Authors: Pierce Youatt
Slowly, I eased open the bathroom door and leaned around the edge to look inside. My eyes scanned the floor next to my sopping clothes. No towel. I opened the door the rest of the way and hitched up my blanket cape so it wouldn't drag in the puddles. The towel definitely wasn't in sight. I had thrown it down on the floor. I was sure of it. I'd heard it plop. I moved cautiously so I wouldn't slip and fall with my bum knee. My jeans were right where I'd left them puddling on the floor, and I prodded them with a toe. They didn't move. Why the fuck would my jeans move? I picked them up and draped them over the vanity so they could drip in peace. It made me feel crazy, but I followed the same process with my shirt. I continued toward the shower, placing each foot carefully, rolling from heel to toe, when I stepped on what could only be a very wet, wadded up towel.
I looked down to the floor and saw my toes hovering a fraction of an inch above the tile. I froze there, staring toward the towel I could feel but not see. The bottom edge of my blanket cape was beginning to brush the wet floor, so I lifted it from my shoulders and balled it up for a more effective throw. I tossed it clear of the bathroom, turned, and slowly bent until one hand touched the ground. I felt around deliberately until my fingers found the see-through fabric. It seemed unusually heavy as I picked it up with both hands and sensed that it was folded in a place I couldn't see. My fingers followed the edges around until they found the corners and the towel hung lengthwise in front of me. This was no illusion. It was genuinely invisible.
I backed out of the bathroom and hung it over the outside of the bathroom door, where water dripped from an indeterminate source. I turned on the rest of the lights around the room and put on dry clothes, never taking my eyes off the back of the bathroom door. Something very unusual was going on in my apartment, and I was determined to figure out just what it was. I went to the kitchen. My dish towels were hanging right where they always did, on the oven door handle. Okay. So this wasn't a towel thing. There went one theory. I made a few other guesses, periodically going back to the bathroom door to touch what I couldn't see, to convince myself that this was really happening.
I was going about solving the mystery the wrong way, and I knew it. I'd never be able to guess the cause at random. What was the effect? My towel was invisible. Okay, that was one effect, but was it the only one? What if whatever was causing this phenomenon had affected other things as well? I certainly hadn't encountered any other invisible objects over the course of my day. Or had I? It's not like I would have been able to see them. I probably wouldn't notice if anything else was invisible unless I ran right into it. Then how could I tell the difference? I began to work back through my day. Where had things been missing? Well I hadn't been able to find my favorite hooded sweatshirt that morning, but I could've left it anywhere. That didn't count.
Toothpaste. That morning I had run out of toothpaste when I was sure I still had some. I went straight to the bathroom and grabbed the tube off the counter. It was sticky. I was on to something. I removed the cap and extended the index finger of my free hand. I lined the toothpaste tube up with it like my finger was a toothbrush and squeezed. I could feel, without seeing, an invisible line of paste squeeze onto my finger tip. Holy shit. I put my finger in my mouth. Mint. There was no doubt about it. My toothpaste had gone invisible, too. I wasn't seeing a pattern, though. I needed more to go on.
I went to the hook where I usually hung my hoodie. It was visibly empty, but I walked over to it anyway. With flattened hands, I reached out toward the wall and approached it with an open palm. I hit fabric before my hand met the plaster. Holy moly. Okay. I took another step closer and grasped for the fabric with both hands. Baffled, I lifted an invisible sweatshirt off the hook. I removed the shirt I was wearing and pulled the hoodie over my head. It fit like a glove. It really was my sweatshirt. The same one I wore all the time. I held a sleeve up to my nose. It even smelled the same. This was really happening. I flipped the hood up over my head and looked to the side. It was like there was nothing there - I saw right through it to the bathroom door. I looked down at my stomach and saw my navel through the transparent material. This was too weird. I needed to sit down.
