Neon Déjà Vu

The first time I saw her was outside the El Rey, under a half-dead neon sign buzzing like it was choking on its own light.

She leaned against the ticket booth, one boot braced on the wall, her perfectly frayed jeans slashed open at the knee like they’d survived a hundred nights just like this one. A necklace of raw crystals dangled from her throat, catching stray flashes of red and violet from the flickering sign above.

She looked like someone you were supposed to know — or someone who already knew everything about you.

When her gaze found mine, it pinned me in place like a butterfly to glass. She smiled, slow and deliberate, and it wasn’t at me — it was through me. Like she could see every bone beneath my skin, every version of myself I’d ever tried to bury.

“Don’t you remember me?” she asked.

Her voice came soft, but it landed like breaking glass.

I blinked, hoodie strings tangled around my fingers, caught between fight and flight.

“No,” I lied.

Because I did know her. Or maybe I knew the shape of her. The curl of her mouth, the shadow at the edge of her smile, the way she seemed built from the parts of LA you only ever saw at 3AM: cigarette burns, sodium lamps, motel pools reflecting nothing but static.

Somewhere deep in my chest, something sharp twisted, like stepping barefoot on memory.

She laughed low, smoke curling up into the wet night. “You haven’t changed.”

We ended up walking Sunset together, the city stretching itself out beneath our boots.

She moved like someone who belonged to the streets but had never truly touched them. Every time we passed beneath a streetlight, her shadow stretched wrong — longer than mine, fractured, bent like someone had warped the film before the reel caught.

Her crystals clicked softly when she walked. I couldn’t tell if they were meant for protection or invocation.

“What’s your name?” I asked, even though it felt stupid, even though some part of me already knew the answer.

“You used to know it,” she said. “You used to say it all the time.”

That should’ve been my cue to leave.

But I didn’t.

Not when she smelled like wild sage and gasoline. Not when every word out of her mouth sounded like the end of a prayer I didn’t remember starting.

By the time we hit Western, my phone had died. Hers, apparently, didn’t exist.

She told me she lived “over the bridge,” but when I asked which one, she just smiled like it was funny I thought there was only one way to cross.

When we got to my apartment, she didn’t come inside. She stood in the doorway, boots dripping rain onto my welcome mat, hand resting on the frame like she was testing its weight. The streetlight behind her made her crystals glow faintly, as though they were alive, feeding on the charged hum of the night.

“You’ll dream about this,” she said.

“I barely know you.”

She tilted her head like a predator considering prey. “That’s not true.”

And then she was gone, dissolving into the wet hiss of tires on asphalt, leaving behind nothing but the scent of burnt paper and the hollow thrum in my chest.

I didn’t sleep that night.

But when I closed my eyes, I saw her standing in a hallway I haven’t walked since I was seventeen — fluorescent lights buzzing overhead, walls breathing bleach and withdrawal. She had her hood up this time, her crystals tucked into her collarbone like a secret, but I knew it was her by the way she held her shoulders like she was bracing for an earthquake.

And in the dream, she said it again, softer now, almost kind: “Don’t you remember me?”

When I woke up, my hoodie smelled like smoke.

And there was an empty cigarette box on my kitchen counter.

I don’t smoke.

The second time I saw her was at Union Station.

It had been six nights since the El Rey, and I’d convinced myself I dreamed the whole thing. That she was some neon-soaked hallucination born from too many sleepless nights and too much nicotine gum.

But then I saw her across the concourse, leaning against a cracked marble pillar, and everything inside me stopped like a skipped record.

Same boots. Same perfectly frayed jeans. Same crystal necklace catching stray strips of fluorescent light.

She wasn’t looking at me. She was staring at the arrivals board like she was waiting for a train that didn’t exist anymore. I stood frozen, my palms damp against my hoodie pocket, heartbeat in my teeth.

And then — without turning — she said: “You’re late.”

I should’ve walked away. I tried to walk away. But my legs carried me toward her like they remembered her better than I did.

When I reached her, she didn’t look surprised. She didn’t even blink. Just tilted her head, a half-smile ghosting her mouth like she’d been expecting me since before I was born.

“Where have you been?” she asked.

I swallowed hard. “I… I thought I dreamed you.”

Her laugh was low and ragged, more static than sound. “That would’ve been easier.”

Before I could answer, she grabbed my wrist — cold fingers, chipped nails, a pulse like lightning under skin — and pulled me toward the lower platforms.

The whole station hummed around us, fluorescent buzz blending with the low thunder of trains, footsteps echoing too loud for the handful of people scattered along the corridor.

Except… halfway down, the air changed.

The chatter, the announcements, even the rumble of trains above us, gone. Just silence, broken only by the steady clack of her boots on tile.

When we reached the end of the platform, she stopped under a dead bulb, crystals glowing faintly like embers under her collarbone.

“This is where it starts,” she said.

I looked around. “What does?”

She didn’t answer. She just pointed to the far tunnel, where an old Metro B Line train idled: wrong logo, outdated paint, windows fogged from the inside.

“That line hasn’t run in years,” I whispered.

She smiled without showing teeth. “Exactly.”

Inside, the train smelled like static and sage smoke. The seats were cracked vinyl, sticky with humidity, and the air was sharp with ozone, like the sky before a lightning strike.

There were only five other passengers, all perfectly still, staring straight ahead like mannequins someone forgot to pose.

She sat across from me, one knee propped up, boot tapping an uneven rhythm against the floor. Her crystals clicked softly with each sway of the train, catching slivers of red light as we plunged into the tunnel.

