Lip Cuts and Coffee Burns

She had realized her lip tasted salty. She ran her tongue over the cut again, and found her mind floating around the tastes yet again, the different taste on her lower lip, which was not at all an accident. It was always soothing during her smoke, a taste to focus on while staring at the empty school in front, or faking a conversation with another. The unfinished smoking area was perfect for these times, empty, and flooding with different smells, the faint scent of old, long deserted buildings, paint from cans lying around, but mostly wood and smoke. It always got her thinking, what if she accidentally burned the entire building down. She did not look like much of an arsonist anyway, in fact, she did not look like much of anything, only sleepy all the time. And it was partially correct. She required very few hours of sleep, and thus, more hours in front of the TV, or at work, or with friends, or thinking about cuts and bruises in her body, or hopefully, actually in the act of making them.

Someone across the hall, going down the stairs, intently looked at her for a while, before waving and calling out her name. She waved back, or more accurately, waved them away. Now was not an ideal time for chit-chat, and besides, she was sure they wouldn’t go near her, for fear of seeing ghosts. There were stories about the office being haunted, and the lights in the area wasn’t installed yet. All the better, she thought. She never listened to accounts of their experiences, not did she care, she was too busy with the stories in her head to be bothered by shadows moving around. And it was quite amusing, fully-grown people going out of the office in packs, all because of that concern, a mere bang of the door given extra meaning. Fear of the dark was for people who had nothing to think of. Nothing troubling, nothing fun in their minds, with enough space for the darkness clad imagination to creep into. They never appeared in front of her, and she doubts she would notice them if they ever did. Here, as long as she had her cup of coffee, her cigarettes, and the frail sound of the music from the office inside, she was fine. God knows it was much better than hearing people talk to themselves in front of the computer, the worst part of that was the talk was not even worth listening to. One is allowed to talk to one’s self if it entertains eavesdroppers she thought. What use is talking to yourself if you can’t even hold your own attention? Would it be for the sake of the ultimate uninteresting conversationalist?

The band from the nearby bar-compound was beginning to play, and her cup was nearly empty. It was time to go in, and hopefully, come back outside for another cup and a few sticks.