The Life of the Invisible

This story was published in The Kolob Canyon Review in the Spring 2006 edition. I don't know why, but I picked it up today and it kind of struck me funny. Enjoy.


Life of the Invisible


Jason and Tyler’s apartment was small, and felt yet more cramped by the
comfortable couches, bean bags, and large entertainment center crammed into the front
room. An empty pizza box lay discarded next to one holding a single slice of
congealing cheese. Half-eaten bags of popcorn and Doritos were scatter on the
furniture. Cans of soda were within easy reach of the three people avidly involved in a
desperate game of Super Smash Brothers.

“Hey! I hate it when you do that!” Tyler shouted as Danielle’s Yoshi slurped his
Ness into an egg.

Jason met the Ness in the air with his own Samus, and Ness was thoroughly
zapped. But coming to ground, as Jason was about to attack again, the Ness leapt out
of the way before he could even twitch at the controller.

“No cheating, Tyler!” he growled.

“I’m not!” Tyler responded, shooting fire at Samus.

Their time expired, and with much groaning on the others’ parts, Ness was
shown as the winner. As Tyler stretched with an exaggerated yawn, obviously gloating,
Jason reached for his Pepsi and reiterated his belief in Tyler’s cheating.

“Just because you lost...” Tyler shrugged, draining a Squirt and reaching for a
Mountain Dew.

“It’s hard to tell sometimes, Ty,” Danielle interjected. She popped open a can
of Pringles and offered it to them both. “I mean, can you blame us?”

“Just because I can read minds doesn’t mean that I do,” Tyler responded
defensively. “Playing games is hard to read anyway, decisions come so fast, and I
have to play my own characters.” He grinned. “Card games, now, that’s when it can
come in handy.”

Danielle threw a cushion at him, which he blocked deftly; it just missed
knocking over Jason’s drink. “Oi!” Jason protested. “Watch it!”

Tyler knelt in front of the Nintendo set and started rifling through the games.
“What do you guys want to play next?”

Jason shrugged and Danielle made a non-committal sort of noise. She shifted
positions with a groan and looked over her shoulder at the clock. “Oh, I really should
be asleep. I’m going to pay for this in class tomorrow.”

“But it’s worthwhile to spend quality time with your old high school buddies,
right?” Jason said.

She rolled her eyes. “Dork.”

Jason raised his eyebrows. “Oh, that’s mature.”

“You’re one to speak of maturity,” she shot back.

“Oh yeah?” he said, reaching out to tickle the bottom of her foot.

“Hey!” She whipped her foot away.

“Hey what?” he teased, tickling just above her knee. She thrashed, and he rose
to his knees and proceeded to tickle her in every available spot he could reach, past her
futile attempts to block. Suddenly she reached out and tickled just beneath his arm.
He yelped in surprised and abruptly turned invisible.

“No fair!” Danielle shouted. Her hands reached out, trying to fend off his
continued attacks. He pressed on mercilessly until she was curled into a fetal position,
breathless and nearly in tears.

“Now that is cheating,” Tyler commented.

“Mercy!” Danielle gasped out. Jason rocked back on his heels and let himself
fade back into sight. He grinned triumphantly as Danielle slowly sat up, still breathing
fast, but with a twinkle in her glaring eyes.

“So, who’s up for Mario Kart?” Tyler said dryly, turning back to the television.
“I really better get going,” Danielle replied regretfully. She rose to her feet, and
Jason followed suit, watching as she retrieved her jacket.

“Do you want a ride home?” Jason asked.

She smiled at him over her shoulder. “No. I think I’ll fly.”

Jason shook his head. “Sometimes I forget how naïve you are.”

He saw irritation flash through her face before she shrugged nonchalantly. He
briefly wondered if he really had offended her, or if it was annoyance at something he’d
been saying for years.

“Good night, guys,” Danielle said curtly.

“Night,” Tyler called, his eyes glued to Mario Kart.

“Night, Danielle,” Jason said, opening the window for her. She stepped out
onto the tiny balcony and with a slight breeze, she was off into the night.

Jason stepped inside and shut the window. As Tyler completed the current lap,
Jason grabbed a handful of popcorn and a fresh Pepsi. He plopped down beside Tyler,
finished off the handful and grabbed a controller. Without comment he joined in the
next round.

As though he was reading Jason’s mind, Tyler dodged Jason’s every attack,
beating him on every round. Jason didn’t even bother to accuse him of cheating.

