Invisibly Yours
a novel
C.D. Payne
The first time I “dematerialized” I was taking my dog to the pound because I could no longer afford to feed him.
Now this mutt I had always pegged as more lovable than intelligent, but he had the smarts to perceive that this place was bad news for canines. He didn’t want to get out of the car and then halfway across the parking lot he slammed on the brakes. So I say his name and yell out a command.
A weird queasy feeling comes over me. “Queasy” hardly describes it. More like someone had touched an icy metal bar to every one of my internal organs. That’s when I noticed that my legs and feet had disappeared. Along, I quickly spotted, with the rest of me.
I’m a fairly rational guy. So I jump to the only logical conclusion.
I’m dead.
Stone dead from a stroke or something. Damn, that sucks.
Well, at least I went out owing a ton of money. Not in Judy Garland’s class, who checked out a cool $4 million behind the eight ball. But still, I’d finished ahead of the game.
So this is what it’s like to be dead.
Kind of surprising. Not what had always been advertised.
Your body disappears, but your mind continues on.
Wow, who knew?
But for how long does your mind continue to function? For a few seconds until your brain finally chokes off from lack of oxygen? For a minute or two? What?
I assumed I was deceased, but I could feel my heart pounding in my chest.
Something wasn’t adding up.
I look around. There’s my dog still pulling against the leash, which extends up from his collar and hangs–apparently unsupported–in mid-air.
If I’m dead, where’s the body? Shouldn’t at least some visible part of me be sprawled lifeless on the asphalt?
My dog is just as panicked as I am. He nearly pulls me off my no-longer-visible feet. Without thinking, I yell out his name and repeat the command.
Poof. My ears tingle strangely, vivid magenta stars twinkle and pop before my eyes, and suddenly I’m back.
Wow, I’m not dead after all. I check myself out. There are my legs extending down nicely from my crotch. There’s my beer gut, my scuffed sandals, my funky cargo shorts, and all the rest of me. Yes, my body had returned to the visible world. I gaze around the deserted parking lot. Apparently, no one had witnessed my dramatic departure and reappearance.
By now I’m shaking all over, but I make it back to my car and collapse in the seat. Being not yet deceased is a very welcome and exciting development. Thirty-seven, I decide, is way too young to croak. Good news for my pup too. His abandonment was now temporarily postponed.
So how does a 37-year-old college grad arrive at a state where he can no longer afford to provide for a 30-pound mixed-breed dog?
It’s the usual story of ambition and sloth.
I’m a journalist by training, employed until two years ago by a metropolitan daily in a second-tier midwestern city. I liked the work. I wasn’t shackled behind a desk all day. I even won a few of those awards they hand out like peanuts at press conventions.
My job as a reporter took me frequently to hospitals to interview folks who had been shot, mauled by pit bulls, mangled in machinery, sucked out of trailers by tornadoes, or rendered unwell in some other newsworthy way. In the city hospital near downtown I frequently encountered Rachel, the nurse with the amazing green-blue eyes. Lovely Rachel had a much-despised surgeon boyfriend, but the persistent journalist persisted doggedly. Not quite six years ago we got our names in the paper under the matrimonial listings: Axel Weston and Rachel Burke. United forever. Or so I thought.
As you may have heard, all is not golden these days in the newspaper biz. Our chain was still making money, but every year or so they would rotate in a new publisher. Each one was more of a corporate suit and less of a journalist than the previous one. Then they started the layoffs. Not good for morale or one’s dedication to the cause.
Still, my job seemed pretty secure. They needed at least a few bodies in the newsroom to cover the shootings and factory closings. Rachel and I bought a modest house in a semi-genteel neighborhood, and there was some preliminary discussion of ankle-biters. At least I regarded them as preliminary. A puppy arrived on the scene as a test of our nurturing skills.
And then three senior reporters got called upstairs and were offered buyouts. For my 13 years in the saddle I was offered $93,742 to go away permanently. Rachel and I mulled it over for two days, and then I went in and signed all the termination forms. I cleared out my desk that same morning. No going-away party, but a few of us met later that day for a long, boozy lunch. For the first time since I was four years old I didn’t have school or a job to go to.
I was a free man with a big fat bank balance.