There had to be something specific at work here. These three items weren't random. They had to fit some kind of pattern. Granted, when the world goes crazy, I guess it doesn't have to follow any particular set of rules, but I was absolutely convinced that this did. The towel. The toothpaste. The hoodie. That's when it came to me. Green. They were all green. There was no reason their color should matter, but this wasn't a reasonable situation. I concentrated on the rest of my morning, on the rest of my day. There must've been some green somewhere. After all, I had a salad for... They were out of lettuce. I didn't have a salad for lunch because they had been out of lettuce. They hadn't been out of lettuce, I just hadn't seen it! I hadn't seen it because it was invisible. Invisible to me, if not to anyone else.
That clinched it. I was wearing a see-through sweatshirt, and the invisible lettuce sealed it for me. I had to confirm the truth of my theory. I knew I was right, but I needed confirmation. I got up and hobbled to the bathroom where my jeans were draped over the counter. I reached into the back pocket and removed my wallet. I opened it. Inside were several very wet, very invisible bills. I couldn't see green.
My mind buzzed with this new information. I didn't so much question why it was happening, or what the cause of my new ability was, but it was definitely that: an ability. Maybe I didn't understand it, but I was sure this was something I could use. I wanted to test it, test myself. I wanted to find my limits. I hopped on the internet. Everything from about 500 – 550 nanometers was totally transparent. It was bizarre. Absolutely bizarre. Rationally, if I just couldn't process green light, you'd think I would've been color blind. You'd think I would have still been able to see the reds and blues. Or at least, I would've been able to detect green objects with the rod cells in my eyes. There was no reason I shouldn't have been able to sense light and dark. Objectively, green things were still reflecting and absorbing light. They hadn't up and decided to break the laws of physics starting that morning. But my vision was not operating the way logic would dictate. I was looking straight through green objects like they weren't even there. Whatever was happening was beyond any kind of rational explanation.
Early afternoon had turned into early evening. Instead of weakening or tapering off, the storm had settled in to stay. Rain was pouring from the sky and thunder was rolling. The darkness and the clouds outside seemed to envelope the building. I wouldn't be going anywhere, certainly not on foot. I couldn't drive for obvious reasons. Still, my discovery energized me. I wanted to do something! At the very least, I had to celebrate. I wasn't sure what my newfound ability was good for, but it had to be good for something! This was practically x-ray vision! Granted, I could only see through things that were green, but there's green everywhere! I poured myself a glass of bourbon and began to think about the possibilities.
I immediately determined I couldn't tell anyone. Not only would they call me crazy, but then I'd have to prove what I could do. Obviously that wouldn't be a problem, but what would happen once they had proof I was telling the truth? It would spread. Word would spread. People would find out about me. Everyone would find out about me. That might be kind of fun, but then I'd never be able to use my ability to my advantage. There would be tests and questions. Maybe that wouldn't be so bad. I'd be someone important! Maybe the government would take an interest. That could be a bad thing, a very bad thing. What if they locked me away somewhere? My glass was empty. I poured another three fingers.
What if there were other people like me? There had to be other people like me. I couldn't be the first individual to develop this type of ability. I couldn't be one of a kind. Why hadn't I ever heard of anyone like me? That didn't bode well. It was ominous. There were no pleasant explanations to be found. If you had asked me a day earlier – even several hours earlier – I would've told you I didn't believe the government was capable of maintaining a conspiracy. But if there were people like me out there and no one knew, that had to be the case. Someone, some government organization, or worse, some shadowy organization outside government jurisdiction had to be keeping a lid on things.
By the time I reached the bottom of my third glass of bourbon, I'd put those fears to rest. More accurately, I'd decided I was being paranoid and went back to planning hijinks and escapades. My ideas were getting progressively more grandiose. I was having trouble following a plan from start to finish, but I was pretty sure I could rob a bank somehow. I toasted to my inevitable riches. I was practically a multimillioinaire already. I could afford to get drunk midweek.
When I woke up the next morning, my head felt like it was in a vice. Sunshine was streaming in through the blinds. Apparently I'd passed out with all the lights on, too. The little green message indicator on my phone was blinking. Oh boy. I picked it up and read my last outgoing message, sent to the only girl I'd wanted to share my victory with. Shit, she had responded.