“You keep following me,” I said, voice rougher than I meant.

“No,” she replied, almost amused. “You’re following me.”

I frowned. “I don’t even know your name.”

Her eyes — sharp, impossible, reflecting more than the weak lights overhead — pinned me like glass over an insect.

“Yes, you do.”

The train jolted hard enough to make the lights stutter.

When they came back, everything outside the windows was wrong.

The billboards on Alameda were ads for places that closed before I was born. The skyline was off — smaller, unfamiliar — like we’d slipped backward into someone else’s memory of LA.

I glanced at her, but she was watching me instead, smiling faintly, like she knew.

“What is this?” I whispered.

“This,” she said, tilting her head toward the blurred city beyond the glass, “is where you lost me.”

The train slowed at a platform washed in red light, the air suddenly hotter, heavier.

I stood, but she caught my wrist again, leaning close enough for her breath to ghost against my jaw.

“You don’t want to get off here,” she murmured.

“Why not?”

“Because this isn’t your stop,” she said softly. “Not yet.”

I sat back down, dizzy. The other passengers hadn’t moved. Their stillness felt wrong, sculpted, like statues waiting for permission to breathe.

She leaned back, boots braced against the seat in front of her, watching me like I was the one out of place. Her crystals glimmered faintly, a pulse in rhythm with mine.

“You used to know,” she said, almost to herself. “But you forgot.”

I exhaled slowly, forcing out the words: “Forgot what?”

Her gaze pinned me again, soft and lethal all at once.

“Me.”

The train jolted once more, and when I blinked, she was gone.

Her seat was empty.

The necklace, the boots, the frayed jeans — gone like she’d been pulled out of frame mid-shot…

When the train reached Union Station again, the cars were empty. No mannequins. No hum.

Just me.

I stumbled back onto the platform, lungs burning, and turned in a slow circle, searching for her, for anything that made sense.

But the station was silent.

And when I finally made it to street level, my phone buzzed in my pocket. Dead black screen. No notifications.

Except the date.

Two years earlier.

I’m not sure what I believe anymore.

But last night, I woke up with my hoodie still smelling faintly of smoke.

And on my kitchen counter, there was a single crystal, cracked and humming faintly in the dark.

I don’t own any crystals.

I didn’t plan to go back there. But the city keeps pulling me south, past where the lights thin out and the pavement splits, like an old scar refusing to close.

Skid Row smells the same as it did when I left it behind: bleach, sweat, and something metallic underneath, like rusted pennies dissolving on your tongue.

I shouldn’t be here. I know this, and still, my boots scrape cracked concrete until I’m standing at the chain-link fence behind what used to be the free clinic.

The clinic burned down seven years ago.

I know this, too.

But tonight, the lights inside are on.

She’s there. Leaning against the graffiti-tagged wall like the last time I saw her, black hoodie pulled up, perfect frayed jeans slouched over worn-in Docs. A strand of beads and crystals hangs from her wrist, catching what little light leaks through the busted streetlamp above us.

She looks exactly the same. Same chipped nails. Same cigarette balanced loose between her fingers.

“Don’t you remember me?” she says.

Her voice sounds like it’s coming from two places at once — here and somewhere deeper, somewhere I’ve only been in dreams.

I laugh, sharp, nervous, too loud. “You keep asking me that.”

“You keep lying,” she says simply.

I want to leave, but my body doesn’t move. The hum of the city feels muffled here, like I’m underwater, and the air’s heavy enough to choke on.

“You were here before,” she continues, brushing ash off her jeans. “Right there.”

She points at the cracked concrete beside the dumpster.

I swallow, hard. “I don’t—”

“Yes, you do.”

She exhales, smoke curling upward, mixing with the faint incense burn of her crystals.

“You died here once.”

The memory doesn’t hit all at once — it leaks in, slow, like light through torn blinds.

Seventeen. Rainwater pooling in my palms. Spoon bent wrong. Someone yelling my name. Sirens somewhere close, but too far to matter.

And her.

Not as she is now, but younger, crouched next to me with shaking hands, trying to keep me breathing while everyone else scattered like roaches in blue light.

“You were there,” I whisper.

She nods once.

I step closer. Close enough to smell sage and cigarette smoke clinging to her hoodie. Close enough to see a shard of amethyst threaded into her bracelet, glowing faint in the half-light.

“I didn’t make it,” I say, barely above a whisper.

“You did,” she replies, soft. “But not all of you came back.”

There’s a sound then — low and steady, rising beneath the street noise. A familiar hum, like a train somewhere deep under the city, beneath where the rails should end.

I glance around. There are no tracks here.

Her crystals catch the dim light again, pulsing faintly like they’re syncing to the rhythm of my heart. Or maybe hers.

“Why me?” I ask.

She smiles, small, almost kind, but there’s nothing soft in her eyes.

“Because LA doesn’t forget its ghosts,” she says, “and you’ve been haunting yourself for years.”

The sound grows louder. The air vibrates.

I step toward her without meaning to, and she steps back into the mouth of an alley I swear wasn’t here yesterday. A narrow stretch of darkness cut sharp between two crumbling walls, glowing faintly at the edges, like film catching fire.

“If you follow me,” she says, “you won’t come back the same.”

I should run. I don’t.

My boots crunch broken glass as I step after her, into the alley that shouldn’t exist. The hum swallows everything.

And right before the dark closes in, she says it one last time, soft and steady, like a promise carved into bone:

“Don’t you remember me?”