A Life Transparent (5 page)

Traffic lurched forward once more. Donovan took his exit. The dashboard clock read 8:49. He tried to ignore it and pressed his foot on the gas.

“Come on,” he said, smiling at the purr of the engine. He came off the exit ramp and sped through the intersection just as the traffic light turned red.

He was just two blocks from the office when he spotted red and blue flashing lights in the rearview mirror. As the police cruiser neared, he caught a glimpse of his own reflection. His face, eyes, forehead, thinning hairline—all disappeared before his eyes. The world went gray again, turning the cruiser’s red and blues into meaningless shades.

“No,” he moaned. “
No.
”

The officer flipped on the siren. Donovan frowned, signaled, and pulled the car into an empty gas station parking lot. The clock read 8:56. In four minutes, he would be late for the first time in nine years.

•  •  •

He shoved the ticket in his pocket and sat down at his desk. His watch read 9:22. He checked his phone and discovered three missed calls—one each from Tammy Quilago, Tammy Perpa, and Timothy Butler.

His legs turned to limp noodles, his arms and stomach to jelly, and he could feel his pulse on the back of his tongue. For the first time since waking, Donovan did not seem to mind that he was disappearing. In fact, at that moment, he wanted nothing more than to vanish from the face of the planet.

According to the messages, his superiors were waiting for him in the conference room. On any other day he could have shrugged off the meeting, walked into the conference room calm and collected. But today? Today he had a five o’clock shadow at nine in the morning, a $90 speeding ticket, and an order of invisibility with a side of colorblindness. His plate was full.

“Oh hell.” He leaned over to pull up both pant legs. His left sock was blue; the right was brown. His hairy shins flickered as if to mock him.

A young woman walked past his cubicle just as he dimmed. She said nothing. He sighed, rose from his seat, and made his way down the aisle toward the conference room.

One of his coworkers, Phillip, got up from his seat as he passed.

“Good morning, Don.”

“Morning, Phil.”

The young man seemed to recoil at the sound of his voice. He pinched the space between his eyes. The room went gray, and Donovan thought he saw movement over Phil’s shoulder. He blinked. Everything was back to normal—except for Phil. He was very pale.

“You all right?”

Phil said nothing. He pushed past Donovan and hurried to the restroom.

Work carried on around him, and no one else seemed to notice his strange affliction. Their attentions were focused on their monitors while they spoke into headsets, performing monotone sales pitches about a full range of Identinel’s services. He passed a trainee on her way to the employee lounge and felt himself flicker as he opened his mouth to say hello. She simply smiled and went on her way.

A gut-wrenching thought occurred to him: his symptoms really were figments of his imagination. It explained everything, including Donna’s apathy.
I’ve lost my mind
, he thought. He reconsidered going to see a doctor, particularly one of the psychiatric variety.
You best stop that
, Hopper scolded.
You got other things to be done
‘sides bellyachin’
.

Donovan obeyed his creation and made his way to the conference room. He stood outside for a moment, sucked in his breath, and waited for his pounding heart to calm itself. When he was finished, he entered the room.

•  •  •

The conference room was sterile. Its white walls were accented by a pair of large, potted plants which sat in opposite corners at the far end. In the center was a long table, around which sat Timothy Butler, Tammy Quilago, and Tammy Perpa.

He stood, hands clasped behind his back, and tried to smile while the icy fingers of the phantom hand yanked at his insides. His smile came as a strained gesture as he tried to conceal his discomfort. They paid him a series of short glances before returning their attention to the pages of Donovan’s file. The Tammys put their hands to their heads almost in unison, squinting as they tried to read the words on the page. Butler dug a finger into his ear.

Can they even see me?
he wondered. His fear grew with each passing second. Finally, after a full minute of waiting, Butler spoke.

“Have a seat, Don.” Butler motioned to the table.

He sat. Tammy Quilago shot him a cold smile before looking away. He realized none of them would make eye contact.

“Let’s get started, shall we?”

Donovan nodded. He wipe his sweaty palms on his trousers. Yesterday, he was prepared for this. He knew what he would say in response to their questions. Today he found the words weren’t there. They were stolen from him by an apparent lapse of sanity.

