1
GO AWAY
I don’t like the look the waitress gives me when she asks if I want a refill. If she had endured the kinds of nightmares I’ve been avoiding, she would over-caffeinate, too. Never mind that my clothes and hair are unwashed; it’s the bags under my lavender eyes that make me look truly disheveled.
“Refill already? How about we switch you to decaf now. It’s nearing nine o’clock.” She points to the darkness outside the long picture window of the greasy diner.
I glance at the glass, but when I catch a translucent glimpse of myself in the reflection, I grimace.
I haven’t showered in days. Haven’t brushed my hair in at least two weeks, leaving it an overgrown, twisted mess of loose, black waves.
I can’t remember the last time I shaved.
I turn my face away from the image I don’t need to see. It doesn’t matter what I look like. Waitress is the only person who sees me on a regular basis. Judging by the way she hasn’t bothered plucking the gray hairs from her chin, it’s clear to me that neither of us cares all that much about our appearance.
I come here every night and sit in the same, sticky booth. I love that neither of us feels the need to learn the other’s name. I like Waitress. She leaves me alone, for the most part. Apart from her occasional needling that I should lay off the caffeine at night, she’s perfect. All the other waitstaff wear nametags, but she doesn’t wear hers. Doesn’t want people to know her, I guess.
My kind of person.
“Regular.” I tap the side of my mug, searching the newspaper for signs that my premonition might be wrong.
Please let me be wrong.
Waitress sighs. “You’re going to be jittery all night long, you know.”
“Counting on it. Leave the pot.”
If I am granted a good night’s sleep, there’s a higher chance that my stupid prophetic dreams will paint themselves on the walls of my psyche yet again. When I was a kid hoping for superpowers, I should have been more specific. Prophetic nightmares that predict gruesome deaths is hardly super speed or super strength. The bags under my eyes are not exactly the Superman muscles required to impress the ladies.
It’s the same exchange we have every night, wherein Waitress brings me refills until I tell her to leave the pot. Then she shakes her head at me and waddles off.
She never smiles at me. I like that. I don’t trust people who smile for no reason. I don’t exactly have a face that inspires sweetness in a person. I appreciate people who don’t dress it all up for the cheap seats. I tip just fine, smile or no smile.
Tonight, however, there are hardly any customers. Waitress must be bored because she shuffles back to my booth and lingers, leaning her round elbow on the back of the seat across from me. “Anything worth reading in that paper of yours? Or is it all doom and gloom?”
Come on, Waitress. Neither of us enjoys small talk. We were getting along so well.
“It’s a mix.”
The Hawker is a publication that sells at most grocery stores near the gum and candy at the checkout. To anyone searching for celebrity gossip rags, this appears as nothing more than a tabloid, filled with vampire sightings, monster mayhem, and werewolf hijinks. Only trappers know the information for what it really is: a news update for our supernatural community.
Finally, Waitress makes her way on swollen ankles to the next table without making me endure more small talk.
I mean, honestly.
I’ve had the same dream for three nights now. If it’s come to fruition and the girl has been murdered, I can go to sleep tonight and hopefully catch up on my missing REM cycles. With each page I turn, I scour the print for a murdered child, maybe ten years old, clawed to death by a werewolf who’s in the middle of her moon madness.
Nothing. Come on.
I get more frustrated with each page I turn. When I come to the end of the periodical, I know I’ll need to finish the pot of coffee if I am going to escape seeing the child mid-death, as I’ve done for the past three nights.
The younger the victim is, the harder it is for me to watch.
That’s what I do. I just sit there in my dream and watch. In real life, I am not a person most would mess with, given my taller, muscular stature. But when I am asleep, I am powerless. I never get to intervene. Even back when I was all about preventing these things from happening in real life, in my dreams, I was motionless.
Now that I’ve long since given up trying to be the hero, the stagnation in my dreams has bled into real life.
I take my time finishing the pot, pretending this is the life I prefer. By the time I meander to my car, I don’t do more than frown when I find my door unlocked. I know I locked my car before I went into the diner. I would never not lock my car.