The blue haze filtered through the spinning of the fan blades and flickered against the wall chaotically. In between bursts of color he faded, and reappeared in perfect sequence to the explosions of light that ruptured in a frenzied tempo to the right of his body. His features were illuminated only briefly, but boldly enough for her to make out the line of his jaw and the curvature of his shoulder. She squinted to suck him into her mind and absorb him as more than a fleeting image but it was a struggle to steady herself, to afix her eyes to such randomness when there was nothing in the room to orient her.

She was lying on her back, with her knees upright and her feet pressed firmly against the cool hardwood floor. Summer sank into the small of her back, the heat coiled up inside; spring-loaded and ready to pounce. She had nothing left to grasp hold of, aside from the picture in her head, and even that seemed miserably evasive from her point of view.

She dug her fingers in between the two loose boards in a mixture of frustration and despair. She wanted to stand up and move her way through the darkness to hold him, however she was cautioned by the sudden spinning of the room and her own uncertainty as to whether her gesture would be shunned.

As abruptly as the pain had struck her and landed her in a position of immobility, so had she sensed his departure. Upon further assessment, she realized she was no longer a witness to the flash of his face in the darkness, rather, to the corner of something more angular and clearly less human.

He was gone.

Her only memories were the slant of his jawline, the slope of his arm relative to her position on the floor, and the blue light that spun itself into an intricate maze of missing someone she hardly even knew.