Vanished

Vance sat on a park bench as the sun and shadow washed over him as quickly as the passing centuries. He pushed his sunglasses against the bridge of his nose and he pulled his hat down further over his eyes. He fidgeted nervously with his shirt. He was paranoid, though he tried not to come off as such to those he composed himself enough to meet. Such was the joy of exile.  

He sighed. He was always doing that. Perhaps he’d picked it up from someone. Not that it mattered; his breath was irrelevant at this point.

A bunch of lavender balloons floated into the air from far away. As Vance looked at them, they stopped and just hung there in the sky. He clenched his fist in frustration and the balloons drifted away.

A girl had sat down next to him now. Her eyes were huge, clear, and blue. She was eating strawberries in an absent sort of way. She was a pretty one too, but in broad daylight, all Vance wanted to do was retreat into himself. Perhaps he was strong and above the forces of time, but he was still a freak to pretty young things like her.

     “Are you okay?” she said, looking at him sideways.

     “Why?” said Vance too defensively.

     “You’re not breathing, that’s all,” she said.

He was always forgetting about that, but usually people had the decency not to notice.

     “Oh, I’m fine,” said Vance. He took a deep breath solely for the girl’s benefit.

The girl leaned back and took in the beautiful day.

You are a pretty one aren’t you, Vance thought.

     “Thank you,” said the girl, “but be careful. I’m much younger than I look.” She was lighthearted, but Vance thought she might not be sincere in it.

The fine line between thought and spoken word was something Vance still had to work on, it seemed.

     “If you’re so young, haven’t your parents told you not to talk to strangers?” said Vance.

     “My parents say I’m a genius, so I go to school with much older people than me. The boundaries are blurred in my mind, I guess, but it’s so much fun to tease the boys.”

     “How old are these people you go to school with?” said Vance, mildly curious.

     “They’re eighteen or twenty something, like you are.”

     “You think I’m twenty something?” said Vance.

     “Well, how old are you?”

     “I’m forty five,” Vance lied. He was two hundred and thirty, but to his credit, he rarely felt his age.

     “Liar, you can’t be more than twenty three,” said the girl.

     “Twenty three and a half,” said Vance, but only since he’d decided to stop aging.

     “You’re lucky to be twenty three and a half,” said the girl, “you’re parents aren’t breathing down your neck.”

     “But I don’t have the benefit of my parents telling me how smart I am,”

     “I guess so,” said the girl. She paused and then continued, “who will tell you what a charmer you are, if you don’t have your parents?”

     “It took a village to raise me, I suppose,” said Vance, “but I wanted to do things that were against the rules, so they threw me out.” There it was; his entire life in a nutshell.

The girl finished her last strawberry.

     “You’re pretty hung up on that?” the girl asked.

      “I am,” said Vance.

     “If you’re free, just be free,” she said, “I walk around unsupervised and pretend to be a grown-up. Don’t do that. Enjoy life, be free.”

     “What if people don’t like that?”

     “There will always be people that don’t like you, but if it makes you feel better, I do.” She giggled like the very young teenager that she was, got up, and walked back down the street.

Vance nodded to himself and took off his hat and sunglasses. He was free. As long as no one saw him, he was free.

He had curly black hair and dark purple eyes with no pupils or whites. Maybe he was a monster, but what kind, remained to be seen.

Vance snapped his fingers and a lavender balloon hung in the air before him. He grabbed it between his index and middle fingers, before it floated away. He replaced his hat on his head, smiled slightly, and vanished.