# # #

Climbing the stairs to the second floor of his apartment building, Jason’s
thoughts were wrapped up in his physics exam results, received earlier in the afternoon.
Physics was never Jason’s strong point—he just expected things to happen, with no
personal expectations regarding the mechanics of it all.

The second story was dim; one of the fluorescents was out near the stairwell,
another in the center of the hall. The aesthetic lack of appeal didn’t really bother Jason;
the rent was cheap. As he started down the corridor, Jason reached for his keys in his
coat pocket.

“Who do you think you are, you little idiot?”

Jason’s steps slowed, and he saw a crack of light leaking out of an apartment
several doors down from his own. He hesitated before he slipped his keys back into his
pocket, turned invisible, and crept closer to the open door.

“Dragging our family name around in the dirt like some filthy hippie!” a strong
male voice slurred. The smell of marijuana and beer streamed through the door to
Jason’s nose. “As if you didn’t have anything better to do with your life but hang out
with drugees!”

“Dad, I swear I haven’t been—“

“Shut up, you son of a bitch!” Jason heard something large hit the floor. “You
disgusting drug addict, you crap-smoking loser! Shut up!” Jason nudged the door
opened a little wider just in time to see the father in a white wife-beater backhand the
teenage boy cowering, half-risen off the floor, a chair broken near by. The sound of the
connecting flesh echoed horribly in Jason’s mind, and it was all he could do not to cry
out himself.


“Do you think we are made of money, Jason?”

Jason turned to face his father, suddenly fifteen again. The towering figure was larger
than he remembered, dressed in a business suit, the pressing all but gone after a day at the office,

the top buttons of the shirt undone. A little wine had gone with dinner. Adrenaline raced
through Jason’s veins, but he could not stop what he knew was coming. Then, or now.
“Well, boy? How do you expect me to keep paying for you if you don’t show anything
for it? You are wasting everything!”

“Dad, I swear I’ve been trying—“

“Your test scores are a disgrace! What the hell do you think you are doing?”
“The teachers are really hard, Dad—“

“I’m not going to keep paying for you to mess around! You have better things to do
than screw around with the little whores! Stop slacking off—“

“Dad!” Jason cried out urgently, knowing that he couldn’t stop it now, “ I haven’t
been—“

Jason’s father rushed forward, throttling him around the neck. “Shut up, you son of a
bitch! You listen when I’m talking to you!” Jason was thrust to the ground, receiving a sharp kick in the ribs. He cried out, but there was no one to hear him, no one to help him. There was never anyone to help. The blows continued to fall, and Jason didn’t even think to hide from them.

The drunk man before him raised the broken chair into the air, about to smash it
down upon his young son’s head. Emotion filled Jason’s chest, and he knew that this
time, a son would not be left alone, with no one to help him and defend him from his
father. Invisible, Jason’s foot was already moving into the room when the son abruptly
rose up, wrested the chair from his surprised father, and knocked the older man down
to the ground.

“Damn it, Dad, stop blaming me for your problems!” the kid shouted, tossing
the chair away. “Just because you smoke pot, quit thinking I’m doing the same idiot
crap! Mom didn’t leave me, she left you!” There was a pathetic moan from the floor,
and the boy kicked his father in the ribs. Without another word, the kid stormed from
the apartment, barely missing Jason, who stood, stunned, just inside the door. After a
few moments watching the groaning drunkard on the floor, Jason too left the apartment
and headed for his own, feeling more powerless than he had in a long time. Since the
night he had escaped his father for the first time—the night he found his invisibility.

# # #

Jason and Tyler sat in their apartment on a late Saturday afternoon. Tyler was
tinkering with parts Jason couldn’t recognize if he tried, and was putting them together
into something Jason couldn’t quite discern, but which he assumed would serve some
sort of gaming function. Jason himself was putting their vacuum back together, having
broken it earlier that month.

Tyler, in the middle of polishing a chip of some sort, abruptly giggled, quickly
stifled. Jason looked up at him. Tyler had a far-away look that Jason easily recognized.
“What now?” Jason demanded, turning back to the vacuum belt. “Who are you
spying on?”

“You really don’t want to know,’ Tyler replied smugly. He abruptly snorted and returned to polishing.

“It’s really disgusting, you know,” Jason commented.

“What is?”

“Invading peoples minds just for kicks.”

“Haven’t you ever been tempted to turn invisible to do stuff just for kicks?”

