Word Count: 578

Four or five months had gone by since Alex Gramme left his life. Since he’d ******** up with the girl, no young woman, he thought he was going to spend the rest of his life with. Merric sat on the roof of his house, the asphalt roofing titles still warm from the day, his deep blue bass guitar laying across his legs. Above him, stars began to blink into existence as dusk turned into night. The breeze ruffled his shirt and his electric blue hair, and for a moment he closed his eyes and listened. Fingers started to move along the neck of the instrument, running over frets and strings until they came to sit on a position to start. His other hand took the blue pick from his mouth, running over the edges, and placed it to the bass.

He strummed once, moved his fingers to a different set of frets, and started again. It wasn’t often Merric used a pick to play bass; you used the whole two finger deal that looked like you were feverishly scratching at the strings normally. But occasionally, he used a pick. The blue haired teen swayed on the roof, listening to his own music. It was low; his electric guitar didn’t have the box that an accostic did, but that was fine with him. He could hear it in the amp in his room.

His street was quiet in the dusk. He lived out in the suburbs of Destiny City; it was usually quiet unless his neighbors were holding parties. He could hear the sound of the freeway blocks away, and the crickets feet away. He placed the pick back in his mouth, clamped between his teeth, and his figures went back to strumming the strings. He moved up and down the neck, fingertips sliding along the strings and moving to different ones.

Across town, the costumed freaks battled monsters and each other on a daily basis. Here, out here, Merric was ignorant to it all. Ignorant to his own destiny, to what he’d one day become. Here, he wasn’t getting assaulted being gigs by military-esk uniformed people, or stalker fangirls, or short-skirted girls with magical attacks. A whole world existed just beyond the limits of the suburbs and he was fine with it. He had no need to go galavanting off to become terrorists, or whatever the news was calling them now.

Besides. How would he, Merric Hollinger, even have the time for such a thing? He didn’t have time for sleeping as it was.

The night air rustled his hair again and Merric opened his eyes. Silver eyes shone like liquid in the light of the slowly rising moon. For a moment his mind flickered back to a night like this, a night filled with smiles, whispered words of love and lust, and a night he thought could never end. Would never end. The liquid eyes dimmed to flat disks of grey and his bass fell silent. Even months later, Merric found himself still thinking of her, and what had been. Her smile that warmed his soul, her eyes which showed every emotion within her and often were filled with tears, her teasing, her kindness, her everything. Countless times he damned himself to hell for taking that dare. Countless times he wished for her back.

Nothing was bringing her back. Not now, not in the future. Never.

Ignorance was bliss.

Until the world crashed it down around you.