The magic ran through my veins, coursing, filling, unending.  I dragged my hands through my hair, mussing it up even more, and my blood boiled inside me, making me inhale deeply on my cigarette and fall backwards onto the park table.  I stared at the sky, listless, and dropped ash onto the white plastic, shaking.  The clouds moved slowly, curling around each other, and I squinted my eyes against the sun.  Some kid rushed past me on racketing roller skates.

"You know, you'll never stop if you keep pondering your place in life like that," someone interrupted.  I didn't even bother looking to my right, or even responding.  I lifted the fag to my lips again, closing my eyes, and dragged in another take of nicotine.  "It's a bad habit.  Thought you said you were going to stop."

I kept my mind firmly on the sky, on freedom, on anything but the man sitting next to me.  I knew his face, his body by memory already.  He was tall, dark, with black hair pulled back into a ponytail and strands of it falling into shining blue eyes.  A Grecian nose, large hands, firmly muscled chest, baritone voice...  Probably dressed in a black, alternative rock band T-shirt, baggy jeans with a rip in the right knee, and a pair of black Vans with silver writing all over them.

The magic pounded at my temples.  I ground my teeth together.

"The nicotine isn't going to make the magic go away," he continued in that damned voice.  I glared at the inside of my eyelids.  The kid rocketed past me again, whooping.  "You were given this to save people, Tess."

I sputtered in disbelief and finally snapped my eyes open and glowered at him, at the superior smirk on his face.

"I am a magically enhanced human in the middle of a world that is inundated in demons and angels.  I'M THE LATTER DAY JOHN CONSTANTINE!"

A bird chirruped in the silence that followed my outburst and I cringed as I noticed a couple walking in the other direction very quickly.  I sat up and covered my face with my hands, clamping my lips around the end of my cigarette, which was finishing itself off rapidly.

"Female, too."

"Shut up.  I can't believe I'm even having this conversation with you."

"Technically," he drawled, "it's with yourself."

"Shut the fuck up."

The kid came past again, slowing down as he stared at me, before going faster and swerving down the lane, around with a giant cry of excitement.  He disappeared from my vision and I tossed another glare in my companion's direction.

"You have no idea how hard it is to have to ask people if they can see the person standing next to me or determine who's a magical being, who's just human, and who's just a figment of my imagination," I ground out.

He sat up next to me and lay a hand on my knee – I flinched away before burrowing the fag into the plastic.  It left behind a circular black mark and ash.  I rubbed my forehead in annoyance.

"What am I supposed to do?  Get a sidekick with a taxi and die young from smoking too many cigarettes and going to Hell for committing suicide?" I snapped out.

"Crazy lady," the same kid muttered as he rushed past again.  That was it.

"Hey, kid!" I hollered. "I hope you crash into a car!"

Which shows exactly the kind of restraint I have...  The man sitting next to me stiffened and then he took my hand and yanked me off the bench, racing after the kid who had taken a detour out of the park, into the sidewalk.

"Hey!  Hey, let go of me, you freak!"

"How can I be a freak if I don't even exist?" he spat at me.  "Look at what you've done!"

I heard the screeching of tires on pavement, the smell of burnt rubber infused my nostrils, and I snapped around, mouth opening in horror.

He crashed.

I stumbled back, holding a hand to my mouth, and slammed into a tree, slapping to my knees with a sob.  The blood stained the street and he lay at an awkward angle.  Cars were already stopping and clogging traffic.  Someone was calling 911 on their cell phone and the woman who had been driving the car was crying, kneeling beside his body.  People poured, flooded out of the park, into the street, but I just kneeled there, on the concrete path in the park, crying at my own idiocy.

"Get your act together, Murray."

I looked up at Gregorio, and he gazed back down at me, an avenging angel of my mind.

"I'm so sorry," I sobbed at him.  "I'm so sorry."

"Mommy?  Mommy, why is that lady talking to thin air?"  I looked over my shoulder, the tears blurring my vision as I recognized the familiar sight of a mother hurrying her small child away from me.

"You're a schizophrenic with magical abilities, Contessa Murray.  Deal with it."


End

Thinking of doing a longer piece with this same character.  I admit it.  "A Beautiful Mind" and "Constantine" influenced me no end.  In fact, it reeks of them so much, it makes my teeth hurt.