Brief memories appeared in snippets: sneaking into a professor’s office. Getting
into a concert without a ticket. Walking into a meeting late, not wanting to be noticed.
“No,” Jason said aloud.

“What about that time in high school? The girls’ locker room?”

It was a dare that he was too prideful not to take. “Go on!” Tyler encouraged. Jason
knew it was just a memory, but even then, he had been reluctant to move onward. His high- school self turned back to look.

There was Tyler, looking idiotic with a mullet, so new and excited in his telepathic
powers. Behind him was little Henry, their morph, dead now three years. And next to them was Zack, the one with super-strength who had made their high school years so much fun. Eventually he had found the boundaries of his strength, though, so he was gone too. Jason’s memory didn’t show Max, who could control electricity, maybe he hadn’t been there. The military had him now. “Jason, go on, man!” Tyler hissed. The others made gestures urging him forward.

Jason’s feet moved a few slow steps down the hall before he briefly concentrated (it had
been harder then, he remembered) and disappeared. He heard Tyler cackling gleefully as Jason put his hand on the door and pushed his way swiftly and quietly inside.

It took quick stepping to avoid a chattering group of girls on their way out. Nervously
Jason moved further inward, past lockers he had expected to be different from those in the guys’ locker room. A few girls remained after the gym class, but they were mostly dressed already, and Jason caught no more than glimpses of midriffs and thighs. Relief filled him, then embarrassment that he was relieved. He thought about turning back and making something up to satisfy the guys, but then he passed the last row of lockers.

Her back was facing away from him as she reached up and tugged her shirt over her
head. He couldn’t help looking as she pulled up her tatty blue jeans over some flower-print panties. He thought for sure that she would sense his watching presence as she stuffed her gym clothes into her locker and packed her things back into her bag, and he held his breath, his heart pounding in his ears.

“Hey Danny.”

Jason jumped at the same moment as Danielle, and whirled to see three tall, senior
blonde girls block off the path out of the locker room. “Any more weird stories for us today?” one asked. Jason tried to fast-forward the memory in his mind, the girls pushing Danielle into the lockers, throwing her homework and then her drawing notebook into the running showers, stealing her backpack with all her things, all the while calling her horrible names guys would never think to call a girl. He tried to look away as Danielle crumpled after their exit, but he hadn’t been able to look away then, either.

“What good is being able to fly?” she shouted to the empty locker room, her face red
and puffy from the lockers and crying. “You can’t fly from anything!” She dashed her tears away, and slammed her locker shut. “I’d rather be normal,” she whispered to it.

“I don’t even remember what happened that day,” Tyler said with a laugh. “Didn’t you see Jill Stiles’ boobs or something?”

Jason did not reply. He rose abruptly to his feet and made for the door, ignoring Tyler’s questions as they followed him out into the deepening dusk. He set off down the street, having no particular destination, only the need to be moving away.

Invisibility was a guilty power. You can’t do good things with a power that doesn’t let other people see you. There is no honest purpose. It’s only good for escaping from things. It had been cool, in high school, when their group had used their powers in various schemes. It had been fun to get away with things. Every once and awhile, he had tried to be a do-gooder using his powers, but it never quite worked out right, always leaving him feeling stupid, just like he had the other night.

What good is being able to fly? You can’t fight bad guys with it, you can’t be a bad guy with it. Superman had super strength, too, and a determination belonging to a god, not a man. But Jason didn’t want to be a superhero; he just wanted to be a decent person, something invisibility didn’t really fit with. Now, as the three of them remaining tried to lead normal lives, Jason used his power less and less, and only around Tyler and Danielle. Yet, even to this day, he couldn’t help feeling like invisibility had given him a firmer grasp on life and the real world. Flight was a naïve power, and Jason always had associated it with Danielle, so she was naïve in his mind, too.

But maybe I was wrong.

Suddenly filled with an overwhelming need to talk to Danielle, Jason turned on the spot and started walking briskly for her apartment. Upon reaching it, however, he found that it was dark and empty. Puzzled, he tried her cell phone, but got only her voice mail. He hesitantly scanned the skies, but it was still light enough out that he didn’t really expect to see her. Starting to feel a little worried, he jogged quickly across campus to the library, where he scoured the rows of desks and computer terminals, to no effect. He out-and-out ran back to his apartment, where he burst in to find Tyler still at the table with the controller parts.

“What’s wrong, man?” Tyler said, looking up at Jason.

