I sit in the dark of the study with only the television for company. The news of mass disappearances and hysteria now so frequent, so normative, that it has become an established reality. The illness so devastating that its absence would cause greater panic than its continued existence.
In cities all over the country people staple photographs of missing friends and family members to telegraph poles and noticeboards. They tie notes and trinkets to chain-link fences. They hold candlelit vigils. The bereaved trail behind vacant coffins. The bodies of their loved ones missing like the casualties of some great war.
I flip through the channels listlessly. Outside the cicadas hum and I feel my mind wandering in search of simpler times. I circle endlessly round my argument with Simone in the garden.
It’s with a dull ache that I must admit to romanticising the act of disappearance. For as long as I can remember, whenever the cacophony of my life has reached an unbearable pitch, I have considered vanishing. As a child I was fascinated by ghost towns. Areas abandoned due to pollution, lawlessness, prolonged droughts. Their inhabitants fleeing so quickly in the night that they left piping hot dinners on tables and front doors ajar.
I found a calming, almost meditative bliss in the notion that a name, an entire life, could be abandoned. When I found myself dithering or unnecessarily consumed by worry I would reduce my life to a series of interpersonal connections. It became a mental exercise. How many people would have to disappear before my own existence was forgotten? Before my actions were free of consequence?
But the unfortunate truth is that the immediacy of disappearance betrays the reality of the undertaking. It must be carefully planned in order to succeed. You must squirrel money away over a long period of time. Small amounts, accrued gradually, so as not to arouse suspicion. An extra little bit from the ATM at the convenience store, cash back when paying at the till. Never any large or unexplained transactions. Nothing that could betray your true intentions. No cards, no paper trail. And you would need supplies. A bag of clothes and other essentials tucked away in the garage. A collection of road atlases and motel listings. A burner phone.
In the stillness of the study I fantasise about the breathless thrill of the act. In my mind I am never the perpetrator of such infidelities, but rather a spectator watching an alternate version of myself. A dark reflection. I imagine the hammering of my heart as I fetch my bags and throw them into the back of the car.
I sit and watch my future play out in a sort of montage.
I head west, the road before me illuminated in wide arcs. I see palm trees and tropical drinks with those little paper umbrellas. I see a barrage of motel rooms and late mornings. At some point I swap my car for an open-top convertible and use it to snake along the coastline like a shadow.
I can almost feel the sea spray. It cleanses me. I feel the breeze catching in my hair, playing with my shirt collar, and with each passing moment I seem to shed more weight, until I feel as though I can practically levitate, until I have become completely unencumbered.
I spend my days betting on horses and when either my luck runs out or the sun runs off I go in search of loose women. I fuck them behind bars and on the hoods of cars. I take them from behind, their hair wrapped tightly in my clenched fist. And when they gasp and then beg for me to slow down I thunder on, as if I am trying to rip them apart. I stop only when, at last, I am sated.
But the fantasy falls apart almost as quickly as it materialises. The logistics rendered suddenly laughable. How would I rent a convertible without providing some form of identification? Who were these loose women, and where was this disposable income coming from?
I think again of the boy on the highway.
I sit perfectly still and try to visualise the internal mechanics of my own body. To disassemble my molecular structure. To reduce my body to its purest form. To release a lifetime of guilt and regret. Until I am left with only the goodness in me.
But I find the person who remains unrecognisable.
We would be strangers in the street.
I would pass him and he would pass me, and we would share not a single glance.