Hours before, Eden found herself searching desperately for her companion, certain she'd seen him standing just on the opposite side of the club.

Granted, she'd lost herself to the music again; limbs moving and smoke spiraling in rhythm with the melancholy lyrics reverberating off the walls. It all happened so fast, lost in an absent-minded whirl of drunken excitement. Most nights passed like this, and as summer began drawing to a close Eden found herself savoring every second of it, hungrily devouring every ounce of the club's otherworldly atmosphere.

She staggered outside, the chilled night air gnawing bitterly at her flesh. She fumbled to light another cigarette in a last-minute attempt at escape. Her mind was always wandering elsewhere; daydreaming both served her and harmed her. She was well aware of--yet indifferent to--the consequences.

As another cloud of smoke dissipated from her lips, an uneasiness settled in the back of her mind. She hadn't seen Silas since he'd arrived at the club. It was strange (not to mention emphatically rare and concerning) that he had not turned up yet, either drunk or in otherwise miserable spirits, his bloodshot eyes framed with his familiarly messy eyeliner. Sometimes she'd find him slumped over against the wall beside the dance floor, muttering nonsense in a half-conscious daze. Other times she'd find him smoking outside, and they'd share cigarettes on the rare occasion that one of them didn't have enough. A pang of melancholy rattled her frame, ricocheting through her mind as she balanced her last remaining cigarette between her lips.

He'll turn up, she thought, uncertain whether it was only to convince herself.

Moments later, she found herself back in the bleak confines of her small apartment, thick curtains drawn against the outside world. Ashes sprawled along the windowsills and countertops; the aftermath of incense burning incessantly through the night. The appeal of incense (for Eden at least) is that it has the kind of scent that can transport the senses; the kind of scent that makes you forget. Sometimes it allowed Eden to forget where she was at the present, and how much it all hurt. The ashes continued to pile up along her windowsills, spiraling with every wayward breeze, but she couldn't bring herself to throw them away. Casting them to the wind would seem like spreading the ashes of an urn. She couldn't let herself dispose of them; not yet. The aroma lingered like the breath of a ghost, smoke twisting like an airbone network of translucent veins. They felt apart of her somehow. Her hands no longered tremble with the matches she struck, as they once did; now it was a familiar, comforting gesture.

She reached once more for the matches, holding them firmly in the palm of her hand. She could feel the dread building in her chest, suffocating her with a quiet terror she couldn't quite describe. With one swift, instinctive movement, she reached for the phone, dialing the only number she could remember in the moment.

Silas' line rang, the cheery sound a mockery of her desperation. After trying the number multiple times, it was apparent he wasn't at home. Eden's breath wavered uneasily; she had no doubt in her mind that something had happened. She went through a multitude of numbers, every club-going friend that knew Silas, and potentially his whereabouts. They were all just as clueless, if not more so. Very few had even noticed his arrival, and no one had managed to witness his exit.

Eden kept her eyes on the smoke wandering through her apartment, the spicy aroma slowly yet inevitably dulling her sense of panic. It felt like home to her, although the concept of a home was something quite lost on her altogether. How strange it seemed, to belong to one place and one place only-- in her mind, Eden felt as though she were a nomadic spirit; a ghost flitting between shadows and passing from one place to the next.

'Perhaps Silas feels likewise,' she thought to herself, the concept nearly as comforting as the heavy scent overtaking the room and numbing every pinprick of fear.

She stumbled back into her mattress, too drunk to notice the haste with which consciousness left her, leaving her alone to dwell with escapist musings until dawn.