I walked around all afternoon, hand in hand with a churning blank space. She wasn't a girl, nor was she even a color.  Rather, she was bending of the scenes behind her in the vague shape of a human body.  Yet I knew she was essentially female.

 Just another day at SUNY Stony Brook, at least that was how it began. This was back before the shootings of '87, back when it was almost but not quite a safe place.  As if any place was safe for me ... I was living in this dorm with a bunch of party animals, and did not have the decadent dorm spirit that was expected of me.  I never joined in when the rest of the guys woke someone up in the middle of the night and deadlegged them in theshower.  I did not party willingly.  And when I did, I was such a stumbling wreck that nobody would let me into their room.  They said that, even when I was standing still, things across the room would break, and that I should just go to sleep, or barf, or do something useful.  The joys of alcohol.  All I really did was sit in my room with my typewriter and some warm beer or cheap vodka, writing horror stories that were rarely mailed because I spent all my postage money on booze.

 So it was 8:30 in the morning and I hadn't felt like showering or eating. All I could do is complain about how this Physics class (with all its labs and study group meetings) was cutting into my rewrite time.  I shambled down the path to the main campus, those brown concrete angles that jutted out between autumn-dying trees.  I nodded or grinned at the folks who passed, just so they wouldn't turn and beat me.  Not that they mattered to me one iota.  In another ten minutes, I would be sitting in the lecture hall listening to magnetic field theory with my hand gradually gravitating to write story outlines in my ragged blue notebook.

At least this made the day feel productive, since I found it insulting that I had to pay some professor guy to read a simple physics book to me.  What a waste of time.
 These were my thoughts as I travelled from point A (a warm bed) to point B (a discontinuous series of cold plastic chairs) for the day.  A sound like broken bottle shrapnel drew my eyes from the even stones of the walkway.  I looked toward the sound, and saw a vague blur sitting under a tree nearby.

At first I thought the disturbance was a dust cloud kicked up by the thrown bottle, but the silt did not settle.  Instead, it sparkled in a way which suggested (to my tired mind) the reaching out of an arm to me.  What writer could walk past something so strange without stopping to inspect it?  I trudged through the wet grass to the figure that was standing now and speaking to me.

 "Good morning," said a womanly voice that chimed in my ears.

 "What the devil are you?" I asked, somehow not unkindly.

 She looked at herself and saw nothing amiss.  I could not detect any surface features, no eyes, no anything, but she was real and comfortable with herself.  She replied, "I've been wanting to meet you, but I haven't had the guts until now."

 "Is that a fact."  I was quite bewildered.

 "I hope you don't mind.  You're going to Physics, aren't you?"

 "Don't you have a class to go to?"  I almost pushed her away, but I really wanted a good excuse to skip class and talk to this shimmering blob of whatever-it-was.

 "I was headed upstairs at the Union," she offered.  It was my favorite hang-out.  Nothing fancy, just a split-level study area where I liked to sit and watch people doing their stuff on the floor below.  I felt strange as she offered an arm and I accepted its tingling warm-coldness.  We headed toward the Union.

 Thankfully, there would be few people there, just as there were few now on the path to gawk at us apprehensively.  I was glad to see that she was visible to other people.  When she first spoke to me, I was certain that I was still at my dorm, baking in the morning sun and not yet awake.

 We got to the upstairs lounge, and ... lounged, glancing at each other oddly.  I knew my look was strange, and there was nothing about her that wasn't.

 I finally gave in to my curiosity.  "Uh, where are you from?"

 She giggled.  "I'm not exactly a transfer student, you know."  As she laughed, small prismatic vortices twirled and broke within her.  It was mesmerizing.  "I came to campus today because you needed me."

 I sighed.  "So you're intent on remaining a paradox.  Fine.  In that case I don't need you.  You were wrong."  I smiled.  "I can be a paradox, too."

 I looked down as her hand worked itself into mine.  Her hand was a clear, delicate christmas ornament of no particular shape.  My hand was bent and grotesque under the invisible surface.  I didn't mind.  I was beginning to enjoy her company.  That she was not human (or not alive) (or not even real!) did not bother me.

 "Of course you need me."  She was right.  My life was empty and miserable, and even a sparkling non-entity could tell.

 I had no reply but to accept her kindness.  An ordinary couple passed and stopped to stare solidly at my companion.  They saw my disapproval and became politely  embarrassed.  Walking off, they shook their heads sadly. Their attitude was simple: they wanted me to fill in this empty space because it annoyed them.  It annoyed THEM?  This was humanity working its mysterious ways again, always thinking of themselves, always cruel and unfair.