Three months later we had sold the house and moved to Los Angeles. Rachel got a job in about two seconds as an ICU nurse with a big increase in pay. Housing prices were a shock, but we found a two-bedroom condo in Glendale that we (foolishly) bought because it was close to her hospital and within walking distance of a dog park. The second bedroom I would be using as my office. In that 10 by 12 foot box overlooking our midget patio, I was to produce best-selling mystery novels and the occasional blockbuster screenplay.
a novel
C.D. Payne
The first time I “dematerialized” I was taking my dog to the pound because I could no longer afford to feed him.
Now this mutt I had always pegged as more lovable than intelligent, but he had the smarts to perceive that this place was bad news for canines. He didn’t want to get out of the car and then halfway across the parking lot he slammed on the brakes. So I say his name and yell out a command.
A weird queasy feeling comes over me. “Queasy” hardly describes it. More like someone had touched an icy metal bar to every one of my internal organs. That’s when I noticed that my legs and feet had disappeared. Along, I quickly spotted, with the rest of me.
I’m a fairly rational guy. So I jump to the only logical conclusion.
I’m dead.
Stone dead from a stroke or something. Damn, that sucks.
Well, at least I went out owing a ton of money. Not in Judy Garland’s class, who checked out a cool $4 million behind the eight ball. But still, I’d finished ahead of the game.
So this is what it’s like to be dead.
Kind of surprising. Not what had always been advertised.
Your body disappears, but your mind continues on.
Wow, who knew?
But for how long does your mind continue to function? For a few seconds until your brain finally chokes off from lack of oxygen? For a minute or two? What?
I assumed I was deceased, but I could feel my heart pounding in my chest.
Something wasn’t adding up.
I look around. There’s my dog still pulling against the leash, which extends up from his collar and hangs–apparently unsupported–in mid-air.
If I’m dead, where’s the body? Shouldn’t at least some visible part of me be sprawled lifeless on the asphalt?
My dog is just as panicked as I am. He nearly pulls me off my no-longer-visible feet. Without thinking, I yell out his name and repeat the command.
Poof. My ears tingle strangely, vivid magenta stars twinkle and pop before my eyes, and suddenly I’m back.
Wow, I’m not dead after all. I check myself out. There are my legs extending down nicely from my crotch. There’s my beer gut, my scuffed sandals, my funky cargo shorts, and all the rest of me. Yes, my body had returned to the visible world. I gaze around the deserted parking lot. Apparently, no one had witnessed my dramatic departure and reappearance.
By now I’m shaking all over, but I make it back to my car and collapse in the seat. Being not yet deceased is a very welcome and exciting development. Thirty-seven, I decide, is way too young to croak. Good news for my pup too. His abandonment was now temporarily postponed.
So how does a 37-year-old college grad arrive at a state where he can no longer afford to provide for a 30-pound mixed-breed dog?
It’s the usual story of ambition and sloth.
I’m a journalist by training, employed until two years ago by a metropolitan daily in a second-tier midwestern city. I liked the work. I wasn’t shackled behind a desk all day. I even won a few of those awards they hand out like peanuts at press conventions.
My job as a reporter took me frequently to hospitals to interview folks who had been shot, mauled by pit bulls, mangled in machinery, sucked out of trailers by tornadoes, or rendered unwell in some other newsworthy way. In the city hospital near downtown I frequently encountered Rachel, the nurse with the amazing green-blue eyes. Lovely Rachel had a much-despised surgeon boyfriend, but the persistent journalist persisted doggedly. Not quite six years ago we got our names in the paper under the matrimonial listings: Axel Weston and Rachel Burke. United forever. Or so I thought.
As you may have heard, all is not golden these days in the newspaper biz. Our chain was still making money, but every year or so they would rotate in a new publisher. Each one was more of a corporate suit and less of a journalist than the previous one. Then they started the layoffs. Not good for morale or one’s dedication to the cause.
Still, my job seemed pretty secure. They needed at least a few bodies in the newsroom to cover the shootings and factory closings. Rachel and I bought a modest house in a semi-genteel neighborhood, and there was some preliminary discussion of ankle-biters. At least I regarded them as preliminary. A puppy arrived on the scene as a test of our nurturing skills.
