How to Disappear Completely

by shortskirtsandexplosions

Disappear

Author's Note:

Flash Sentry wasn't certain he could even capture the song's feeling with just an acoustic guitar performance. He felt naked and alone at the mere contemplation. Then again—he realized—that sort of a sensation made it perfect, and every time before that he had attempted the musical feat the teenager was by himself, absorbing his heart and soul into the slow, haunting, melancholic mantra that stretched the song into something of a dirge.

He knew better than to try and emulate the prodigy who first wrote the song—his trademark pitch and wailing tone—but to sing the piece any other way wouldn't be doing it justice. So he did his best, keeping things subtle for the most part, then giving his all with ghostly gusto when the song reached key points. Before he knew it, he was flowing down a river of sonic emotion, serenading those along the outer banks with a chorus fit for poultergeists.

The melody rocked back and forth, inviting sea sickness. Flash held his lunch in by vomiting out his vocal chords instead. He swayed with the tune—rocking himself almost to sleep. His lungs vibrated, and that sensation alone reminded him that he was real, despite every word and lyric of the song trying to convince him otherwise. Somehow, he found equilibrium, much like he had before on lone bus rides home when he used to sing this to himself... or hallowed nights of hiding under the sheets, wishing that dust, duvets, and darkness could somehow insulate him from the pounding resonance of his parents yelling at each other.

There was something divinely selfish about the song... necessarily silly, foolish, and hollow. He knew that the music's only poignance was in its emotion—and emotion wasn't everything. And yet—for every attempt he had made before in his life to totally and completely vanish by absorbing himself in this music, he could now savor the irony of exhaling the anthem in the afterglow of actually having successfully achieved such a goal. In a way, it should have been a victory song... but it somehow left Flash feeling wanting... as if he was eulogizing the loss of triumph and accomplishment for having become the pariah of his high school dreams. Here he was so many untold dimensional firmaments away from his troubles, performing with the same wingtips that allowed him to fly so far from home, and yet he knew deep inside that the magical horse people listening to his jettisoned soul wouldn't be able to fully understand the implications of his mileage.

It was indeed very much like a dream. And the problem with most dreams is that there would come a time when Flash would hve to wake up, and the distance flown wouldn't seem all that very grand after all. Part of him wanted to lie to himself, to continue the song forever, but that would be even more selfish. At some point, he had to touch down—if not for himself, then for those around him. Being nothing but self-serving in his flight was starting to leave him feeling exhausted, fatigued. Perhaps the song helped him feel a bit deflated, so that he could recollect the breath in his lungs and appraise the situation at a new angle.

Whatever the case, when the final melodic wail had left his throat and he strummed the last few notes of the guitar, he arrived softly at his destination. His insides shook; he felt cold, vulnerable, and more than a little bit silly.

The unexpected applause of his audience clothed him, and he breathed with meager warmth as he recovered from the very last lunge of his journey.

"Pretty!" Lyra Heartstrings chirped, throwing glitter on Flash's tender heart. "That was very pretty!"

"I'm inclined to agree," Fancy Pants said, finishing his applause.

"Gotta admit..." Filthy Rich shifted where he sat. "Not quite what I expected."

"Sounded..." Carrot Cake's brow furrowed. "...very sad." The baker sensed several eyes on him. "In a g-good way!"

"Yeah, bro." Soarin nodded, glancing aside at Flash. "Feels like you poured a lot of you into that."

Flash smiled crookedly, hugging the guitar to his fuzzy chest. "I didn't write it, dude."

"You know what I mean."

Flash shrugged.

Derpy Hooves raised her left hoof like an anxious elementary school student in the front row.

Flash nodded at her. "Yes, ma'am? You with the golden hair?"

Derpy lowered her hoof and squirmed guiltily in her seat. "I didn't understand all of the words."

"Uhm..." Bon Bon's muzzle scrunched. "Me neither."

"Hah..." Flash chuckled slightly, gazing down at the floor. "Yeah... well... that's Radiohead for ya. Picking most of their words randomly from a hat."

"O.. kay...?"