 But traffic slowed to nothing when the second class of the day started. The blank space grew closer to me.  She breathed things to me, whispering in the voice of all the memories of people I've cared for (and been rejected by), while holding me with her strange-cold hand-warping hands and threatening to consume me utterly.

 I stood up and broke the grip.  I saw the sudden possibility that she was tricking me, that she would possess me somehow.  Merged together we might create one faint shadow, or nothing at all.

 She looked sad somehow.  "These people are making you nervous, aren't they?"

 There were still four people in the lounge, and their eyes were merciless, filled with opinions I didn't want to see.

 I turned to stalk away, to find a place where I could sort these things out.  But she grabbed me in a long coalescing hug, like the day's breeze. A coruscating jumble of my own eyes nose arms and fingers sprang up around me, quick reflected spectres dancing on air.

 Then she swirled around the room, running at the other students, waving arms in front of them, scaring them off as effectively as a pipe bomb. Worried about the chaos we had caused, we left as well.  As we walked out, we heard people talking about us, everywhere we went they hushed as if we hadn't heard them, or they hadn't spoken at all.

 What was this force which had attached itself to me?  Why did its touch feel like kisses?  I knew that if I did not come to terms with it soon, I would fall in love with it simply because it fulfilled my wishes.  And then what?  I knew that she or her kind did not show up when they were needed, regardless of what she said.  In all my dealings with other people, and the writings of many cultures, I had never heard of such a creature.  So why had I been singled out?

 She was a comfortable nightmare, frightening in its simplicity.  She was my worst fear (that nobody loved me), projected into nebulous chaos, holding my hand and wanting to hang out in my room for a while.

 It was 11:25am.  Looking at my watch was the sort of detail which proved that I was awake and in trouble.  For as we walked, the stares and comments went on, and this girl-thing was just as real as the rest of me.

 A girl I knew called out my name and approached warily.  Her name was Linda, and she was some kind of artist herself.  Other than that, I did not know anything about her.  I sometimes tried to avoid her, for reasons I never could understand.  I felt the blank space ease its grip on me.

 "What are you doing?" I asked it/her.  It did not reply.

 Linda thought I was talking to her.  "Just saying hello.  Are you uh -- okay?  What's going on?"  Strangely, her voice had an inflection I could not identify.  It wasn't fear, though.  The blank space approached her and she did not seem to notice it.

 "I don't understand.  Get back here."  I tried to summon the blank space to my side, to protect me.  Its aura changed as it wrapped itself around Linda softly.  Linda squeaked in disbelief, as though a sudden wind had blown her hair in her eyes.  Her books slid to the ground from her limp arms.  Then she fought back, and I moved in to help her, afraid of what the blank space might do to her.  Was it jealous?

 It was like stepping into a hall of spinning mirrors.  A conflict was taking place, but nobody was getting hurt.  There was an underlying sense of pleasure that I found sickeningly out of place.  Things that were not happening were being reflected, like wishes dreams futures possibilities, but the reflections faded.  I thought I saw myself, much older, waking up not alone.  My blank space left behind one last caring phrase as it vanished.  "I come forward when I am needed."

 I found myself holding Linda in an embrace that was quite ridiculous.  We hardly even knew each other.  I did not even like this girl.  Or was the blank space trying to tell me that I did?

 Uncertain, I let her loose, and she looked up at me with a softness in her eyes that might soon become tears.  Then she held her ground, saying, "I'll be late for Ceramics."  She scurried for her papers, which the wind of our struggle had scattered.

 I bent to help her and something struck us both as funny.  In the laughter I thanked the animated blank space that had brought us together.  I had always avoided her because she was what I wanted.  It was so obvious now.  When we had all her stuff gathered, I walked her to class, apologizing for some imaginary wrong.  I tried to be generally amusing.  When I ushered her into her classroom, I had to stop and wonder where I was supposed to go next.  I couldn't think straight.  I just shrugged my arms, picked a
direction, tied my shoes, and took off.

 Looking up, I saw Daryll Benson walking toward me, with my blank space clinging to his arm.  It made an infinite sequence out of the side of his face.  She was a hall of mirrors, alright.  He was a sci-fi writer, and needed all the help he could get.

 I waved to them and wished him good fortune.

Background by Jang Hee Yun.