“I can't see green!”
“Stop texting me.”
Yeah, I guess I had that coming. I felt sick and slightly more miserable. Not just from the alcohol. At least I hadn't called her. I didn't think I had, anyway. That ship had sailed months ago, but the renewed rejection still stung.
I stumbled across the room and switched the lights off. I grabbed the towel off the back of the door on my way into the bathroom and emptied the contents of my stomach into the toilet, which made me feel a tiny bit better. I hung up the towel, stripped off my sweatshirt and let the heat of the shower breathe some life back into me. The steam made me feel like a new man, so it was only ten more minutes before I stepped out of the shower, dried myself off, and went to brush my teeth. My heart sank. I hadn't even noticed. Green toothpaste was smeared all over the counter.
Airports, casinos, and hospitals have a lot in common. You may not be aware of it, but alongside their locations in the real world, airports, casinos, and hospitals exist in a parallel dimension where time operates differently. Of course, that's not the only thing they have in common. There's more. They each have their own specialized equipment that normal people only ever see in airports, casinos, and hospitals. Each houses its own food service. They all have huge parking lots and buildings. They're all highly expensive, or can be if you're unfortunate. But those are some of the minor similarities. The more important things they have in common are...well, like the way each place sees you as a set of numbers. The seat and flight numbers on your boarding pass, the money in your wallet, your vital statistics. And while you may only be numbers to them, airports, casinos, and hospitals are places of hope, joy, sadness, and depression for the people who walk through their doors.
Now what makes all this interesting is that while they exist in this parallel dimension, this bubble, these comparisons allow you to see just how deeply they float in the aether compared to one another. For example, you might lose a few hours in an airport terminal, but an entire day or night can disappear in a casino. Hospitals can steal weeks. Months. Years. The metal detectors, moving sidewalks, and baggage carousel might offer some relief or frustration, but slot machines and video poker can produce wealth and poverty side by side. A defibrillator is a life and death piece of equipment, as are a dozen others in the hospital. Airports, casinos, and hospitals have a lot in common, but for me there's no competition. I hate hospitals the most.
It's not just the antiseptic covering up the smell of sickness – worse than the recycled air on a long flight, by the way. It's not even the way the overworked, underpaid nurses are too burnt out to acknowledge when family members are in the room. Or, for that matter, that you almost never see an actual doctor and that in the rare moments you do, they have too many patients to remember the medical history of the person in front of them. It's all of those things. It's the crippling cost. And the hospital food. And the anxiety and all the other things I can't even put into words.
There I was in long term care. Long term care because you're only allowed to stay in the ICU a certain number of days, because you're taking a bed from someone else who needs it more. Long term care, the land of feeding tubes and catheters, bed sores and fog. Long term care, where you spend your days watching for tiny changes, asking questions, where the only answers you get are vague and noncommittal. Long term care, where you can only guess at what might be a result of drowsiness, fatigue, low blood sugar, medication, or worst of all, brain damage. There I was at bedside, watching the IV drip, feeling guilty for thinking about the parts of my life I was neglecting. Thinking about the people I knew who didn't know my dad, or that he was sick. Going about their lives because everything was fine for them. Dealing with age-appropriate problems like homework and hangovers. I was a little bitter, but I knew I was where I needed to be.
A man walked into the room like he'd been there before. I heard him coming right away, but he didn't notice me because of the privacy curtain. I didn't recognize him, and he wasn't in any kind of uniform. He was past the foot of the bed before he turned and saw me. He was scanning the room for someone, and I was the only waking person he found. The cautious smile froze on his face and he ducked his head like he was caught red-handed, guilty. I raised my eyebrows at him. Gotcha. “Sorry!” he said, and left noticeably faster than he'd come in. I turned back to my dad's slack features. Sleeping, maybe. It was hard to tell. I took his hand in mine, but there wasn't any response in his grip or his expression.