Vanishing

"The true magic of this broken world lay in the ability of the things it contained to vanish, to become so thoroughly lost, that they might never have existed in the first place." The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, by Michael Chabon.

She watches them from far away, metal collar limp and lifeless at her neck, and eyes wide to the scenes that play themselves through over and over and over again. It's like a movie she can't quite remember. The story and the words, and then the people that say the words to the story -- they're nothing but a vague sort of mess in her head now. More than a little forgotten, like everything else. It's on the pile with clothes that cover you whole, names, and voices that sing you to sleep at sight. And even though the pile they make sounds comforting enough, she knows it's not meant for sleeping well.

Some something lingers from that movie. Just one little image. A picture in a picture, of a family slowly fading away. Hands and feet and head and heart all slowly disappearing, lost to the nothingness. That's how it feels here, she thinks. That's what watching it looks like.

They all start out so tall and clean and strong, not really sure what's happening to them. Let's of them determined to find out. But then the collars and the beatings come, the backbreaking work and night that...

Well, it's where the fading starts.

But it isn't just clothes that go away, or heads and limbs. It's what made each of them different. How you could tell any of them apart at all. It's names and smiles and if laughter sounds short or long. What you found funny, on;y nothings really funny anymore. 'Cept yourself, anymore -- in that hard, painful way. Anything that's anything is stripped away. Gone.

Until you're all alike.

And you're all alone.