Gone

          Terry knew she was gone. People didn’t make those shapes with their bodies and survive. He lay face down on the clifftop unable to speak or move. He couldn’t cry or think. He was blank. He lay there until the moon came up, until the cold made him shiver into a sort of consciousness. He couldn’t think about it. Inside his head all he could hear was static. Screaming static. He couldn’t start to make his body move further; he curled into a ball holding his knees. Rocking, shaking. Head exploding with white noise. It hadn’t happened, it hadn’t happened, it hadn’t happened. That was all that went through his mind for hours.

          He stumbled through fields and over fences, keeping away from the roads, the paths. His clothes sodden, his eyes hollow as the valleys he walked over, pushed through. No food, no drink for days. He slept little and fell over often. Still the white noise. He smelt of piss, he stank of it. His mouth was cracked and sore and his hands cut and bruised. The clothes were falling off him by the time they found him and took him away to the hospital.

          His parents were contacted and they agreed it was best that he stayed there for some time. The doctors asked questions but he just said it hadn’t happened. It took a long while, six maybe nine months before they though he was okay to go out and face the world again.

          It hadn’t happened – he kept on repeating that to himself even when the static switched itself off. He believed it. Locked it away in a corner of his mind until he didn’t even know what hadn’t happened any more.