The Girl In The Painting — Matt Shaw

Nick: I watch from the shadows as I always do. Humans going about their daily lives, blissfully unaware of our existence. I see her and not for the first time. She stands there with no memory of who I was nor what we once shared. Had my heart been beating, it would break to know that I am now nothing to her, not even a faded memory from a life long since gone. See me once more. Please, see me. Be mine again. Hannah: Of the one-hundred plus students crammed into the lecture hall, it is the boy who draws my eye. The beautiful, pale boy. Every other single person around him fades into nothing. As if sensing my eyes upon him, he turns to look at me. The watchful intensity of his gaze is as chilling as it is thrilling, as if he can see straight to the beating heart of me. My secrets, my hopes, my dreams, exposed and laid bare. I see him, too. His sadness. His loneliness. I see it and I feel it. And I am scared.