sunday prompt: new leaf

they say this is how Tom Nero disappeared: he pulled a small length of string from his pocket and smiled sadly at nothing in particular. they had all been smoking cigarettes in front of the bar, mute, watching the wind whip up drifts of snow like shaving cream lather. they had all heard him say it before.

someday i am going to vanish. don't you ever just want to vanish? disappear? drop off the face of the earth? go off the map?

he had said it with varying degrees of self-loathing. had punctuated it differently each time, once with furious, drunken spittle. once with tears streaming over his cheekbones and runnelling down the natural lines of his face. they were all used to it by now. knew enough to nod and smile and stay away. he drank oceans worth of alcohol and vomited hurricanes.

it was shortly after the passing of the old year that Tom Nero disappeared. at first, no one noticed. then he didn't show up for his job and the requisite phonecalls were made. no answer on the other line. he was fired in absentia and rumors spread like the contagion of ice on a frozen pond. small town - people talk. they have nothing better to do. some had grudging respect for him. "He went and did it. Disappeared," they'd say. everyone knew how much of a drunk Tom Nero was. he had a reputation for anger and intolerance. was quick to judge but it pained him to be judged by anyone other than himself. he would explain at great gasbag length how fucked up he was to anyone who was fucked up enough to listen. he could be found sitting alone most nights with a pen and a notebook, dreaming up other realities he could live in for a time. his modus operandi was escape, escape, escape. he drank, he wrote, he smoked pot, he smoked cigarettes, he watched TV and movies unceasingly. rarely left the house except to go to the bar and to go to work.

"sometimes people just need a change," said Gary, a regular at the One Horse. "happens all the time. slip right through the cracks. though it's not like he killed himself or anything." he had paused, rubbed his chin, and laughed. "more like he killed what everyone knew of as himself!"

"took himself right out of the picture," mused Rebecca, a friend. "it doesn't surprise me, but i'm sad to see him go. he hated himself so much."

"how does someone hate themselves so much that they just disappear?"

Rebecca shrugged. "like spontaneous combustion or something. just need the right combination.... and boom."

Tom Nero left everything behind. a single tall bookshelf crammed so tightly with works that it was difficult to retrieve any one title without a struggle. his wallet and cell phone. his bottle of marijuana, his pipes. his sneakers and clothing. his laptop computer and external hard drive. his backpack, still occupied with notebooks and a copy of Paul Auster's New York Trilogy. his savings, all in cash, totalling just about a grand.

"it's the right time of year for it," said Frank, another regular at the One Horse. "everybody's turning over new leaves. i always thought that meant leaves on a tree. Tom told me it was like turning a page in a book. That was called a leaf, too. Makes more sense when you think about it that way, doesn't it?"

efforts were made to track Tom Nero down, via every sort of technology possible. Facebook proved useless. he hadn't signed on in months. his roommate scoured his hard drive for details but found only endless documents of unfinished stories. characters who were miserable and who met characters more miserable. "he could've given me some notice," groused his roommate. "at least he left enough money to cover this month's rent." she reflected for a moment, then came back to her sentence. "i hope he's okay. wherever he is."

yes, wherever Tom Nero had gone to. wherever had he gone to.

the interest in his story died down after it became evident he wasn't going to return. it became another quirk of the small town, revived only in jokes or in side-stories about the past. Tom Nero became another ghost on memory's highway. the secret was how many envied him. the telling was in how much they drank the night after he was discovered gone. how fiercely they all spoke and clenched their bottles. the shots they swilled and the fights they got in. Tom Nero would have been proud to know he had such an effect on them. but Tom Nero never knew.