“Mr. Candle,” Tammy Quilago said, “we commend you for nine whole years of service.”

Tammy P. chirped, “That’s quite a feat!”

“Indeed.” Tammy Q. nodded. “Turn-over rates in this business are embarrassingly high. It’s employees like yourself that keep Identinel ahead of the game.”

She looked down at a sheet of paper. Her script. Donovan wondered how many other employees had heard this spiel. She began to speak again, but he could not hear her. A series of chimes rose in his ears, filling his head with the drone of distant bells, signaling his further descent into madness. His skin prickled, blinked out, and reappeared. He held his breath, expecting one of them to say something, but he was met with a silence that confirmed his suspicions. He was on his own.

The chimes slowed just as Tammy Q. finished her part of the script. It was Tammy P.’s turn to go over the review’s structure. When she was done, Butler cleared his throat and flashed Donovan that award-winning smile. Sweat beaded on his forehead.

“Got any questions for us so far, Candle?”

“No.”

“Good,” he said. “First off, let’s discuss your punctuality.”

Donovan slumped back in his seat. He put a hand to his forehead. That prickly feeling crept up again. It felt as if thousands of insects crawled across his skin. Butler spoke, but Donovan could not understand him. He tried focusing on the man’s words, but the more he tried, the more incomprehensible they became.

His vision went gray again. It lingered this time, and he watched in panic as objects lost their color. His coworkers became silhouettes. The walls and furniture lost their texture, appearing as simple, geometric shapes. The air had no warmth, and it was possessed of an unsettling gravity that pulled against him. He felt its familiar grip down in the center of his gut.

What the hell is happening to me?
Even Joe Hopper was silent in his mind. There were no answers for this. He wanted to flee the room, race back to his car, and check himself into a mental hospital before something worse happened. Instead he remained frozen in place, unable to make out Butler’s words as the world around him was systematically drained of color.

That’s when he saw it—a long, slender shape standing almost as tall as the ceiling. It had long, white limbs, and in the gray haze he could see the indentations of a face. Whatever it was, it had eyes, a nose, and a mouth. The lanky, wretched thing lingered in the gray gloom, watching the four of them from its corner.

He realized he could no longer see Butler’s features, nor could he understand anything the man said. His voice came through as a garbled mess, and Donovan could only make out the man’s dark gray outline. The same was true of the two Tammys, who made various quips and asides throughout Butler’s conversation, but Donovan could not understand a damn word of it.

The scrawny, albino
thing
swayed lazily in the corner, shifting its weight from one foot to the other. Its knuckles brushed the slate floor with long, slow strokes. Donovan watched, his face locked into an expression of confusion, fear.

I’m insane
. He admitted it to himself. His heart beat a heavy tattoo in his chest, and sweat ran from his pores.
I’ve lost my mind
.

In that moment he realized just how limitless the depths of his insanity truly were. The thing
noticed
him. Its swaying ceased as it planted its full weight on both feet. It cocked its head in his direction, raised one, spindly arm, and beckoned to him with a loud, forlorn moan.

A ripple ran through the thing’s pale flesh. It squinted its empty, black eyes and kept pointing at him with one spindly finger.

Donovan’s heart raced. Was this real? How could it possibly be? It defied his grasp of logic, tickling a place down in his brain, a place he used to call his imagination. This was a figment of his own creation, a repressed idea manifesting in the form of a waking nightmare. He
had
lost his mind—and this was his body’s way of telling him.

He blinked. The room went back to normal. Butler and the Tammys were still in their seats, each one sounding off a number which, at first, did not make any sense to him. He was still distracted by what had just happened. It was a hallucination. Had to be. It was a chemical imbalance in his brain, maybe, or perhaps a side effect of a head trauma he could not remember. These possibilities plagued him so much that when Butler called his name, he jumped from his seat.

“Whoa, easy there. Are you okay, Candle?”

Donovan stared at his superiors, then back to the corner of the room. He expected the lanky creature to be there, but it wasn’t. He went back to his chair, and the tension slowly leaked from the room, replaced by dread.