"I guess it's more in the emotion than the actual lyrics," Flash mumbled. "What it conveys in feeling more than meaning."

"I understood quite a lot of it," Octavia said matter-of-factly.

Flash squinted across the way from her. "Somethings tells me—back in my world—you'd be a huge Oasis fan."

"Right. Whatever that means." Octavia cleared her throat and spoke, "It sounds like a meditation gone wrong. You keep repeating to yourself: 'I'm not here. This isn't happening.' Then you surrender yourself to the sway of the music, harmonizing desperately until your voice is practically sobbing." She leaned her head to the side. "Something tells me that what the dreamer wishes is already known to be false. In the end... you're not entirely succeeding, are you?"

Flash Sentry swallowed a lump down his throat. He gazed across the banquet hall. "No... I suppose not..."

"Well, that's one way to interpet it," Cup Cake said.

"Indeed." Octavia nodded. "Still, all-in-all, it was very pretty... in a haunting way."

"Yeah..." Flash exhaled, eyes searching. Scraping. Excavating. "Very pretty for as long as it lasts." He cleared his throat and glanced at Octavia again. "You should hear the backup strings used in the original studio version of the song. It's absolute nightmare fuel."

"I'm... not sure I want to hear a scarier version of that song," Derpy said, shivering a bit.

"Ah come on..." Soarin chuckled. "It wasn't that awful—"

"I wouldn't describe it as 'awful,'" Derpy remarked. "Just... chilling." She gave Flash a sad look. "Who would ever feel the need to sing such a song? You must be very lonely where ou come from, Mr. Bard."

Flash wasn't certain which element to deal with first: Derpy's arrowhead accuracy with that statement or her fallback to using the surrogate nickname. In either way, the moment left him feeling just as two dimensional as the performance he had just given.

"Lonely... alone..." His ears drooped. "...I had every opportunity to reach out and make friends... to afford myself a support group." He shook his head. "But I never went for it. I denied myself it. I came over to this world instead... to escape the very notion of fixing myself."

"But why?" Derpy asked, her eyes sincere and warm in their aimless searching. Flash felt that he had seen that expression before—sans the innocence—in many a lonely, tearless gaze into his own bathroom mirror. "Why would you just... leave like that? Why try and disappear?"

"Because..." Flash grimaced. "... ... ...because everything back home is just so unbearably toxic." He shuddered. "And I couldn't stand it anymore... nor could I own up t-to the fact that I-I had contributed to that very cesspool."

The ponies around him leaned in compassionately.

"In what way, dear?" Cup Cake asked.

Reluctantly, Flash Sentry shut his eyes, throwing himself back into the shadowed hallways and sun-bleached streets of the world he once knew... or thought he knew. And—at the risk of growing nauseous—he forced himself to count the stains...

Comments

[MythrilMoth]

Oh crap.

[ProjectRabbid]

Then he woke up, sat up in his room and sighed

[IceKitsune]

Here it comes the explanation we have all been waiting for.

[Mix-up]

Rock on.

[lazyreader19]

8890044
Meanwhile, back with the princesses...
...back to Brad
"...and that's how it went down."

That would make for a great April fool's chapter

[lazyreader19]

...I had a random thought if he ever went back to the human side. He retells his tale to the girls, and says tool scitwi "oh yeah, and your horse-brother locked me up"

[Porfiry Petrovitch]

So it wasn't Queen. In fact it was something that you told us as soon as you'd named the story. Beautiful.

[Booster Spice]

Well, gotta let the kids do it themselves sometime. Just wish I could remember what it was. I seem to have lost last year as well.

[FanOfMostEverything]

And so Flash comes in for a landing in his own regrets. Still, he's assembled quite the therapy group over the course of his flight. If anyone can help him grapple with his past, it's them.

[Drachos]

8890668
8890044

Arguably, if you are refering to the mystery women...

Another fake out. We learn why he is depressed, but not why the women is important.

I am beginning to think the women he was driving past in that dream will never be explained.

[BoJack Horseman]

I feel so dumb for not realizing what song it was going to be