I woke up. Pockets check, shirt, check. Face, beard. What? A beard.

I opened my eyes it’s blurry.

Knock on the door. “Good morning Karl you need to be ready in half an hour for your speech”

“Speech?”

“Yes sir speech”

Footsteps faded away.

Speech? What speech I don’t know anything about speeches. I quickly shuffled my hand around on my side table and felt glasses and put them on.

Ah. I can see...

Golden eyes,

Fireflies,

Tiny fireworks that never burst,

Lighters, candles,

Stars....

It was September, I left a note on the fridge it read.

“I love you”

Nothing else nothing more.

Then I boarded a train out of town with a one way ticket. Deleted my social media. Applied to deedpoll to change my name so you couldn’t find me cut my hair and changed my number. I wasn’t just leaving I was vanishing, the love we had was too powerful too life changing and you told me the night before ...

Further down the street stood a tall empty building, it had been empty for as long as she could remember. Every time she walked past it she always wanted to peer in but could never get the courage to. White cloths hung over the windows there where precisely 6 windows at the front and a huge boarded up door with the numbers 56 sprayed across in red paint.

People said the house was used in the war ...