“I’m sorry,” he said, clearing his throat. He felt as if he’d swallowed sandpaper. “What were you saying?”

Timothy Butler chuckled and said, “Overall we gave you a 3.8.”

Donovan’s eye twitched. He forgot about his bizarre hallucinations. A 3.8? What kind of number was 3.8? Never in his nine years had they given him anything but a whole number, which was usually a four. But 3.8? He repeated it to himself. Three. Point. Eight. It implied he’d done worse this year than the last, which made no sense to him—after all, he’d worked harder this year than any other. He could understand receiving a 4.8, but this? No, this would not stand.

“A three-point-eight?”

“Yeah,” Butler said, gathering his files together. He stood and finished off a cup of coffee. “New ranking system. Nifty, huh?”

“But a 3.8?”

“Is there a problem, Mr. Candle?” Tammy Q. frowned.

He cleared his throat, stared at his blinking hands, and said, “Problem? N-No, no problem. I was just ...”

Tammy P. strained to look at him. She forced a smile. “Yes?”

“The score seems a little low, is all. I thought I worked very hard this year.”

“And you have, Candle!” Butler chuckled. “We just see it as a means of incentive. Right, ladies?”

The Tammys nodded.

“Incentive?”

“That’s right. For you to work harder and strive for even more excellence.” Butler stood and opened the door. He wore that same, conniving grin from the day before. Seeing it made Donovan’s blood pressure rise.

“Besides, there’s always room for improvement!”

With that, Timothy Butler left the room. The Tammys whispered among themselves. Tammy P. giggled at something Tammy Q. said, but Donovan could not hear what passed between them. After a moment, he cleared his throat and spoke.

“Was there something else?” Donovan asked. They looked up at him, startled by the sound of his voice, and looked in his direction. Tammy Q. chewed her bottom lip as she strained to look at him.

The room shifted back to gray for an instant. Donovan saw a second, lanky figure standing behind the two women. Then things returned to normal. Tammy P. spoke.

“Just a teensy-tiny thing,” she said.

“Your salary increase,” Tammy Q. added.

Donovan nodded. “Which is?”

“Since your performance score falls into the median bracket, you’re eligible for the standard quarter-per-hour increase.”

His stomach lurched once again. He tried to ignore it as he rolled their words in his head. A quarter. Twenty-five cents. A year of kissing ass and working self-imposed double-time was worth a quarter? Donovan opened his mouth to speak, but his vision went gray once more. The sensation in his stomach grew to a sharp jolt. The room flashed, and that prickly feeling crawled across his skin. One of the Tammys spoke, but her voice was slow and garbled.

Donovan forgot about the measly raise. His attention turned to the pair of long, tall albino figures standing in the room with them. They stood in place, swaying in tandem, their elongated arms touching the ground. Their black, empty eyes looked upon him with unflinching apathy. He was but an insect to them, a passing curiosity.

The second figure stepped toward the gray table. Donovan’s heart beat furiously in his chest. What were these things? And why did he see them? His imagination filled in the gaps.
Ghosts
, he thought,
or demons
—

“—any questions, Mr. Candle?”

Color flooded back into the room, and he found himself staring at Tammy Perpa. He couldn’t bring himself to speak—how could he? His mind raced with impossibilities, all of which seemed alien. Spirits? Invisibility? These things weren’t possible. This was reality, and—

“Mr. Candle?”

“Y-Yes?” he asked at once, eyes darting between the two women.

“Do you have any questions?

He shook his head without thinking. The Tammys stood and collected their things.

“Good!” they said together, then giggled at their sickening uniformity. Donovan watched them leave the room. When they were gone, he closed his eyes and buried his face in his hands.

My God, what next?
he wondered.
What next?

•  •  •

Donovan spent the next few days wandering in a stupor. The befuddlement of Tuesday morning continued throughout the week, and all the while he tried to rationalize the strange, transparent disease afflicting his body. Tuesday night, when he went to urinate, he caught sight of his own manhood blinking out of existence. For that brief instance he saw only an arc of urine flow into the toilet. He screamed and succeeded in soiling himself.