Vanishing
November 7th 2006 14:53
Written about eight years ago...
First automatic doors didn’t trigger as easily -- he had to walk right up to them, and wait for half a minute before they agreed to budge. Then butchers and shop assistants began increasingly to ignore him, then crowds began to bump into him and push past with increasingly little in the way of apology. Teenagers playing soccer treated him as part of the field.
His name began never to be called anymore in the waiting rooms of doctors and dentists, dogs never howled at his approach, and cats seemed to make a point of not watching him when he moved in their vicinity. One evening when he returned home from work he found his family surprised to see him, as if he shouldn’t have been there.
He was scarcely surprised himself when his reflection began to fade. The first time it happened he muttered angrily, glared at the mirror, but over the next few days it became thin, then insubstantial, then transparent, blurred, then hardly visible at all, his temper waning with his image.
Soon his shadow splintered at the edges, and his identity seemed to slip away from him. He never received phone calls anymore, no letters or e-mail ever came his way, and one day, after shouting at an inattentive teller for half an hour, he found to his unastonishment that the bank had no record of him, and nor did any of his credit agencies. Friends who passed him in the street, if they noticed him at all, bent their heads as if to avoid the awkwardness of greeting a person they scarcely knew.
He saw his own body fading and slipping away from him, arms turning to broomsticks, legs becoming stick-like, skin paling and stretching parchment-like over his brow. His stomach could barely contain the little he pushed down it; and whatever he drank went right through him. Objects began to refuse his attempts to engage with them, food falling from his hand or through his fingers, clothes sliding from him entirely.
And finally, lying in the middle of a hot bitumen road, scarcely caring about the heat he barely felt or the cars that drove over him, then, at last, his memory began to leave him also, till he no longer knew who he was, then no longer knew.
***
First automatic doors didn’t trigger as easily -- he had to walk right up to them, and wait for half a minute before they agreed to budge. Then butchers and shop assistants began increasingly to ignore him, then crowds began to bump into him and push past with increasingly little in the way of apology. Teenagers playing soccer treated him as part of the field.
His name began never to be called anymore in the waiting rooms of doctors and dentists, dogs never howled at his approach, and cats seemed to make a point of not watching him when he moved in their vicinity. One evening when he returned home from work he found his family surprised to see him, as if he shouldn’t have been there.
He was scarcely surprised himself when his reflection began to fade. The first time it happened he muttered angrily, glared at the mirror, but over the next few days it became thin, then insubstantial, then transparent, blurred, then hardly visible at all, his temper waning with his image.
Soon his shadow splintered at the edges, and his identity seemed to slip away from him. He never received phone calls anymore, no letters or e-mail ever came his way, and one day, after shouting at an inattentive teller for half an hour, he found to his unastonishment that the bank had no record of him, and nor did any of his credit agencies. Friends who passed him in the street, if they noticed him at all, bent their heads as if to avoid the awkwardness of greeting a person they scarcely knew.
He saw his own body fading and slipping away from him, arms turning to broomsticks, legs becoming stick-like, skin paling and stretching parchment-like over his brow. His stomach could barely contain the little he pushed down it; and whatever he drank went right through him. Objects began to refuse his attempts to engage with them, food falling from his hand or through his fingers, clothes sliding from him entirely.
And finally, lying in the middle of a hot bitumen road, scarcely caring about the heat he barely felt or the cars that drove over him, then, at last, his memory began to leave him also, till he no longer knew who he was, then no longer knew.
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Comment by katyzzz
Photography Tips
MS Paint Art
Some Brilliant penmanship. What went wrong?
I was attracted by the title.
My attraction was not wrong!
katyzzz Maybe one day you'll tell us.
Comment by Adrian
Philosophy Blog
No one knows went wrong. Or maybe nothing did.
It's like how, sometimes, people get turned into bugs inexplicably.
Comment by katyzzz
Photography Tips
MS Paint Art
I don't know of anyone who has been turned into a bug. I'm a skeptic on that.
Where's your evidence and is it persuasive?
katyzzz
Comment by Gareth
Comment by Adrian
Philosophy Blog
Thank you for the kind comment.