Invisible

Invisible

I’ll relate this particular day to whoever is willing to hear of a life changing experience. Nope, that’s inaccurate… a death-changing experience would be more precise. You see, I am dead, have been for as long as I can remember. But the experience I speak of took place on one day, a Tuesday.
I was just arriving back at my house. Yeah, I have a house. Actually, it was abandoned years ago, so I just made it my own. You see, I don’t haunt, and I try to minimize my contact with people so as to avoid unnecessary sightings. I mean, we can only appear to the living if we want to. It’s just that I believe that there may be people who can feel my presence, even though they can’t actually see me, and they’d be as equally as scared as someone seeing me with their two eyes. I don’t like to cause fear. With that said, my reasons for arriving at my house just before sunrise on this particular day should be apparent. I rarely leave home in sunlight, because I would inevitably have to be around the living.
Anyways, enough with my rambling. On this Tuesday, I arrived home before sunset and began to prepare my breakfast. Yes, we eat. I don’t believe it is necessary, seeing as how we don’t actually have a real body. I guess it’s just habit. I sat in my living room reading the newspaper and marveling at the achievements and failures of mankind. To me, reading the local newspaper has always seemed to be a way of glimpsing the status of mankind on a whole. If the newspaper is filled with stories of death and destruction, I can only assume that is what is going on in majority of the other parts of the world. The same applies to the rarely mentioned humane acts.
Reading my newspaper and eating some canned tuna, it was a wonder that I heard the sound at all. I usually zone out for a couple of hours during this part of the day. It came from the front hallway of the house. I got up slowly and floated my way over to the front door. Upon arriving, I was taken aback when I witnessed a young child running down the hall. Now, I knew my house well, and it wasn’t in the best of shape. There were many places where a person could hurt themselves, especially a ten or eleven year old kid. So I chased him. I caught up to him around the corner, heading into my kitchen. I willed myself to be seen and jumped in front of him. He screamed bloody murder but I blocked him before he could turn the other way.
“Hey, hey, it’s alright. I’m not going to hurt you. I just don’t want you to hurt yourself.”
Contrary to popular belief, we can’t do anything to humans even if we wanted to, only inanimate objects, and only if we’re really pissed. It’s always been a wonder to me why people are so scared of us when we’re more harmless than damn near everything in the real world. The only things beyond the grave that you have to worry about are poltergeists.
“Don’t… don’t eat me,” the child stammered, face red and streaked with tears.
“Now, why would you think I’m going to eat you?”
The child gave me a look of innocent superiority, as if the question I had asked was completely inane.
“That’s what you do, isn’t it?”
“No, no. I’m not very much into red meat,” I stated. “You have nothing to worry about.”
It took me a while to actually understand the implications of what this child was saying.
“Hold on, why would you say that I eat people?”
“My friends. They dared me to come in here and run out the back door without you catching me and eating me…” His eyes began to water. “…and… and I lost.”
“Listen child, nobody’s eating anybody! Just tell me, how do your friends know about me?”
The child looked confused.
“Everybody knows about you Mr. Cannibal. My mom and dad told me never to come over here. They would be real mad if they knew I was here.” He suddenly looked scared. “Please don’t tell them.”
The strange situation I had found myself in was thought provoking to say the least. Essentially, what this child was telling me was that my presence in this small town was public knowledge.
“Son, that can’t be true. You see, I’m what you might call a ghost. I can count the number of times I have allowed myself to be seen by the living on one hand.”
“I see you now,” the child said, his tears drying up. He didn’t seem to be as apprehensive at the sound of the word ghost as he was at the word cannibal. Children nowadays.
“I know that,” I said, becoming edgy. I’m usually gentle by nature, but the situation at hand was beginning to annoy me. “But… but you couldn’t see me when you came in. That’s because I was in my normal ghostly state.”
The kid looked even more confused.
“Noooo,” he said.
“No what?”
“I saw you when I came in. That’s why I ran.” The child cocked his head to the side. “Are you sure you’re a ghost Mr. Cannibal? You don’t look like one.”
The question, innocent as it was, was enough to jar my brain. I needed to take a seat… so I did, on the floor. After much thought, I willed myself back to my normal invisible state and stared at the child. He stared back, wiping away the last of his remaining tears.
“Can you see me?”
“…are you ok Mr.? You’re acting weird,” the child said, looking more perplexed by the second.
I was in awe. I stood up quickly, startling the young boy, and began to move.
“Where are your friends?” I asked.
“Outside waiting for me.”
I approached my front door, waiting for the child to open it. He looked at me quizzically as he twisted the door handle and swung the door wide. I was met by three kids who appeared to all be the same age. Staring up into my face, they screamed as if in a vice grip by death himself. As a side note, death isn’t as scary as people make him out to be. He’s just a working man, doing his job and trying to have a happy afterlife. He’s a great guy, extremely misunderstood.
Anyways, the screaming children did nothing to help my state of mind. I turned to the child behind me and asked him if he could please get his friends to calm down. He ran up to them and proceeded to tell them that I wasn’t the cannibal they thought I was. When they had finally managed to lower the volume to quiet moans, I noticed that one of the children had a growing wet spot on his shorts.
“I take it you all can see me,” I said.
They nodded their heads vigorously, squirming on their feet.
“How?”
They all gave me the same confused look their friend had given me.
“Because… you’re standing in front of us?” The one closest to me stuttered out.
The recent developments plagued me and I did the only thing I could think of. First, I told the boys to go home, which they seemed happy to oblige. Then I began to move. As I floated down the sidewalk towards the Kwik Stop I frequent at late night, I kept an eye out for any signs of fear, or even just recognition in people’s faces as I passed. They seemed to be able to see me, but they also seemed more… revolted than scared. I had never looked at myself in a mirror, figuring that there would probably be nothing to see, literally. I guess I must have been a mess. If I had known I was going to be putting on a fashion show, I’d have at least washed my face (I’m being sarcastic for those of you who don’t catch on).
As I reached the corner before the Kwik Stop, I heard a sudden cry. I looked behind me, coming face to face with a frightened mother and an equally distressed baby. Avoiding eye contact, the woman damn near ran down the sidewalk, the shrieking baby bouncing around in her arms. As I stepped onto the road, I kept looking behind me as the baby’s squeals faded away. It had me captivated for a good minute too; I almost didn’t hear the horn. My head snapped around mighty quick for somebody who wasn’t used to erratic movements. I barely had a chance to see the driver’s face before I was thrown with the force of a hurricane. I think it was a woman. I remember thinking to myself that I had finally learned how to float, until my upward rise was halted by gravity. A few seconds later, the concrete and I squared off and, I must admit, I lost that fight before it even started.
Its funny how many of life’s revelations come after it’s too late to do anything about it. Existence seems to be a huge classroom that fully utilizes the idea of active learning. I lay there in the middle of the road for a while before the reality of the situation hit me. I was barely able to lift my head and survey myself, but I saw enough to change my state of mind completely. My mind raced with new facts as dead consciousness fell deeper into a pit of blackness. Shadows began to appear in the oddest places as all my thoughts narrowed into one repetitive reflection:
I thought dead men couldn’t bleed. I guess I was wrong.