Page 6 of Embers of Midnight
“Will do.” She disappears through the swinging door, then a moment later I hear the back exit thump and lock. Her footsteps fade into snow.
The diner is suddenly a different place. The neon hum turns loud. The clock ticks like it wants to be noticed. I stack chairs on tables, the scrape of wood over tile louder than it should be. I wipe a circle on the counter where those two sat, harder than necessary, until the stainless shows me a warped version of my face.
Deep breath. Keys. Routine.I count the drawer twice because my brain is an anxious little auditor. The numbers line up. I snap the cash tray shut and lock it, then do the rounds: back door, storeroom, side hall, bathroom. The soda machine burps as it powers down. My steps echo. The place without people feels like a stage after the play.
At the front, I kill the neon OPEN sign and the room tilts toward dark. Streetlight filters through slats of ice on the window. I shrug into my coat, wrap the scarf up under my nose until the wool itches.
I lock the door. The bolt slides home with a small click that feels final. Outside, the parking lot is a flat of gray and white, tire rutsfading at the edges. A car engine coughs somewhere, then dies. Wind runs a palm across the front windows and moves on.
I pause with my palm on the glass. The reflection gives me a thin version of me. For half a second, behind my shoulder in the glass, I swear I see a smile that isn’t mine. Not a friendly one. Not dramatic either. Just… placed.
Don’t start.I blow out a breath and fog my own face.Keys. Walk. Home.
The street is quiet. Snow talks in small sounds. I put my shoulders down and start toward the corner, weight balanced, ears open.You’ve got this. Ten minutes. No detours. If someone says your name, keep moving.
At the curb I check left, then right. The world looks the same as it did this morning, except my skin knows it isn’t. I hook the keys deeper between my fingers until the bite edges into pain I can catalog. It keeps me present.
He said see you later,the memory whispers, the words landing like a cold coin.Maybe he meant nothing. Maybe he meant something.My mouth goes flat.
I step off the curb. The night exhales.
And I walk.
Burn The Night
Seraphina
Snow complains under my boots. The lot is half-plowed, ice lurking where the shovel got bored. I tuck my chin, scarf high, shoulders down, pace steady.Don’t look like prey.I’m not prey, even if my body sometimes doesn’t get the memo.
Left past the pharmacy with the paper snowflakes. Right where the streetlight flickers like a bad habit. The air has that late-night quality where sound travels too far—an engine two blocks over, a laugh that doesn’t belong to a face here. Something else, too. Steps that learn mine and keep time a breath behind.
It’s them,my skin says, the the hair on my neck standing up.Or it’s nothing. Or it’s the way cold stretches time until it creaks.
I don’t speed up. I don’t slow down. The keys stay tucked. My other hand lives in my coat pocket, curled around my phone like it’s a lifeline and not a rectangle that drops calls when it’s dramatic outside. The window of Marlowe’s Pawn throws asmear of green light onto the snow. I use it as a mirror. A shape crosses the glow and then vanishes at the edge like a fish in shallow water.
Okay. So not nothing.
I angle for the next turn; the alley there cuts off a block. I don’t take it. I keep to the sidewalk because I enjoy not being a cautionary tale. The steps behind hitch and adjust. A whistle threads through the dark, lazy as a cat stretching, and dies.
“Evening,” a voice says behind me, just close enough to bruise.
Every muscle in my shoulders wants to climb my ears. I don’t stop. “Stores are closed.”
“You just closed one,” the other voice says, to my left now, and the map in my head redraws with two red pins. “We wanted to leave a comment card.”
I swing my eyes to the glass of the laundromat. It gives me shapes—bulk jacket, beard, posture that says bored and sure at once. The one on my left walks fast enough to put his shadow over mine. The other hangs back, letting the angle trap me between.
Keep moving. Street ahead. Light ahead. Yell if you have to. Don’t give them the alley. Don’t—
A hand clamps my upper arm and yanks. Momentum betrays me. My shoulder slams cold brick and my back finds a doorwayI didn’t plan on. The world snaps smaller. I bring the keys up, punch with the little brass teeth like a kid who learned from a YouTube video, and hit jacket instead of face. He grunts. The other one laughs and it’s wet with cigarettes.
“Spicy,” he says. His palm lands on my hip over the coat and squeezes like he’s checking fruit. “Smile for us.”
“You first,” I snap, twisting, aiming my knee where God and biology made it count. He shifts just enough that I catch thigh. It lands but not the way I want. His breath ghosts my cheek. It smells like old coffee and something sweet that went wrong.
He pins my wrist to brick, the brick biting through my sleeve. The other man uses his body like a wall. Cold knifes through the back of my jeans when I hit ice on the step and slide half an inch. My scarf catches on a coat zipper and tightens against my throat until my pulse taps there like it wants out.
“I said smile,” the first one repeats, softer now, like a bedtime story told by a liar.
