How to Disappear Completely

by shortskirtsandexplosions

Here

...Flash Sentry got on the bus and he rode to school.

He hadn't slept. At all. The last time he got any semblance of shuteye was when he was lying numb on a royal bed deep in the Crystal Empire, and at the time he had only been numbed to exhaustion from sobbing his eyes out in the comfort of magical horse friends.

Nevertheless, with so much sleep being missed, he felt more awake than ever that morning... at least more awake than those sharing the bus ride with them. And as he stared at their slumped bodies... their nodding heads... their ragdoll misery that rolled with the bumps and the jolts and the lurches of the grimy state-issued metal tube on wheels, Flash wondered if they ever once knew wakefulness... or if a day would come that they might rise out of the grave.

The bus arrived at CHS. Flash hopped off; the others shuffled like zombies. They weren't alone—the rest of the students rolled in through the front entrance with the same necrotic dance. Flash marched firmly through the bright hallways, blinking. He felt tall—at least a foot taller than the wheat field of bowed heads and sunken expressions all around. He gawked curiously at them, like a sheltered tourist cruising through a war-torn country.

Everyone's head was bowed. Eyes sunken. Pupils absorbed with the flickering reflection of iPhone screens and mobile apps and news reports and Twitter pages. An entire student body of starved lampreys scouring the checkerboard floor of an abysmal trench, scraping for signs of life among sterile plastic. Occasionally there were smiles—even laughter—but Flash felt he had seen it all before, a rerun stuck on repeat, hollow and programmed.

He tried lifting his gaze above everyone else, and he found it remarkably easy. In so doing, Flash discovered colors he hadn't seen in as long as he could remember. Gold trophies beyond shiny glass cases. Bulletin boards plastered with blue and red ribbons announcing dances, club meetings and band recitals. Adorable animal shelter advertisements lined with pink trim, christened with Fluttershy's unmistakable handwriting. At one corner, there was a drop-box dusted in purple and blue glitter where students could leave suggestions concerning ideas for next month's community fundraiser. One wall even had a dazzling collage full of snapshots of smiling students, collected from over a year's worth of freelance photography.

The borders of yesterday's periphery had been bespeckled in rainbows all along. But when Flash looked back at the student body forming the current of such a pastel artery, all he saw was the backs of bowed heads, the flicker of phone screens, and the occasional scowl or eye roll or middle finger.

He arrived at homeroom later than usual. Only a few faces glanced twice at him. Flash Sentry's glorious return to the mortal coil was celebrated with mute fanfare at best, and the moment had passed in less time it took to pass gas. He sat tall in his desk, staring ahead with eyes wide like a deer caught in the headlights. He looked at his teacher and she seemed a lot older than he remembered. A tired hand rubbed a hangover out of three decades' worth of wrinkles, or tried to. There were too few pictures on the faculty member's desk, and none of them smiles. The classroom was silent as a sepulcher, and her corner the quietest. Flash wondered at what point in her existence she gave up her life for a thankless pursuit... and how deep into the muck of it she accepted the diminishing rewards as something sane, normal, or even realistic. Could she even climb out of it at this point? Would she have the capacity to survive the pitfalls and perils it took to make such a leap at that age?

The bell rang. The undead jolted out of their seats via electrical shock. They landed in the first period class and so did Flash. It was math, and he was a full week behind in lessons, but nobody cared—the instructor less so. And yet—for the first time in days—Flash bothered to. He found that all it took was a few flips of the textbook, and the numbers fell into place, like gravity. He finished each equation assigned to him that day with the greatest of ease. Sure, he cut corners in a few spots, but math was math. It solved itself. It was only humans who were ignorant of the path in between until they connected the dots. He did so admirably, and he tackled a few of the next day's problems with just as much vigor while the rest of the class battled sleep and drool all around him. Just before the period ended, he took the manic risk of showing his teacher the extra work he had done. He was scolded for his efforts—told rather passive aggressively not to leap blindly into the next leg of the curriculum until the appropriately allotted task was officially assigned.

