Under Her Frayed Hem

The taco truck on Santa Monica Boulevard was a living thing.

Its fryer hissed like it was whispering secrets, and the air around it shimmered with grease heat and gasoline fumes. I’d been on my feet for twelve hours at the treatment center, scrubs wrinkled, badge half flipped, hair barely holding on under a headband. I’d told myself I wasn’t hungry, but the truck’s pull was gravitational, like gravity itself smelled like carne asada and cilantro.

El Grito was painted in screaming reds and sunburned yellows, a skeletal calavera grinning wide on the side panel, half-faded from decades of LA smog and street dust. A crooked string of bulbs swung overhead, buzzing faintly like dying cicadas, light pooling and breaking over the cracked sidewalk below.

The line was chaos: pure West Hollywood, post-midnight.

Drag queens glittered like they’d been carved out of galaxies, their lashes sharp enough to cut glass, laughing with bartenders whose shirts still smelled like tequila and lime. Valet kids leaned against a meter, exhaling perfect rings of vape smoke into the humid night air, while a muscle boy in gold lamé shorts argued with someone about who ordered first. Basslines bled out from a nearby club, muffled and wet, syncing up with the heartbeat in my temples.

It smelled like three different realities colliding… carne fat sizzling on steel, lime juice sticky on fingertips, old cigarette ash ground into the pavement. Somewhere behind me, someone yelled, “Who dropped the extra salsa?!” and a girl in rhinestone cowboy boots shrieked like the world was ending.

And maybe it was.

Because that’s when I felt her watching me.

She was leaning against the graffitied wall across from the truck, tucked into the shadows like she belonged there — boots scuffed but deliberate, jeans perfectly frayed at the ankles, as if the threads had been worn down by years of walking roads no one remembered anymore. Her chipped black nail polish caught the light like tiny obsidian mirrors, and there were crystals tied into her left bootlace that flashed when a rideshare’s headlights swept past.

I tried to look away, back toward the order window, pretending she wasn’t staring straight through me. I focused on the menu instead — birria, lengua, al pastor — each word making my stomach cramp with hunger.

Then her voice slid through the noise, soft enough that no one else could’ve heard it over the fryer, but sharp enough to thread straight into my chest.

“Don’t be under the lights when they hum.”

I whipped around, clutching my paper plate tighter, tacos threatening to slide off. “What?”

She didn’t move, didn’t blink, just tipped her chin toward the bulbs above us.

“They’ll start soon,” she said, her tone flat and unshaken. “You don’t want to be here when they change.”

I tried to laugh, but it came out sharp and brittle, like a bone snapping. “Lady, I’ve been at work for twelve hours. I’m hallucinating guacamole right now. Whatever this is? No thanks.”

She tilted her head — slow, deliberate — like she was reading the last sentence of a book she’d already memorized.

And then she was next to me.

I swear I didn’t see her move, but suddenly she was close enough for me to smell her, wild sage and gasoline, a scent sharp enough to burn its way into memory. Her hand brushed my scrub pocket, so quick I almost thought I imagined it. Then she was gone, disappearing into the blur of neon and vape smoke, swallowed whole by the crowd.

I looked down.

A matchbook. El Grito stamped on the front in smeared black ink, one match missing.

Inside, written in cramped, deliberate handwriting: Don’t look up when the lights breathe

I told myself I wasn’t going to think about her.

By the time I left the taco truck, the matchbook was buried in the bottom of my scrub pocket, shoved under a wad of receipts and a half-crushed granola bar. Boots Girl was just another weird LA fever dream — like those people outside The Abbey handing out CBD lollipops or the guy on Fairfax who claimed to sell “celebrity ashes” in vials for fifty bucks. West Hollywood ran on neon delusion. I wasn’t special.

Except I didn’t sleep.

Back at my apartment off San Vicente, the kind of rent-controlled miracle you only get if someone dies and leaves it behind, I tried every trick. Lavender candles, chamomile tea, crime podcasts whispering slow murder into my headphones… The whole block outside buzzed with WeHo’s usual trash-glam cacophony: distant basslines bleeding from clubs, drag queens yelling across the street, a valet honking like his soul depended on it. It was chaotic, comforting, familiar.

But the lights outside my window kept flickering.

I told myself it was bad wiring. LA’s basically held together by duct tape and earthquakes. But when I finally shut my eyes, I dreamed of the taco truck again. The same buzzing bulbs. The same wet pavement. And Boots Girl, leaning against the graffitied wall, her boots soaking up shadows like they belonged to her.

“Don’t be under the lights when they hum.”

Her voice was quieter this time, but heavier somehow. Like it was sinking into me.

The next morning at the treatment center, the smell of burnt coffee hit me before I even clocked in. Mondays always had this dull hum — fluorescent lights vibrating overhead, nurses dragging, patients restless and pacing like caged tigers. I told myself work would ground me. Routine always does.

Except the matchbook burned a hole in my pocket all day.

I didn’t tell anyone about her. I didn’t want the look. The “okay, Missy’s finally snapped” look. But halfway through morning meds, one of my patients — Jess, twenty-two, big brown eyes, four days clean — set down her cup of orange juice and whispered:

“I saw her.”

My throat closed. “Who?”

She scratched at the inside of her elbow, jittery from sleep deprivation and too much bad coffee. “By the vending machines. Boots. Jeans. Said something about… about lights?”

My stomach dropped straight through the cheap linoleum floor.

I leaned in, lowering my voice so the other patients wouldn’t hear. “Jess. Listen to me. What exactly did she say?”

Jess chewed her lip, eyes darting toward the hallway where the soda machine hummed. “She said, um… ‘Don’t be under the lights when they breathe.’”

By nightfall, the center felt wrong.

