I know I’m a little late posting today… but I swear I didn’t forget about it! I was just busy writing this lovely super short… short story!

I got the prompt out of my wonderful 642 Things to Write about book! It’s a quick scene, I know… but maybe and probably I’ll come back to it and add on to it later!

So… here goes: The story of a strange girl who hides herself under layers and layers of clothing!

—

She does this every day.

Samantha Pierson does this every day.

I looked from her fuzzy grey earmuffs to the neon green knee-high socks that overlapped her lightly washed jeans and took a step into her direction.

She continued to stare at her laptop screen behind her dark sunglass shades as I stopped in front of her mini round table. I set the black coffee that I had just purchased on the tabletop and pulled up a chair across from her.

“Mind if join you… Samantha?” I asked, glancing momentarily down at the clear, close to empty latte cup beside her laptop, reading the words ‘Samantha Pierson’ inscribed on its front side, the only way I actually knew her real name.

“Uh…” she began to reply, but couldn’t finish before I took a seat.

I watched her while she reached for her drink, noticing that her hand was covered with a thick, dark blue mitten.

“You know, Samantha,” I began, pausing for a second as she took a sip from her green straw. “It’s… Isn’t it a little hard to type with mittens on?”

She placed her beverage back on the tabletop and looked at me from behind her shades.

“Or…” I went on. “A little warm?”

“No,” she shot back, and then turned back to her black laptop.

I fell quiet for a moment and took a drink from my own coffee cup.

I stared as she slapped her keyboard a few times with her wrapped cluster of fingers.

“What are you… doing, there?” I eventually questioned, my thumb tapping on the side of my drink.

“What does it look like I’m doing?” she grumbled back, tilting her head to the side a little as she did so.

I decided not to respond and instead watched her continue to repeatedly hit the white buttons in front of herself.

“Can I just ask you one question, Samantha?” I, after a minute or so, perked up to ask.

She wrinkled her nose and made a loud sniffing sound.

“No,” she responded.

I kept my eyes on her and continued anyway.

“I’ve been watching you for a few weeks now…” I paused as she slowly turned her head back into my direction. “Well, not watching you, I mean… more like… noticed… you…” I paused for an even longer moment. “I just gotta ask… What’s with th-”

“It keeps me safe,” she answered, before I could even finish. She then stopped, opened her mouth, and leaned far over the table to whisper the rest of her statement. “From… the blood.”

“The… blood?” I raised an eyebrow.

“You look a lot like my brother,” she commented, completely off-topic, while she straightened her back. “At least… when he was my brother…”

“Um…” I started.

“My brother hated blood, too,” she went on.

She let a silence fall around us for about a minute, and I could hear the conversation between the two young women at the table a few feet to my right.

One of them said, “But Brant is the one with the squinty eyes.”

And then the other said, “God, Angela, they only look squinty because he’s always staring at your rack.”

And the other replied, “Oh, please… do you really think so, though?”

I decided to pipe up once more before I could listen to the rest, though.

“So… what’s so… bad, I guess, about blood?”

Samantha’s gloved hands hovered over her computer keyboard for a few seconds, and then she gradually turned her gaze slightly away from her screen.

“Because, Michael,” she started, probably reading the side of my coffee cup to capture my name with her voice. “It’s…” She trailed off a bit, and then slammed her hands harshly down on the table and yelled the rest of her sentence. “It comes out of people!”

I shuddered as she screamed, and then looked both to my left and right to see a few groups of people, including the pair of girls from before, all staring directly at us. After a moment, I returned my eyes to the girl across the table from me.

I looked her over, speechless, as the rest of the people in the small cafe slowly returned to their previous chattering states.

She froze for a bit, and then hurriedly shut her laptop, stood, and collected her bag from the floor.

“Hey, Samantha, I’m… sorry,” I began, my voice probably sounding a tad unsure of itself.

She proceeded to place her computer in her backpack, and then slung it over her shoulder. After that, though, she twisted back to me and gave a small smile.

“Don’t sweat it, Michael,” she said. “I’ll see you tomorrow… won’t I?”

I parted my lips to respond but, before I could manage anything out, she spun around and stomped her purple high tops away from the table. I continued to watch her as she made her way through the open door nearby, and then took another sip of my coffee.

“Well,” I whispered to myself. “We’ll see…”

---

Let me know if you liked it… or didn’t… or if you want me to continue it later this week or something!

-iKari!