And then three senior reporters got called upstairs and were offered buyouts. For my 13 years in the saddle I was offered $93,742 to go away permanently. Rachel and I mulled it over for two days, and then I went in and signed all the termination forms. I cleared out my desk that same morning. No going-away party, but a few of us met later that day for a long, boozy lunch. For the first time since I was four years old I didn’t have school or a job to go to.
I was a free man with a big fat bank balance.
Three months later we had sold the house and moved to Los Angeles. Rachel got a job in about two seconds as an ICU nurse with a big increase in pay. Housing prices were a shock, but we found a two-bedroom condo in Glendale that we (foolishly) bought because it was close to her hospital and within walking distance of a dog park. The second bedroom I would be using as my office. In that 10 by 12 foot box overlooking our midget patio, I was to produce best-selling mystery novels and the occasional blockbuster screenplay.
That was the plan.
But L.A. was an exciting new place to explore and I was a guy with a big fat bank balance. Besides, hadn’t I earned a nice vacation? And that rusty beater that had towed the rental trailer from the Midwest wasn’t cutting it in L.A., where You Are What You Drive. It got traded in on a sporty import. And then April 15 arrived, and what was left of my termination wad got axed in half by the tax man. No unemployment compensation coming in, of course, since I had left my job voluntarily. Still, I had a gainfully employed wife, and you can’t rush the creative process.
I did manage to excrete a screenplay. It was not great, but how many great movies was Hollywood turning out these days? If anything, today’s producers seemed to hone in on mediocrity. I even managed to get a few agents to read it. They declined to take me on, but a couple asked to see my next effort.
My next effort. Right. And what was that going to be?
So there I was living on a bleak street in Glendale with no friends except for a few acquaintances I’d made at the dog park. I took to showing up with a six-pack of beer in a cooler. Then I got a bigger cooler. That one I charged on my credit card because the fat bank balance was long gone.
And then a few months later the lovely nurse was gone. That shook me up enough to send out some résumés. What newspaper wouldn’t want an award-winning reporter with 13 years of experience? Lots of them as it turned out.
Then our bank started sending registered letters with foreclosure notices. Like they really expected me to scrape up $2600 every month for a crummy overpriced condo that the slob owner never even bothered to clean. Fortunately, by then the whole housing bubble had popped, swamping the greedy bankers with a tidal wave of condo deadbeats. Nearly a year had passed since I’d made a payment, and I was still waiting for the sheriff to toss me out on the street. Meanwhile, I was parking my sporty car six blocks away; I was late on those payments too. The calls from bill collectors came in 18 hours a day (I turned my phone off at night).
One by one, my credit cards got maxed out. Then the day came when I was flat busted. No money for beer–or for dog food. That was the day I discovered this universe has a few surprises up its sleeve.
So there I am sucking wind in my car as my heartbeat edges back from the Red Zone. Had I really just dematerialized like Captain Kirk beaming away on the Transporter, or was I still impaired from the previous night’s debaucheries? I certainly felt sober. Too sober, in fact. What I really needed was a nice cold one.
OK, had I hit rock bottom at last? Was I ready to abandon all pride and resort to panhandling in the offices of the county dog pound? Could I cadge a few quarters from those animal lovers if I said I needed to buy dog food? I looked over at my pup, gazing adoringly at me in his usual servile way. All those endless hours of dog-park fun had earned a lifetime of loyalty from that mutt. Too bad he wasn’t showing a few gaunt rib bones.
And then the beer-besotted remnants of my ace reporter’s brain ticked over. It occurred to me that I had never before uttered that particular combination of words to my dog. Nor, likely had anyone else. In a moment of nostalgia, I had named that squirming puppy after my first childhood pet–only with the letters reversed. Everyone at the dog park remarked on my dog’s unusual name.
So what did I have to lose? I looked around the parking lot. Still deserted. I took a deep breath and said those words again. The icy metal bar again goosed my pancreas and spleen. My visible form immediately disappeared from view. I reached over and pulled out the cigarette lighter. Interesting, my clothing had disappeared with my body, but the object in my hand was visible floating in space. I felt for my shirt pocket and stuck the lighter inside. It could no longer be seen. Hmm, a very interesting effect. I removed the lighter; a couple inches from my shirt it slid into view. I cupped my fingers around it and it disappeared.
I said the phrase again.
No ear tingling this time. I was still invisible!
Fuck!
