Chloe Surreal Up Close ((top)) 🆒

She laughs, and it sounds like a slowed-down sample of a 90s R&B track. Her teeth are perfectly straight, but one canine is just slightly too sharp. When she tucks her hair behind her ear, you see a tiny, fading bruise. Not from violence. From resting her head on a speaker at a warehouse show three nights ago.

“Sorry,” she whispers. “I’m still buffering.” chloe surreal up close

Not perfume. Not vanilla or patchouli. It’s the ozone smell after a lightning strike. It’s the metallic tang of a freshly opened hard drive. It’s the faint, sweet rot of peonies left in a vase too long. She smells like nostalgia for something that hasn’t happened yet . She laughs, and it sounds like a slowed-down

She smiles.

She stays exactly where she was.

Her eyes are the real anomaly. From afar, they look like standard-issue hazel. Up close, they are lenticular . Tilt your head left, and you see the lonely girl from a Hopper painting. Tilt right, and you see a glitch—a pixelated tear, a binary code flickering in the iris. She is not looking at you. She is looking through you, into a version of this conversation that exists only in a deleted scene. Not from violence