It’s Monday or Tuesday. He can’t remember. He’d been on a World of Warcraft bender for a few days. Two? Three? Some chemicals may have been involved.

He’s gone stir crazy. He has to get out. It’s dark outside. It’s dark inside. He has been juggling with his sanity for a while now. He was bound to drop a ball. So he starts to drive out into the darkness. He doesn’t know where he’s going and he doesn’t really care.

What time is it? Who knows? Who cares? It all blends together in an electronic world. He can turn the lights on at night. He can duct tape the curtains down during the day. Whatever.

The road is nearly deserted for some reason. He sees a few cars pass by. The headlights give him Warcraft shell shock.

The windows are rolled down. The air breezes through. The open road! Is this true freedom? No. Freedom is a headset and a screen. In there you can die without dying. That’s freedom. But he needs something to break up the monotony.

He slows down near a curve. He hears strange noises. Strangely familiar noises. Yet unfamiliar. They give him that kind of uneasiness that makes your stomach tighten up just so much.

As he rounds the bend he sees a bright light ahead in the distance. It’s too big to be a headlight.

Wait! This is that crazy dream he’s always had. He always felt it would slip into reality. He’s dreaded it while half hoping it would happen. He knew it. It’s so post-modern. It is going to end perfectly! The aliens are coming to take him away. Bliss.

The UFO rises in the distance. It hovers. Its engines chirrup outside his windows with a sweet melodic twitter. How sweet the tweet. The kind of sound you hear as you stand homesick in alien corn.

He’s ready for this. He’s been ready for this for a thousand gamer years. He’s imagined this before – just this scenario. He knows they’ll accept him. Yes, for the first time in his life he’ll be accepted. He has a Tralfamadorian tattooed on his calf, that’s got to count for something, right?

He stops the car to await his destiny.

And the sun rises, and the birds keep singing.

I’m in the fourth grade. A girl in my class doesn’t show up. She doesn’t show up for days. For weeks. There are rumors. I don’t understand them. She didn’t move away. Is she coming back?

Then one day she shows up. She’s not alone.

A man I’ve never seen walks to the front of the class and tells us he’s a psychologist. I don’t know what that means. He tells us the girl has something to say to the class.

She stands up at the front of the class. She’s the teacher now. She seems confident for a fourth grader. A little nervous, but hardly showing it.

“I tried to hurt myself,” she says. “I took a knife out of our kitchen. I cut myself.”

“I’m getting counseling to help me so I won’t hurt myself anymore.”

I don’t remember the rest of what she said. I thought she said she was coming back. I don’t know. It is the disappearance that I really remember. She walks away with the man. Where are they going? Will she be back?

The next day she’s not there. Or the next. Or ever. I’m still here. I still don’t know why she did it. Or where she went.

Did she try again? Did she succeed in her next attempt? Is she now a well-adjusted mother of three? Does she take Prozac? Is she the next Mother Theresa?

I don’t know. Google doesn’t even know. Does that mean she is as good as dead? If she’s Facebook dead, then she must be dead, right?

The man gave her back to us for a moment. Fourth grade girls cried. Fourth grade boys didn’t understand.Then he took her away. Do people always disappear when they walk away with the psychologist?

*Note* This story may self-destruct in a couple of days. If you want it to stay up, you may want to tell me.