Friday 29 January 2016

Invisible

For audio click here
It was official, Mark was invisible. He’d thought he might have been for a while now, but he finally had his suspicions confirmed in Debenhams. Perhaps not the most obvious place to notice your lack of presence, but when the girls with the aftershave didn’t offer him a squirt, he decided to look in the multitude of mirrors to check he still existed. To his horror, he wasn’t there. Although he knew damn well he was there, he was alive and he was in the shop, there was no reflection. Mark had become the invisible man; he had an unwanted superpower and he was afraid to use it. 
Most people would love to be invisible, but few would use their power for good. They’d sneak into the home of someone they fancied or into the boss’s office. They’d find out gossip to take back to their friends when the invisibility wore off. Maybe they’d even ‘cop a feel’ take advantage of their status by committing unseen sexual assaults. But Mark didn’t want to do any of that. He’d hate to know what people were saying about him; he was not the type of person to take advantage, and who wants to watch Sonia Williams having sex with that idiot Chalky? He sighed; Sonia Williams was far too pretty to be involved with a small-time crook like Chalky but she didn’t even know that Mark existed and now, well he hardly did.
He’d been feeling like he’d been drifting away for a while now. He’d noticed that shop assistants would look right through him; people bumped into him on the street and then were amazed when they looked around to see him there; Facebook posts went unliked and his messages lay unanswered for days on end. His phone hadn’t rung in weeks and his voice was becoming so soft that it seemed to be on the wrong frequency for most humans. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been out with his friends and as for women… well. He’d been slowly fading away and now he had gone. 
He sat on one of the benches outside the market hoping no one would come and sit on his lap. What was he going to do? Was it irreversible? He couldn’t go to the doctor’s could he? That was a joke waiting to happen.  Could he ever get his body back, or was it more than just the body that was missing? Had he somehow just lost his soul? 
A family of four was coming towards him; he got up and moved on before he got squashed. He could still feel the rain falling on his head; he could still feet the pavement beneath his tired soles; he could still feet the heavy ache in his head, but the strength to project had gone. As he trudged around town, no one noticed the slight grey shadow on the pavement. He’d had enough, he drifted home and disappeared into obscurity.

5 comments:

  1. It is a sad story, Gareth, but also so well written and so beautiful in its sadness... and I think it is a great allegory of the condition of a human being in the modern world. I really really like it. I even think I know exactly how it feels to be invisible to others

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    1. oh, I keep thinking about this story... and don't you think that we often become invisible to others as we do not notice other people ourselves? We want to disconnect, say we don't like people, but when they stop notocing us we realize thaat we are not lonely islands and just need other humans to feel something like happiness at least from time to time

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  2. Sad but nicely written. I believe that most of us know how it feels being invisible... no one wants to be alone, which is sometimes not easy in today's world

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  3. But there's always someone who thinks of us :-)

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  4. Petra Goláňová31 January 2016 at 00:35

    'It was official, Mark was invisible.... when the girls with the aftershave didn’t offer him a squirt, he decided to look in the multitude of mirrors to check he still existed. To his horror, he wasn’t there....He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been out with his friends and as for women… well. He’d been slowly fading away and now he had gone. ..As he trudged around town, no one noticed the slight grey shadow on the pavement. He’d had enough, he drifted home and disappeared into obscurity. '

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