I wrote this a few weeks ago during my College Statistics class (I know, I know, I really should be doing my work, but math is just sooo boring). I'm thinking of submitting it to our school's literary magazine, but I'd like to polish it up a bit. Any comments will be greatly appreciated.

So, without further ado, I present to you...


Pale Grey Eyes

by Kyrianne Stryker


She stood alone in the middle of the street.

She saw nothing. Not the rain-slicked cars shooting past her through puddles of dirt and grime, not the light of the lamp posts as they gently winking into their evening existence, not the rolling danger and the clenching pain in her heart.

She was a shell. The fire that once lurked in her eyes and her soul had long since burnt out. She was full to the brim with the despair and damp darkness that surrounded her.

The rain sent the tears down her face that she was unable to cry. It sung the emptiness of her core as it pattered softly on the cracked pavement.

A taxi slowed and paused beside her, crawling at a snail's pace as the driver peered from his window at her. He stopped; his window rolled down.

His gruff, concerned voice broke through her stupor and floated to her like he was in a cloud. It drifted through her mind like a lost soul before she realized he was speaking to her.

"Are you alright, Miss? Do you need a ride somewhere?"

She turned slowly, as if in a dream. His eyes were so wide, deep and brown and naive, even with his apparent age of stubble and jobs and a driver's license. His eyes bored into her, mirroring the desperation at her answer that resonated in him.

She opened her mouth to speak, but all that escaped was a fireworks of silent coughing, leaving her heaving and bent as she fought to regain her breath.

Her vision clouded. A horrified gasp and the echoing slam of the car door bit into her, and she winced. Warm hands grasped her, dragged her, pushed her onto the stained seat of the yellow taxi and closed the door, ignored the way she leeched his heat, the way she weighted as much as a feather of black.

The melody of the rain was muted behind steel and glass.

He watched her carefully in his rearview mirror as he drove, windshield wipers shrieking to the time of his heartbeat.

Her eyes were grey, unmoving, unemotional. She didn't blink. She just stared onward, lost in herself and lost to the world.

He shivered, and pulled his coat tightly around himself as he spoke again. "Is there anywhere you need to go, Miss?"

Her pale lips were the only things to move as she voicelessly mouthed the words to her destination, oddly detached yet still insistent.

He didn't understand. He decided she was hurt, sick, to take her to the hospital. She was too pale...

He watched her curiously in his mirror. A pale girl, grey eyes, dull platinum hair, a white tattered dressing gown. Silent as a mouse, silent as the grave.

He turned his attention back on the road. The rain washed in torrents down the windshield, fogging and distorting an already hazy world.

He could feel her staring. It sent a tingle up his spine, sent the hair at the nape of his neck standing on end.

Unnerved, he looked back at her. She hadn't moved, hadn't stopped her mad, personal musings of the secrets of the universe. Her pale grey eyes shot a straight line through him and his soul and continued on. His skin crawled.

A beat of something esoteric crackled through the air like electricity. Her eyes flashed, mouth wrenched wide in a grotesque grimace. She moved, her very existence shimmered frenetically. From her monstrous maw ripped a scream, the scream of the Furies and of a fallen angel.

He found himself slamming his foot on the breaks, eyes snapping back to the distant world. He swerved. There was a deer, frozen in terror just as he found himself frozen inside, even as his hands and body pantomimed what was ingrained into his muscles long ago.

When he finally found the side of the road, windshield wipers flapping desperately in harried consolation, he was finally able to breathe. He turned wearily, formulating a thanks to the girl for her sharp perception and reflex.

No words left him as his gaze fell on the seat behind him. The girl was gone. His mind was silent as a mime as he stared. In his memory, the haunting visions of pale grey eyes stared back.

Somewhere, in the middle of a storm-soaked street, she stood alone.

---

Well, what say you? What are some parts I could rewrite? What parts did you like the best? Like I said, any input would be appreciated. :)