendrils, black as death itself. The vapors of carbon were blown by a warm summer breeze over rooftops and alleyways, and made their way toward a girl’s bedroom window. The faint odor woke her, and half asleep she clambered over to the window to shut it. But as she stood there, at the windowsill, the smell filled her with a feeling that he was there in the room with her. She smiled and stared out at the vast expanse of buildings she saw before her, and she knew in her heart that he was out there waiting for her.



Waiting with a smile on his face…the smile he gave her what seems like ages ago. She couldn’t wait to see him again.