Sometimes Baz wondered what it would be like to be invisible. An invisibility not conjured up through the means of magic and illusions but real invisibility. An invisibility where his atoms vibrated until they pulled apart from each other and blended in with the shadows. One where he dissolved into a puddle and flowed over the roughened edges of the cobblestone that greedily stole bits of him until there was nothing left. He wanted to paint himself every possible shade, every last hue known to man until he became a walking chameleon.
He wanted to run. Run long and hard. Run until his lungs blistered, his legs quaked and his heart frantically tried to keep up. He wanted to run through water both saline and fresh, through sand only to have it stick to his sneakers, through grass that brushed off the sand only to lay claim on the sneakers with bright green stains.
He wanted to run until he forgot.
Baz sat on the cold, merciless ground surrounded by the darkness, surrounded in every which way, and he listened to the waves as they pummeled the rocks. He glared at the midnight ocean that sparkled and shimmered in the moonlight. How dare it glisten and dance as it forced the rocks onto their knees, striking them ruthlessly again and again even as hands went up in surrender. He turned his glare up at the moon – the silent accomplice.
He wondered if this need to flee made him a bad person. He wanted to leave everything and everyone here and find a place where it couldn't reach him, but he wondered if such place even existed.
He wanted to run until he forgot.
He wanted to blend until he couldn't be found, not even by himself.
He wanted to disappear – from this place, from his mind, from everything.
He wanted to forget and really was that so much to ask?
He wanted to forget that one night as everything crumbled and smoked around them, as the night filled with shouts, curses and cries that in a bright dazzle of light the Humdrum had won. Baz had watched the look of shock freeze upon Simon's face as the world in stunned disbelief held him up a moment longer before it snatched the light behind his eyes and cut the strings that held his body up. Baz heard a breathless keening cut through the night as he watched Simon's lifeless form crumple to the ground and he brought his fingers up to his lips to realize the sound was coming from him.
The Humdrum had won.
Simon was dead.
And Baz was a coastal rock that was drowning in the unrelenting waves of grief that crashed down on him. He would hold his breath until the wave rolled out but one day the tide came in, surrounded and entered every pore, and it never left.