When the bell rang again, Flash sat there in a momentary stupor, blinking off the fact that he had done more than what was required of him and yet was rewarded nothing. And just what was the end-goal of math? Numbers were limitless, like the sky. Even if he scaled the rungs all his life, he'd never reach the top, for there was no top. Maybe he'd become an accountant or a rocket scientist someday. Maybe he wouldn't. Either way, he felt that being fully prepared in mathematics would leave him... woefully unprepared. What's a drop in the bucket of eternity? Why pretend to learn something when he could just live it?

One segment of his systematic schedule had ended, and he was required to relocate himself to the next. So he did. Biology was just as much a breeze as math—suddenly—and he poured through the day's lesson just as fervently. All of a sudden, setbacks didn't faze him. Even if he had a hard time understanding something, it only meant that the solution—the truth—was elsewhere to be found, and circumnavigating the challenge could only prove stimulating. The only thing that dragged him behind... was the three other students he had been forced to partner up with for the day's lab assignment. One spent the entire class period looking at his phone. Another kept talking to her friend in the next group over, and the third practically slept the whole time. In the end, despite Flash's diligence, the assignment simply couldn't be completed. He expected to get reprimanded by the teacher for failing... but in the end the instructor simply brushed it off. He was too busy with something on his computer and he scarcely even noticed when the bell rang. The student left before they could be officially dismissed.

Flash stumbled out of the room—and nearly got clocked in the jaw by a flailing elbow. In his absent-mindedness, the teenager had stumbled into a fight. Two boys wandering through the hallway had gotten into some kind of an argument and it had blown up into a full-on wrestling match. Entangled in each other's angry limbs, they pinballed off a few lockers and then collapsed to the floor. For the very first time that morning, the souls of those trudging through the school flickered to life, and a tight huddle of chanting, hissing students gathered around the two combatants. Cell phones were held out at arm's length, recording the awkward fiasco for all eternity.

It was with a furrowed brow that Flash observed the scene. Everyone seemed so small... like tiny gerbils converging in the corner of a filthy, uncleaned cage. He was almost certain he had seen the exact same fight in a kindergarten playground once. Every punch and kick that the sprawled-out teenagers attempted only contacted with backpack or floor. The whole pointlessness of the situation was almost cute, in a way.

He walked away from it and proceeded towards his locker. It was lunch time and he might as well empty out half his backpack. When he got there, he saw the lip of a piece of paper sticking partially out of one of the slitted openings. His eyes made out a word at the bottom of the scrap: "yourself." With mild curiosity, he clasped the edge of the note in between two fingers and yanked the rest of the paper out. Now he could read the message in its entirety, slathered in casual handwriting: "You should have just killed yourself."

Flash merely blinked, neither alarmed nor angry. What was one more careless threat in a heartless world? Nevertheless, his head turned to the sound of thinly-stifled snickering. Off in the hallway's distance, beyond the criss-cross of rushed passerby's, he spotted two familiar figures: Flower Print and Hank. The two amused teenagers pretended to be conversing with other students, when in fact they took more than one opportunity to peer in Flash's direction with venomous smiles.

He barely returned so much as a wink. In more ways than one, Flash simply felt... sorry. With a few programmed motions, he opened the backpack and changed out his books. Everything inside the locker was just how he left it—static, predictable, unchanging. He closed the locker and gladly turned his back towards it, heading swiftly to the cafeteria next. When he passed the two authors of the note, he sensed more than a little bit of agitated shuffling... as if they were utterly shocked at his lack of response. He gave them no further satisfaction of sticking around, not that he felt it would accomplish anything... but simply because he knew there was nothing more to salvage than there was to ruin about the moment.

While waiting in line for lunch, someone Flash once argued with in freshman year pretended to trip just as an excuse to "shove" Flash super hard against the wall. Flash's shoulder stung from the impact, but he sandbag'd the gesture... as he did the next two more forceful and less stealthy shoves to the back. Eventually, the pimply agitator gave up. Flash didn't see his face directly, nor could he even remember his name.

He was too busy listening to the souls all around him, murmuring and snickering between scarfed bites of artificial preservatives:

"Of course they're gonna fucking lose the election. Serves them right—especially Whathisface McScrotumhead. Everyone knows that cuck and his whole party's balls-deep in the pockets of those dirty thieving kikes on Wall Street."

