The Invisible Man Part 3

Part three and another without sex! Just one part left, I swear.

Elise knows he's there. It feels like when she was a kid, when she was sure that the adults were watching her all the time, even when they weren't in the room with her. She was sure that they had a camera on her and they in another room, checking up. She feels critiqued and discussed, but comfortable, shielded. She feels him.

The road curves in a ring around the houses in her subdivision. She reaches the point in the arc where the new homes are just starting to seed. They're only clearings now with whips of tape attached to stakes in the ground. Beyond these, the real woods, and a path through them. Most of the residents want the path blocked somehow, strung with a few whips of tape on stakes to close it off, but Elise likes to run there. She told everyone she moved to suburbia for the trees after all.

He follows her.

If Elise looks straight ahead, she won't see the plastic bags stuck in the branches above her, the piles of ashes on burnt spots in clearings, the empty soda cans with the hole poked into the center. She runs, half-squinting for the blur it gives her and listens to the bump-bump of her soles on the packed dirt, trying to listen for his. She's been working out what to do about him when she has the guts, but that would mean she'd have to really acknowledge him, and that would make her insane.

She hears a clomp that's not hers, an excuse, and stops. There is nothing more, just the sound of construction in the distance and the rush of a car or two. The word in her rises and slips out like a shiver.

"Hello?" It sounds like a shiver too.

A squirrel runs in front of her, and she lets out a little laugh. Crazy. She runs again.

She runs past the mysterious PVC piping, the large fallen tree, over the gigantic root that crosses the path about halfway out. She hears the sound of a foot on wood and stops again.

This is out of her mouth before it's thought about, like a reflex that doesn't take any advice but what the spinal column gives it. "I know you're there! You've been there for months! Who are you?"

She's mortified of teenagers, falling out from behind trees with laughter. But she's already done it.

"Who are you? You don't scare me. Just tell me who you are."

She's panting from the run. Each sentence is a chore. She decides to conserve them.

"I know. You're there."

Sweat is attracting mosquitoes and little black flies. She shakes her head and runs again, forward for a few paces, then quickly switches and runs back. She runs into what feels like flesh, but looks like nothing.

"Jesus Christ!" she yells and leaps back a few feet.

A voice comes up in front of her, panting too.

"Damen."

"Who are you?"

"I'm Damen."

"Damen who? Who the fuck are you?"

"My name. Is Damen and I'm. Sorry to scare you."

"Where? Where are you?"

"I'm... look I'm here. I swear I'm here."

"Here? WHERE?"

Elise is screaming now and she knows it. Not screaming is impossible. Damen isn't answering any questions.

"I... I look like nothing," said the voice.

"What?"

"I'm invisible."

"Damen. The invisible guy."

"Yes."

"Uh-huh."

Damen stares at her, concentrates, as if he could concentrate enough for her to see him. She's getting scared though, her eyes picking at the trees and up the path, so he talks again.

"Listen, I'm just going to touch you, so you know, okay?"

"Where are you touching me?"

She is scared. She can admit it now. The entire sentence came out in one word.

"Just your shoulder."

"Leftorright?"

"Just your right shoulder."

Elise can see, well, hear, that he's scared too. It doesn't help. She breathes deeper and holds more, waiting, and then, the fold of her t-shirt and the feel of fingers and a palm, warm, gentle. He doesn't take it away. She breathes, exhales slowly and thoroughly. She doesn't really want him to let go. He does. Something changes in her too, more than the reassurance that she's not crazy, but knowing that she really wasn't alone, all those times she thought she might not be.

"Why haven't you talked to me?" she asks.

"How could I talk to you?"

"You were there when Morris died."

"Yes."

"And when I got my job."

"Yeah."

"And you've been in my car with me."

"Yep."

"And watched me... seen me naked."

"Then too."

"Why?"

He's quiet again, and she's almost angry. This, the most obvious of questions, you'd think he'd have an answer to.

"Why?" she asks again.

"Why am I here or why am I invisible?"

"Both."

"I don't know why I'm invisible. I just am."

"Why are you here?"

"You're my entire life."

"Oh."

"Don't make me leave you. Don't make me leave you because I stepped on a tree root."

She hadn't, strangely, even thought of him leaving. It seems now that she absolutely should, but she needs him too. She realizes that her eyes have been trained on a patch of nothing in front of her, that she hasn't been looking at the trees or noticing the little black flies on her skin. She's been looking at him, not at anything else. She blinks, but she's still looking at him.

"I'm going out tonight," she says. "I'm going to think about it. I'm too freaked out to think right now, alright? I just need to be around people and think."

She walks around where she knows he is and heads back, her feet a slower and lighter bump-bump, and she's so sure that she's lost him that she begins to tear up.

An arm comes around her and pulls her back, strong, so much that her heels dangle over the ground. She feels lips, then a full mouth on her, fingers in her hair and hears his broken breathing. Time passes somewhere and he breaks it, pulls away from her mouth. He's breathing heavier. She feels him shaking too.

"Oh my God," she says.

"I've wanted to do that for so-"

"I'm going out tonight. I'll talk to you tomorrow, okay? I promise."

She walks up the path, listening for his footsteps behind her. She doesn't hear them. When she's out of his sight, her feet pick up and she runs, the woods blurring, unable to see a thing.