//------------------------------// // Leave // Story: How to Disappear Completely // by shortskirtsandexplosions //------------------------------// Flash arrived home late, and he didn't even have the liberty of feeling miserable. His mother and father were already three rounds into their latest shouting match. Flash calmly, ritualistically shut the windows to the house before limping towards his room. The closed door did little to silence the argument beyond, and the whole debacle rolled on for the better part of an hour. Eventually, his parents' boredom outweighed their anger, and Flash was left wondering why the unhealthy conversation didn't end with a healthy gunshot—and then he wondered nothing at all, but simply lay in shadowed silence, measuring the latest echoes of his daily failure. In place of his parents' voices, Flower Print's rose to the surface. It carried with it a ringing tonality—much like the sound in Flash's ears right after receiving the second punch from Hank that afternoon. Flash realized that his life was a worn out tire, boring and circular, and yet rolling over the same old nail again and again. When he sought uniformity beyond the snickers and grimaces, all he could see were the disapproving frowns of teachers... the hairy forest of Time Turner's eyes where many lurking shapes lay in wait. It was only nine months before this final term of educational imprisonment was over, assuming he didn't flunk. When Flash tried to think of the freedom that lay beyond, all he could picture were the melodramatic images he'd steal glances of from internet news apps: cars on fire, volcano plumes, police men with pepper spray. It felt as though high school was the last organ of safety before he was finally excreted into the frying pan. What silly iron that the fluids surrounding him on the outside would be so bitter. The house shook again; his parents had a final round in them before the evening was done. Flash turned over. He saw a gray shroud hanging over the back of his chair. The spaghetti stain stood out in the moonlight. He could smell the sourness from there, could feel the sting of Flower Print's tears from another world away. It didn't matter if the scorned young woman had faked the sobs on the spot or not—they were still more real than Flash would ever be. He envied her, in a way. He coveted the assurance she had to be right about something, even when it was wrong. Flash closed his eyes. Fiery red hair flickered before him, shielding an adorkable petite figure with large-framed reading glasses. She was not the woman he thought she was. She was only half at best—but still more real... more real than anything Flash had ever been blessed with. That summer, at Everfree, he had been slammed in the gut—like a friend would righteously pummel him. He had been told to let her go. He agreed, although he never told Sunset the cost. It was difficult to let something go when one had never truly grasped something to begin with, much less oneself. He didn't expect Sunset to understand. But—as Flash well knew—Sunset was familiar with a myriad things that he himself would never understand. Some people simply existed at an inferior level, and after a few short months of wrestling with the emptiness that came with reality, Flash was starting to grasp his own lot in life. He was tempted to share his feelings with others. He was tempted to let former friends and acquaintances into his little world of nothingness. But somehow he knew—or believed he knew—that any such attempt would be a cowardly cop-out... a temptation to lead him back into the bright blinding world of presumption. The house grew silent again. Flash chased slumber, although he was completely certain he would never find it. If only he was that determined with pursuing his educational future, he thought. And before he had even finished that mental contemplation, Flash answered himself: because unlike sleep, there is no waking up beyond tomorrow. So he surrendered to the sighs and allowed the crimson numbers of the clock to dictate his existence for the next few hours. When they had run their course, he lurched into the light, eyes bloodshot and lungs bloodier. As usual, his parents were wordless that morning, making the previous night's armageddon laughably pointless. He didn't have the stomach to eat, so he dug out a month-unwashed t-shirt from the hamper, threw it on, and dragged his backpack to the bus stop. He rode to school, frozen solid amidst a sea of nodding heads. One by one, the streetlamps turned off. Morning brought with it the death of imagination, until all that was left was brightness and despair. Flash longed for the fog that haunted his youth, where every shape and color was a mountain of confusion—instead of this ordinary flatness that murdered him one commute at a time. Life was too short... too spectacularly dangerous and frightening... to spend it all doing things that one didn't want to do. And before he knew it, Flash was