Ramen Shop

The first pill was pink and it was sour.

Electra slipped it between her teeth hours ago, before the sun vanished and the lights of the city came on because without it the hunger would be an impossible thing to bear.

It was stupid.

All these pop-up, never-go-hungry, political-life-raft type of shops exploded throughout the city months ago and there still wasn't a single one open past eleven. And no ramen shops either. That was the real crime. But the reason was simple. It wasn't ever for the people who needed it. These shops, pretty as they were, existed just to sway the voters.

Rain started falling in fat drops, smacking hard against her head.

Electra flipped up her hood and shoved her hands in her pockets. Of course, it would start raining. And of course, it would be cold rain. This wasn't going to help her any. Not when she was this hungry.

The hunger was a gnawing thing. It always was. The last shop she frequented boarded up and went under the night before, leaving her stuck trying to figure something out today.

Puddle water splashed up the loose leg of her jeans, staining the hem as she briskly walked north.

Daytime was for the rich. Cops would ticket people like Electra just for existing during the daylight hours. So she, and all the others, waited until night blanketed the city and all its pretty lights flickered on to get their food but when the rich left, the shops shut down. There wasn't enough money in their combined pockets to convince them to stay open.

Electra still needed to eat. All the people walking in the rain tonight did.

She stopped at a street corner, watching as a silent stampede of electric cars rushed through the green light. It was a pretty city despite its problems. Prettier when it rained like this. Electra enjoyed the way the lights shifted between the falling water. She liked the way all the shops, all the grocery stores, all the palm reading shops set up three stories up became blurry. It was magical.

Astigmatism made it pretty.

It was a fixable problem. As fixable as her hunger. Just a little bit of money stashed away could fix it.

But there wasn't anyone who would serve her. The shops and the doctor's offices were all closed.

Pale blue light rained down from the lights surrounding the shop entrances and skittered across the crosswalks. They caught the white sides of the cars, turning them into streaks of blue.

What would it be like to be in those cars?

Red from the sudden changing light washed over the herd of hoods of people waiting underneath the rain. Waiting. Cold. Wet. Electra looked up, fixing pale pink eyes on the red palm. The world went crimson as the palm turned green.

A different herd of people moved this time.

She was no different in this, was she? Caught in the tide of the city like anyone else. She moved when the lights changed, she ate where there was food, and she even tuned in to watch the candidates promise her a better future. A sardonic laugh huffed from her lips, turning to steam.

What a joke.

Ah, she'd missed the light again. That was twice now.

There was no worry though. There never was. The city was full of many different sorts of people, most terrible, but the city itself, its buildings and streets and pretty lights, was kind. It would steadily continue to live. Its heart would beat and the lights would change again.

Four minutes on the dot.

It was a slow heartbeat.

Did that mean it was dying? Electra wondered. Or could it mean that it would live forever? If the city lived forever and if she was buried deep in the heart of its cemetery, she'd saved up plenty for that, then maybe she could live forever too.

She could be eternal.

A bone in the city's vast skeletal structure.

Electra slid a thin hand into her pocket, plucking one of two small round pills and easing it under her tongue. The city wasn't bright enough. And she was so hungry. This would at least numb the hunger a little longer. And her thoughts along with it.

Hunger like this fouled up her mood.

It made her jittery and unable to think clearly. A cup of noodles every few days wasn't enough to keep her going. She exhaled slowly, wishing suddenly for a cigarette or something to swipe away the taste of that bitter pill.

A gap in the silent, electric cars let her peer across the street straight into the diner. Ah, there was something sweet to see.

Two women leaned against one another, one with peach hair and the other with yellow. A half-eaten basket of fries sat between them. The only normal color in a world of neon but they were an electric combination. Pretty like the bands of Jupiter. They bled into one another.

They bled into one another.

Yellow blood, electric and worrying like nuclear waste, seeped across the porous skin of the woman who was pink enough to burn an afterimage across Electra's broken eyes. Her bright eyes. Her pink eyes. The woman with pink hair had black eyes. Empty eyes. Nothing eyes.

What would it be like to love?

To bleed into someone so completely that nothing remained of the original form?

Electra blinked and it was gone.

The flickering sign for food. The couple. The smiles.

But the two women stood on the other side of the street, one with headphones on and a dim look to her and the other, a good distance away, head down and eyes closed.

The lights changed. Electra joined the people crossing the blue-stricken crosswalk. Part of the masses again.

One painted line of eight passed underfoot.

She would like to be part of the colors bleeding into each other, the starry shape of blurry lights.

The second line, stomped on by a ratty boot with holes in the sole.

Pink eyes lifted and clung. The women walked in step, perfectly oblivious of the way their souls bent toward each other.

The third line was slick. Electra wobbled but did not fall.

Gravity tugged on the women. Their eyes slitted and slipped, started to fall off their faces, and then...they connected. Black and green turning into the light of a tornadic storm.

Ominous.

Four white lines had passed now.

Electra closed in on the binary stars, swallowing thickly as the hunger fizzled in a nauseating pulse under the power of the drug. Their light was sickening.

Five lines of eight.

She could smell their perfume as she crossed them at the midline. Sweet on one and sharp on the other. One caught in the transition between dusk and dark while the other sat happily underneath the sun.

Six lines.

She brushed shoulders with them both. An impossible squeeze of what never existed and what she yearned for.

Seven.

The smell, the touch, the electricity of it all burned in her blood. The pair ran fingers through her soul and for the barest flicker of a second, Electra thought she found friends.

She stopped on the eighth white bar and turned around.

They should have been behind her, with peach hair and electric yellow under the glow of the city, but there was nothing. Only hoods and the hungry.

And eight lines of white cutting into the starving traffic.

Electra swallowed the bitter aftertaste of the pill and kept walking. Searching for a ramen shop.