“Tyler,” Jason said urgently, “Where’s Danielle?”

Tyler’s eyes hazed over, and for what seemed an eternity they remained far
away. Then he paled. “Oh, no.”

# # #

The two of them ran into the classroom building without noticing the looks that the janitorial staff gave them upon their wild entrance. Jason nearly rammed a guy into the wall in his rush to get down the hallway, but didn’t stop to apologize. The two of them tore into the locked office door, but with a little encouragement, it gave and they immediately rushed behind the desk and knelt, their hearts in their mouths.

Danielle lay crumpled on the floor, her flesh a mass of forming bruises, her clothing torn in several places where it was still on. Jason noticed a ring around one of her wrists and one of her ankles, as though a rope had burned into her skin. She cracked open one eyelid as far as it would open; the other was already swollen completely shut.

“Who was it, Danielle?” Jason demanded softly. Tyler pulled off his sweatshirt
to cover her exposed parts. “Who was it?”

Her eye closed again, and she shook her head with a soft moan. Jason fought the urge to shake her. “Danielle, who was it?!” But when again she would say nothing, Jason grabbed Tyler’s upper arm and shouted, “Tell me who it was!”

“Jason, without her permission-“

“Damn it Tyler, somebody just raped her! Show me who did it, you bastard!”

With a look of reluctance on his face, Tyler placed a hand hesitantly on the top of Danielle’s head, and the other on Jason’s chest. With a disorienting lurch, Jason was suddenly in Danielle’s mind. He felt the blows, felt himself fall to the floor, struggle to get up. He felt a surge of power with himself, and felt himself rise a little off the floor. But he was knocked down again. He turned to face his attacker, wishing with all his might that he could turn invisible and run away.

The face stared at him from two places—the baleful glare of a man shoved into a hallway wall matched the greedy face wrapping a rope around a thin, pale wrist and looping it around a door handle to keep it down to earth. What good is being able to fly?

“Jason,” Danielle coughed. “Jason, you aren’t a superhero. Haven’t you wanted to live a normal life?”

Jason hesitated, then answered, “Yes. Haven’t you?”

“Yes.” She coughed again, and a little blood spattered her lips. Her eye closed again. “This is as close as I have ever gotten.”

Jason felt his heart trying to tear open. He briefly grasped her battered hand, and for one instant, felt very human. But then his rage took him. He stood, heat coursing through his entire body. He could feel his fists clenching and unclenching, but could do nothing to stop them, even had he desired to. He turned abruptly and made for the door.

“Where are you going, Jason?” Tyler asked.

“I’m going to find him.”

# # #

Along with the rage and murder filling Jason’s brain, there was also guilt. Danielle would have been fine if she had invisibility. That thought drove him onward, drove his desire to kill. He darted down streets, past parked cars, following the taillights of a vehicle etched into his mind, little caution left to him. Even though flight was a do-gooder power, the power of the innocent, he, Jason, had the power to protect the innocent, and certainly the power to enact justice. He had to use what he had to protect the guiltless, those who couldn’t protect themselves. After years of using his power only for selfish reasons, petty reasons, he finally realized what his true purpose was.

Jason had to become a superhero.

Starting with Danielle’s attacker. The first nemesis.

Jason had followed him to his car, and the car led him to a house only a few blocks away from campus. A professor’s home. The windows were cheerfully lit, a drastic contrast to the cold dark outside and in Jason’s numbed heart. He crept up to the house, and slowly reached up to peer in the window.

“Go!” a shout cried out.

From bushes around the house and its neighbors, police and men dressed in black with weapons burst out into the open and invaded into the house. Jason watched, stunned, as Danielle’s attacker was arrested, dragged from his home and his wife and his children and forced into a police car. “We’ve been after this one for a while,” an officer told a distraught neighbor. “Known rapist.” Sirens blared in Jason’s ears as he stood in a stupor on the front lawn of that suburban home, feeling all emotion fade from him as he watched the task force drive away.

Jason was not sure how long he stood there, but as the night got darker and colder, eventually he woke to a reality in which he was still a normal person, still a college student with no blood on his hands. His powers meant nothing. He haltingly took steps away from the battered home, where a wife was in tears on the phone with relatives, trying to make sense of what couldn’t be real. Jason walked down the street, wondering if any of it had been real.

As if in a dream, Jason retracted his steps towards Danielle, going back to how he had been, living the life of the invisible.