*Contains adult themes

I met him in fourth grade. He looked at me, frowning, and I remember waking up to sterile clamor in a whitewashed box. We didn't talk in middle school, but by high school he seemed suddenly more alluring in his mysterious charm. We flirted, sometimes, dancing through the days, moving together and apart and together again, weaving about time's stage, caught up in our private waltz. And every time he asked me to come with him. But I would glance at my wrists where he touched them and sigh. I wasn't read, not yet. His eyes, so dark and clear, would gaze at mine as the translucent rhythms pulled him away and his outstretched arm gradually returned to his side. "Maybe next time." He doesn't say it, but we both are thinking it. The next time we meet, he holds me especially close, his arms draped about my neck. I can feel where his hands clasp behind my head as he leans in, his breath upon my ear. "Come with me," he says, and the slight murmur of the words comfort me as I close my eyes. "Come with me and I will show you all the wonders of the world. Come with me and you can walk the line between dimensions. Come with me and you can experience the sweet silence of eternity." I smile, finally ready, and step forward, swept from my feet into his waiting embrace where the comfort of oblivion is everlasting.

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A/N: Originally written May 2015