You return to Confederation Park, eager for another easy meal. Unfortunately, the advisory posters you noticed the last time have been replaced by barriers and ropes cordoning off the main entrances. Signs now read: "Confederation Park is closed after 8PM until further notice."
Damn. You wonder if you should have spaced out your visits a little more. Now you'll have to look elsewhere if you want to feed.
When you arrive at the club, it's late enough that there's no line, for which you're grateful. The bouncer looks largely the same as he did the last time you encountered him, although he's exchanged his checked shirt for another—slightly more colorful—checked shirt. A poster up front proudly proclaims that tonight is "Emo Night." Has it been so long since the 90s that emo is considered retro? Or are the mortal youth retreading history some would consider best left in the ground? You shake your head. They'd say that agelessness has left you with a terminal case of old-man sensibilities, but you'd rather think of yourself as refined. As Jordan once joked: "Am I out of touch? No, it's the children who are wrong!"
You approach the young man with a sympathetic smile and lead him over to the bar. Thankfully he's so distraught that he doesn't even bother to question your motivations. You buy him a beer and pretend to listen while he pours his heart and soul out to you in an endless babble of word soup that almost puts you off your appetite. Eventually you tune out and just nod at the appropriate intervals until he finally stops talking and swipes sweaty fingers through his long emo-bang. Wait. Did he end with a question?
"I'm sorry, what did you ask?" you say, pointing at the stage. "It's a bit loud in here."
"I asked if you've ever lost a soulmate?" he says. "The person you know you were meant to be with."
An unexpected flashback hits you, a cracking synapse in a long-dormant part of your mind. A woman's face flickers into being, wispy and ethereal like a ghost image trapped somewhere behind your eyes. You've seen that face, lost in a rage after Ward knocked you away from the warehouse before it was lost in the explosion. Someone you betrayed before you became undead. A lover? Somehow you can't quite remember.
And then it's gone. As if it never existed.