I had a thing with a girl once. Her name was Come Here. I met her at a car park, and I met her again at a party and I met her for the last time on her uncle’s kitchen floor. There was nothing wrong with her but there was nothing that right either. Her face curved strangely and she swayed like madness: only a few men loved her, but she fell in love with every man she’d meet. “Why can’t you be a werewolf?” she asked me from the bonnet of my car. “When the moon comes out you can like, tear me apart and eat my tits out.” Every time I’d see her, I’d see her through a window, or a windscreen, or through some sad, rising smoke…

She believed that we were both suffering from a bad case of insignificance. We had no money and we both pretended that we did. Her hair wasn’t wavy or long; it was strange and it had no spirit and she spent hours of her life trying to make it better. But it never did get better. She wore black gloves and would always ask me to strangle her, and when I wasn’t forceful enough, she’d slap me. “Don’t you dare write about me,” she said when I showed her my work for the first and last time. “Don’t you write one of those clichéd stories about me, about how you’re a lowly writer who met some eccentric and mysterious woman who smokes and doesn’t care about life. I don’t smoke and I do care about life and I’m not mysterious at all. Seriously.”

“You know what pisses me off about time?” I asked her. “It only lets us experience it once, yet it lasts forever. I’m not gonna get these seconds back, and I’m spending them with you. You better feel special.” She didn’t say anything. She didn’t get that I was joking. Or maybe she did get my joke but didn’t find it funny. She picked my hand up and ran her finger around its lines; she began to say something, but then changed her mind.

There was one evening, when I was feeling particularly desperate and lonely, where I told her that I sort of loved her. She remained quiet before saying that I hadn’t contacted her in months, and that I should buy flowers before saying such a ridiculous thing. Although I’d never seen her cry before, I had a feeling that she cried quite often. I believe that one day, there will be a beautiful painting of her on some wealthy stranger’s wall.

The last time we met, the buildings outside had multiplied, and the night lights and the day lights and the grasping lights and the screaming lights were rapidly spreading across the horizon like some kind of electric flame; the room was hot and the floor was bumpy, and I gazed at her as she gazed at her uncle’s kitchen ceiling with a strange smile on her face.