blinking. He felt it—the stillness—and how so very much apart from it his heart was. He tried mimicking such limbo, and to his surprise—it worked. He stood in place, his backpack drooping off his shoulder, as the whole necrotic world surged around him. Bodies, students, moths, all of the accidental insects scurrying from one pointless nugget to another. The current used to tug him, but now it was crashing around him, foaming, like water against solid shoals. It was ten minutes until homeroom. The entrance to Canterlot High loomed ahead, waiting, inhaling. Flash turned to his right. He took steps. He took many steps. He moved against the flow. None of the souls took notice of him; they never took notice of him. Only—this time—it meant something... or perhaps it meant nothing. Whatever the case, Flash had walked past all of the students, all of the faculty, all of the resource officers and the holsters in between. In a startlingly small amount of time, he had bridged a crosswalk... and left the campus of Canterlot High altogether. The town opened tiredly before him. Flash's eyes searched ahead. He saw familiar blocks at unfamiliar angles. He had wasted so many months speeding around in a stupidly expensive sports car, afforded by his parents' emotional overcompensation. Now he wandered through the fissures of that concrete skeleton, exposed to the smell, the stench of normalcy. Block by block—the flatness inexplicably gave way as he walked up gravel hills and down asphalt slopes. Nevertheless, the mundanity remained—this time blanketed to the buildingfaces, the shop windows, the unpeeling billboards with fake smiles. One by one, the stores opened beside him, which was the first clue that hours had passed. How tardy was Flash? Was it already second period? Third? There was no time—only walking. Flash came to an intersection. Traffic was thick now. Fumes filled the air and horns accompanied middle fingers in the urban haze. Eyes fell on him... then off-him. Nobody cared that a teenager was skipping school in the middle of the day. Nobody cared. Flash looked across the street. A man in ripped denim stood with a cardboard sign. His face was ninety-percent beard and ten percent hope. He stood beside a duffel bag that had done more service than the last two presidents. At one point, his eyes wandered to Flash. Flash was already looking away. He grimaced—perhaps a bit too close to the surface for comfort—and he took the first opportunity he could to walk down the nearest street and away from all that ripped, stained denim. At another intersection, he encountered a police squad car. He stood with his backpack hanging limply off him, staring stupidly at the windshield. A sergeant in blue blinked at him from inside, blinked at him again, and yawned—before speeding around the bend and straight past Flash with a chirp to his siren. The officer promptly chased a twenty-year-old car with a broken tail light. Ten empty thoughts later, Flash still found himself wandering, searching. He ended up at the window to an electronics store. Several wide-screen televisions were being shown off at discount prices. News channels showed the ruins of a city full of children—still being bombed. Swimsuit models wrestled in mud. Prescription medication warned of vomiting and diarrhea. People were shot; murderers were acquitted. Temperatures grew hotter and hotter. A cartoon bear advertised cereal. Flash turned. Roads and roads opened up. One of them—he knew—would take him to McCracken Trail. But—for the first time in his life—he realized that even that wouldn't take him away. Anywhere he went—this town or the next, alive or dead—would have the same heartlessness flickering beyond the glass. There was no stopping the circle. So he allowed it to roll over the same nail once again. Sweat coated his body and his lungs heaved. He was back at campus. The front courtyard was empty. Perhaps Flash knew—or he didn't know—but it was about to get a lot emptier. He saw it. He stared at it: the foundation. The shiny surface of the pedestal that once housed the school mascot, the unwitting avatar from another world. It lingered there, open and accessible, just beyond flimsy yellow tape. Open. Flash still couldn't cry. He wilted instead. Layer by layer, the weight fell off him. First went his backpack—slumping to the side in a dull heap. Then went his jacket, tattered and smelling of wasted days. He marched forward with remarkable speed, especially considering the unknowable that waited beyond the brink. He pressed one hand forward—and nothing pressed back. The ease with which his limbs slipped through was startling. He rode the jolt in his heart and surfed it, leaning forward, falling, plummeting. His eyes closed, and for the first time since childhood, he saw the color. The mirror embraced him, and like any soul unfamiliar with a hug, he simply surrendered... ...until the impending spiral finally gave him the unconsciousness he had struggled so many nights for.