The woman started her night at dusk. The time when the sun had set, and the sky was still a light. A dark blue light. The stars weren’t making a face, and the moon wasn’t full, it was not even half, more so a “C” letter/shape. Crescent moons meant something in the Tarot cards, the cycle of days, weeks and longing for when she would find a friend. A new person to speak about or with, a man who saw more than her appearance, her pretty face, her toned body.

The days had been too fast, time was racing by, and she needed a night or an afternoon to let her actually feel the surroundings and its hidden character.

The new email came with her new job. Her new computer, a tablet and keyboard came with one too. The same person on both internet “@’s,” with two different make ups, remained the same every morning, when the four hours of sleep ended, and the vivid dreams cut or spliced into her lonesome bedroom in her apartment.

She ate a balanced vegan diet. She exercised with another female, a trainer, and even came home to play the latest Call of Duty, or Bethesda Software game for a shorter than most regular gamers session. Fallout 76 and Elder Scrolls V Skyrim, were her eight o’clock cool off from the gym games. The Twitter and Instagram accounts were not as enjoyable. People seemed phony and detached from a view she felt damned to know. Damned to never escape.

It was 2020, and October was being an extra bitch this year.

Passing out after her reading sessions at night; sitting up in bed wasn’t always at the same time. Some nights she used chamomile tea, other nights she did not.

It had been years since she got off pharmaceuticals like Ambien, and Prozac, and Klonopin. This wasn’t right behind her, but it continued to be the wrong choice for our woman waiting to find answers in “passing the hours.”

Tonight, she wan’t gaming, tonight she was just finishing up on an Academy Award winner on Netflix. A sad film, a movie that wasn’t such a mirror, but a mirror of maybe her earlier being.

She rolled her eyes at the suicidal Nicole Kidman with a fake nose, drowning her sorrows with rocks in her pants, her dress and pants, searching for sandy bottoms and other rocks and green moss, under the current.

She wasn’t wanting to die like the characters in “The Hours,” she almost felt like laughing in the face of madness. Not quite the reaction, but she felt disturbed with her past demons, now turned into not sadness or grief, but boredom and loneliness.

The constant clockwork of her career and its hours itself. She was not alone all day, or all night, she just lusted for a meaningful connection with a man.

A handsome gent. A guy that had a way of knowing when not to laugh, but also when to use laughter as a healing potion. A way to really meet that loneliness like a hockey player, licking their chops, for a puck carrier with their head down.

“WHERE THE FUCK IS HE AT?!”