Exerpt:

When Sarah left Steve allowed himself to plop into a huge chair and bury his face in his hands. He still was not sad, still just empty.

"It’s because she’s a cynic, you know," a voice said, and terror struck him again. There she was again, sitting on the couch, with her feet casually planted on the table. She smiled at him, as if to calm him down.

It did not calm him down.

She seemed to understand and extended a hand. "Danielle," she introduced herself.

He was not quite sure why, but he could not think of anything else to do but to accept her hand and offer, "Steve."

"Yeah, I’ve heard."

Steve then decided that he had made enough conversation with his newfound sense of insanity for that evening and grabbed a book, which he tried to read. Every time he looked out of the corner of his eye, however, she was still there, smiling, patiently waiting for him to give in. He did not manage to read a single line. Finally he put down the book and looked back at her.

"Calm down, chap," she said and leaned further back on the couch. "It’s not like you’re mad."

He raised an eyebrow.

"Well, actually," she added more to herself than to him, "I don’t know if that’s quite true."

"You can’t be true, so I must be insane," he said and frantically looked through his pockets for a smoke.

"Well, if you know that I cannot be real, then surely that should speak against you being insane," she answered cheerfully.

"My reason tells me that you cannot be real," he said while trying to light the cigarette with shaking hands. "But other than that, you could have fooled me."

"Maybe I’m not unreal," she leaned in over the table, still with a huge smile on her lips.

He thought the thought through for a little while. He still felt completely determined that she had to be his imagination, but it sure was a nice thought to think that perhaps she wasn’t. He had never been one to believe in anything extraordinary, but he had always wanted to, and if he was going to go mad he may as well take the opportunity to believe something.

"So what are you, then?" He asked, hoping that the answer would be accompanied with some divine evidence. "An angel? A ghost?"

"Well, no, not really," she replied after a little while. "Well, actually, I might be."

Ashes dropped onto his shoe and he noticed that he had not been paying his cigarette any attention at all.

"Let’s just agree that I am," she concluded. "Then, again," she began, thoughtfully, "that might not even be the case."

It struck him that she knew just as little as he did, at least when it came to her own existence.

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