I’d been here long enough to know what wrong smells like: cold metal, sour sweat, dried antiseptic. But this was heavier. Like the whole building was holding its breath.

Around eight, the humming started.

At first, I thought it was the usual: busted HVAC, cheap wiring, one too many extension cords pulling from the same sad socket. But then it deepened, low and steady, like a subwoofer buried somewhere under the floors. The patients noticed first.

Jess started pacing, eyes wide, muttering something about the lights breathing. Then Marcus came out of his room, tapping his temple like he was trying to shake out water. Someone down the hall started crying, sharp and animal.

And then the lights over the nurses’ station flickered.

On. Off. On. Off.

I stepped back without meaning to. My pulse was loud in my ears.

That’s when I saw her.

Boots Girl. Leaning against the doorway to the detox wing like she’d always been there, one foot crossed over the other, cigarette unlit but poised. Same frayed jeans, same chipped polish, same glint of something dark at her ankle where the crystals swung like tiny pendulums.

“Get them out,” she said. Calm. Certain. Like a doctor delivering bad news.

“What?” My voice cracked.

“The lights are breathing,” she said. “When they stop, so will you.”

And then, like a bad cut in film, she wasn’t there anymore.

I turned back to the nurse’s station, heart hammering so hard it hurt. The monitors were glitching, screens jittering like old VHS. The hum was louder now, vibrating through my ribs, and the hallway lights strobed in uneven bursts.

Jess grabbed my arm hard enough to leave crescent moons in my skin. “Missy,” she whispered, trembling, “she was in my room.”

I wanted to say “no, she wasn’t.” I wanted to tell her we were overtired, spinning shadows out of nothing.

But when I glanced down the hallway toward her room, every fluorescent light on that wing blinked once — and went out. The blackout hit like a slap.

One second there was buzzing, beeping, and the white‑blue glare of fluorescent light. The next — nothing but the sound of fifty people holding their breath at once.

Somewhere down the hall, someone screamed.

The backup generators should’ve kicked in by now. I knew because they always did — we tested them every other Wednesday like clockwork. But the whole building was drowning in dark, and the air smelled different now. Metallic, electric, sharp like a storm about to break.

I pulled my phone from my pocket, fumbling for the flashlight, but the screen was dead. The whole thing — battery, circuits, everything — stone cold.

I wasn’t alone in the dark, though.

“Missy,” someone whispered behind me.

I turned fast, expecting Jess or Marcus — but no one was there.

Then a glow bloomed low at the end of the hall, soft and gold like candlelight. I thought for one insane second the power was back, but no, it was her.

Boots Girl.

She was sitting cross‑legged in the middle of the detox wing hallway, striking a match against the floor. The little flame flared, too bright, too alive, reflecting in her eyes like liquid gold.

“You should’ve left when I told you.”

“Who are you?” I asked, breath sharp in my throat.

She tilted her head. The crystals laced into her boot tongue swung gently like a pendulum measuring out the last seconds of something important.

“You haven’t been listening,” she said. “It’s already started.”

A metallic bang shook the ceiling above us, like something massive dropped onto the roof. Patients were shouting now, doors slamming open and shut. One of the men in detox ran past us barefoot, hitting the wall with his shoulder and not slowing down.

“Started?” My voice cracked. “What’s started?”

Boots Girl smiled, small and strange, and held out the matchbook. Same one she’d slipped me by the taco truck days ago. Only this time, when I took it, I noticed something new — words scrawled inside the flap in ink the color of dried blood:

WHEN THE LIGHTS BREATHE, RUN.

Before I could ask, the humming returned… deeper, heavier, vibrating up through the foundation. The walls trembled, ceiling tiles raining dust.

She leaned close, so close I could smell wild sage and gasoline, and whispered like it was already too late:

“They’re waking up.”

Somewhere behind me, a patient yelled my name.

I spun, expecting chaos, and found Jess crouched in the middle of the hall, clutching her head.

“She’s in my room,” she sobbed. “She’s still in my room.”

When I turned back, Boots Girl was gone.

Only the matchbook remained, still warm in my palm.

The humming turned into a roar. And then, just outside, above the pounding storm drain pipes and the wet streets of WeHo, I heard it — a sound so low it rattled the fillings in my teeth.

A train horn.

Except there are no train tracks anywhere near West Hollywood…

The next thing I knew, I was standing on Santa Monica Boulevard.

Wet asphalt, trash glittering in puddles, the throb of bass leaking from a club somewhere down the block. Neon signs hummed over the taco truck like a hive about to swarm. Smoke curled from the flat-top grill, warm and heavy with the smell of charred carne asada and lime, and for a split second, I thought maybe I’d fallen asleep back at the treatment center, maybe this was just another stress dream.

But my palms were still smudged with ash from the matchbook.

I moved closer to the truck, waiting in the thick, buzzing quiet between orders.

“Rough night?” a voice asked.

I turned.

She was there. Boots Girl. Same perfectly frayed jeans, same chipped nails, same glint of crystals laced into leather. Her cigarette burned down to the filter without ever falling apart, like it was suspended in time.

“You,” I whispered. My throat felt raw.

She smiled, small and soft, like we’d already had this conversation before.

“I told you, Missy,” she said. “It’s already started.”

And then she handed me another matchbook.

Not the one I had in my pocket — a second one. Identical. Heavy and warm like it remembered the first spark.

I opened it with shaking hands.

Inside, scrawled in the same ink as before:

THE SECOND LIGHT GOES OUT AT 3:17.

I blinked. Looked up.

She was gone.

The only thing left was the hiss of the grill, the wet shine of WeHo neon on the street, and the sound of a train horn somewhere beneath the city, deep and hollow, like it was calling me by name.