Had I said it correctly? I tried not to panic, and concentrated on remembering the exact order of the words. My fourth attempt worked the magic. I was back in view. I scrambled for a pen in the glove box, and immediately wrote down the phrase.
The whole experience took less than 10 minutes. In that flash of time I had discovered a way to render myself invisible. I had discovered a portal out of the visible world.
Order from Amazon.com
[also coming out in Czech from JOTA]
But L.A. was an exciting new place to explore and I was a guy with a big fat bank balance. Besides, hadn’t I earned a nice vacation? And that rusty beater that had towed the rental trailer from the Midwest wasn’t cutting it in L.A., where You Are What You Drive. It got traded in on a sporty import. And then April 15 arrived, and what was left of my termination wad got axed in half by the tax man. No unemployment compensation coming in, of course, since I had left my job voluntarily. Still, I had a gainfully employed wife, and you can’t rush the creative process.
I did manage to excrete a screenplay. It was not great, but how many great movies was Hollywood turning out these days? If anything, today’s producers seemed to hone in on mediocrity. I even managed to get a few agents to read it. They declined to take me on, but a couple asked to see my next effort.
My next effort. Right. And what was that going to be?
So there I was living on a bleak street in Glendale with no friends except for a few acquaintances I’d made at the dog park. I took to showing up with a six-pack of beer in a cooler. Then I got a bigger cooler. That one I charged on my credit card because the fat bank balance was long gone.
And then a few months later the lovely nurse was gone. That shook me up enough to send out some résumés. What newspaper wouldn’t want an award-winning reporter with 13 years of experience? Lots of them as it turned out.
Then our bank started sending registered letters with foreclosure notices. Like they really expected me to scrape up $2600 every month for a crummy overpriced condo that the slob owner never even bothered to clean. Fortunately, by then the whole housing bubble had popped, swamping the greedy bankers with a tidal wave of condo deadbeats. Nearly a year had passed since I’d made a payment, and I was still waiting for the sheriff to toss me out on the street. Meanwhile, I was parking my sporty car six blocks away; I was late on those payments too. The calls from bill collectors came in 18 hours a day (I turned my phone off at night).
One by one, my credit cards got maxed out. Then the day came when I was flat busted. No money for beer–or for dog food. That was the day I discovered this universe has a few surprises up its sleeve.
So there I am sucking wind in my car as my heartbeat edges back from the Red Zone. Had I really just dematerialized like Captain Kirk beaming away on the Transporter, or was I still impaired from the previous night’s debaucheries? I certainly felt sober. Too sober, in fact. What I really needed was a nice cold one.
OK, had I hit rock bottom at last? Was I ready to abandon all pride and resort to panhandling in the offices of the county dog pound? Could I cadge a few quarters from those animal lovers if I said I needed to buy dog food? I looked over at my pup, gazing adoringly at me in his usual servile way. All those endless hours of dog-park fun had earned a lifetime of loyalty from that mutt. Too bad he wasn’t showing a few gaunt rib bones.
And then the beer-besotted remnants of my ace reporter’s brain ticked over. It occurred to me that I had never before uttered that particular combination of words to my dog. Nor, likely had anyone else. In a moment of nostalgia, I had named that squirming puppy after my first childhood pet–only with the letters reversed. Everyone at the dog park remarked on my dog’s unusual name.
So what did I have to lose? I looked around the parking lot. Still deserted. I took a deep breath and said those words again. The icy metal bar again goosed my pancreas and spleen. My visible form immediately disappeared from view. I reached over and pulled out the cigarette lighter. Interesting, my clothing had disappeared with my body, but the object in my hand was visible floating in space. I felt for my shirt pocket and stuck the lighter inside. It could no longer be seen. Hmm, a very interesting effect. I removed the lighter; a couple inches from my shirt it slid into view. I cupped my fingers around it and it disappeared.
I said the phrase again.
No ear tingling this time. I was still invisible!
Fuck!
Had I said it correctly? I tried not to panic, and concentrated on remembering the exact order of the words. My fourth attempt worked the magic. I was back in view. I scrambled for a pen in the glove box, and immediately wrote down the phrase.
The whole experience took less than 10 minutes. In that flash of time I had discovered a way to render myself invisible. I had discovered a portal out of the visible world.
Order from Amazon.com
[also coming out in Czech from JOTA]