"Pfft! Hell no she won't buy me an Xbox! Why? Because my mom's a stupid heartless bitch, that's why! Gawd... just abort me in the womb, why don'tcha?"

"What a fucking faggot. You should have seen him trying to talk shit to me the other day for saying how much the school's baking club sucks. Man, if I was so lame as to play white knight for a fat cow like Pinkie Pie I would have at least had her blow me first. Hahaha...!"

"And, oh my god, who honestly cares about frickin' Syria? Wars in the Middle East are like fidget spinners. They'll be over long before anybody in the real world even gives a shit."

"And then he got all up in my grill, started calling me a whole bunch of urban ghetto crap, y'know. And I just smiled at him and said, 'Don't blame me for the police doing their job! It's not my fault you were born black!'"

"I say screw 'em! Y'know? Like... if you can't balance a budget to keep your stinkin' little island clean enough to at least look American, then you sure as Hell have no right asking the government for more money! Tch... hope the next friggin' hurricane drowns 'em all."

"I swear if Kanye doesn't release another album this year I'm going to slit my fucking wrists."

"And it's not like my sex life is any of my parents' god damn business. I mean—what's the worse that can happen? We have fixes for everything these days! Well... maybe not in Texas, but you know what I mean. Hahahaha..."

Flash sat over his meal, looking across the tables full of chattering, nibbling creatures. Between every vulgar utterance and snide remark, there would be the occasional smile and laugh—but it was all over in a heartbeat, a passing facade made out of something thinner than paper and thrice as flammable. In the cold fluorescent light of the public school, Flash noticed a fine sheen—perhaps perspiration, perhaps something else just as oily and desperate—like everybody was in a panic to cover themselves... to throw a shroud over the inescapable horror of silence that hungrily clung to every lingering refrain. And beneath the overlaying surface of abrasive bravado and smug nothingness—what was so dangerous? What was so devouring? He gazed beyond it all, and he saw himself—the self he used to be, mirrored in sporadic clusters of lone wallflowers... students eating alone under colorless, depressing clouds of isolation and detachment and surrender. They were the first victims of the unrelenting depths of life, and Flash observed every sneering, villainous cretin treading water in the center, blindly struggling to paddle themselves above the pull of the riptide. The only thing that bound the water in manageable currents was the system that walled them all in... that kept them imprisoned along the pathways of the same culture that spawned them there. It was the result of the blind leading the blind, all down the frothy center of an endless maelstrom birthed upon human civilization's first murder of hope, on some day long forgotten.

Flash dwelt on this as he left the cafeteria. It was then that he awoke to the fact that his phone had been buzzing practically all day. He took his first glance at it—and he saw multiple texts from Sunset Shimmer: all friendly, all supportive. She repetitively offered an ear for him to talk to and asked multiple times if he was handling his first day back alright. Then—in subsequent messages—she appeared more and more alarmed that he hadn't yet responded.

Flash looked up, perhaps expecting a redheaded girl to be scouring the hallways in search for him. Instead, he bumped thoughtlessly into Mr. Turner, his guidance counselor. He appeared overjoyed at Flash's return—enough to morally forgive the teenager for his "misguided actions" with his "online friends" over the past week, proof that Mr. Turner had no doubt been briefed by Principal Celestia, armed with the same working fabrication concocted by Sunset and Twilight. The counselor's entire friendly greeting was merely a precursor to inviting Flash for a long-belated meeting at his office, and to Mr. Turner's legitimate surprise, Flash agreed. Within minutes, the two were sitting in Mr. Turner's room, hunched over a computer and flanked by the usual posters of dead cats battling for balance on tree branches. To every question the guidance counselor asked, Flash returned with a far more Socratic inquiry, and soon the two were enthusiastically perusing local college applications and career opportunities and every other cliche thing in the book. Soon, Mr. Turner was running circles just to dredge up information for Flash to take home and "research," and Flash was amazed at just how... easy it was to wind the man up... to send him on his laps... all with the tiniest hint of an assurance that he was somehow interested in what Mr. Turner was offering.

