Perfect Stranger

In the dead of night, a girl walks into a lonely little bar minutes from closing up for the night. She asks for a glass of water, no ice, not even a straw. Who walks into a bar and orders just water? She sits in this bar, alone, empty. Just her and a barkeep desperate to go home and close up for the night.

A curious barkeep wonders what kind of night brings a beautiful woman to his bar at the early hours of the morning. He wonders who she is as he finds himself lost in eyes of emeralds, a completely hypnotic gleam that forces a glass to slip from his grip, shattering into pieces. The noise makes him jump, yet she does not so much as bat her eyelids.

He picks up the pieces of the shattered glass as she sips at the glass of water. He returns to being lost in those eyes, emerald green. A song comes on, and this song, it is his song, he smiles and closes his eyes as he awaits his favourite part. “I love this song”, she says, those words roll perfectly off of those lips spoken with a voice that resonates in his ears, and he replies with, “it’s my song, this playlist is actually comprised of my all time favourites”. She looks deep into his eyes with a strong desire to learn the contents of this playlist he speaks of.
The next song plays, she sings along, singing as though she had too like him played this song thousands of times before. Soon the clock strikes 4am and he says he needs to close up, she asks if they can at least go to the end of the playlist… He smiles and agrees as he knows full well that this playlist has another three hours of songs left. And for the next three hours they sit and they talk. In that time she gets through another 4 glasses of water. They talk of many things music, art, life, politics, dreams and aspirations. They just talk for hours, they listen to music and she seems to intimately know every song, she tells him her story and as good barkeeps do he listens intently clinging to every word she speaks. The sun rises and the sunlight floods into this underground bar, he has never seen this place lit by sunlight but more than that her eyes seem to look even more astounding in the sunlight.
The playlist draws to an end, she stuffs a napkin into his shirt and they leave as he closes up, she walks off into the distance. He reaches for his phone and the napkin in his pocket, only to find that this napkin has nothing but a list of 17 songs, some of which he has never heard. A cold chill strikes over him as he realises that he did not even get a name.

There now lies a playlist in his iPod, containing 17 songs, titled “Perfect Stranger”. There is a bar in the outskirts of this town, that has a napkin framed on the wall behind the bar and every time he hears the sound of footsteps descending into this bar he looks for emerald eyes that never seem to return....