Flash wasn't interested, of course. But he played along... simply because he found that he could almost do so professionally. He told Mr. Turner that he was interested in taking on a career in anthropology, and that his psychology courses were a means of gearing him towards an advanced sociological perspective in the field. This gave Mr. Turner the impetus to bring up online searches for European universities offering classes to international students seeking apprenticeship abroad, and away Mr. Turner went, ignited by an inspiring lie. Flash stared intently at him the whole time... realizing that with just a few years and a few extra layers of body fat, he and Mr. Turner could very easily become the same person, overjoyed by the prospect of slim promises to achieve everything, but rendering nothing. Flash wondered when was the last time someone like Mr. Turner ever experienced true joy... if he had ever flown somewhere on magical horse wings or staved off war between sentient canines and horses by sheer virtue of having walked through a mirror on wild impulse. Was there any room in Mr. Turner's life for the unknown, despite all of his accomplishments, or was he fated to ferry more and more creatures down the same path that had ultimately cocooned him in a suit and tie, caked with baking grease.

A few extra pamphlets were shoved into Flash's backpack, then—with a pat on the back and a hall pass—he was sent on his way. His second-to-last class was, coincidentally enough, advanced psychology and it was positioned in a portable building to the rear of Canterlot High. He stepped outside and roamed the grounds. Passing the bleachers, he smelled a whiff of marijuana smoke. Students were loitering off along the edge of the football field, breaking god-knows how many rules by simply being there, but they giggled off the moment... going anywhere and nowhere and not caring in between.

Flash's phone vibrated again. He looked at it, and saw more messages from Sunset. She was panicking by now, most likely due to his silence, and for a moment he wondered if she had reason to. The air smelled of garbage—everywhere smelled like garbage. In the distance, sirens echoed against unwashed buildingsides. Jet planes roared overhead, spilling more exhaust into the atmosphere of a dying planet. Across the country, someone was being raped. Across the world, someone was being bombed to pieces. The air was getting hotter and the water was getting filthier and all the advancements and all the miracles and all the progressive accomplishments of science did nothing but corral more and more infants into the gaping, starving maw at the head of the grand serpent. And there Flash stood—frozen upon the fringes of tomorrow—with a hall pass in one hand and a magic think box in the other.

He exhaled. Reaching back, he unzipped his backpack and reached in deep. He pulled out a pair of white-and-blue headphones. Turns out... they were too big for a housecat.

He gazed at his reflection in the spotless sheen of the device. And then he looked up.

The sky was crystal clean... blue... beautiful... like everything was meant to be... like everything still could be for those crazy enough to see through it.

Yes...

Yes... maybe Sunset did have a reason to be panicked.

Flash Sentry stuck the headphones back into his backpack... and turned around. He walked across the campus... across the football field... across the sidewalk...

He left the school altogether. Nobody saw him trudge off last time... and nobody would spot him now. When he was two blocks away in the middle of town, he passed a garbage can on the sidewalk that was spilling over. Without much thought, he dropped his hall pass inside it...

And then he dropped his cell phone in.

And kept walking.

Comments

[IceKitsune]

Great, what in the world does he plan to do now?

[FloydienSlip]

I know there are a few more chapters left to go, but this is honestly a really great finale chapter right here.

[MythrilMoth]

It bothers me to see all our real-world crap dragged into the bright, colorful, happy Equestria Girls universe. Where there are, incidentally, no "black people" since everybody's all technicolor and shit, so that doesn't EVEN MAKE SENSE.

I know what you're going for here and all? But this chapter, it just...it's a massive disconnect.

[djthomp]

Answer your damn cell phone, Flash!

He left the school altogether. Nobody saw him trudge off last time... and nobody would spot him now. When he was two blocks away in the middle of town, he passed a garbage can on the sidewalk that was spilling over. Without much thought, he dropped his hall pass inside it...

And then he dropped his cell phone in.

What. The. Hell.

[ponygrad]

8948003
This is Thunderlane erasure

[Spanner]

What a drama queen. I hated high school too, but it wasn't like every student and teacher was a dead beat sociopath. Get the hell over yourself Flash, and appreciate the good AND the bad you sad sack of #@$&.

I liked most of this story, but as many pointed out it's hyperbolic and doesn't fit eqg.