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 ^{(it's beta!)}

My name is Liam. I have an unusual condition.

No one sees me or hears me.

No, wait, I know what you’re thinking. “Is ‘Liam’ two syllables or just one?”

I’m just kidding. Of course you weren’t thinking that. That was a joke. I guess it was a pretty terrible one. My sense of humor really isn’t what it used to be.

What you’re probably thinking is, “No one sees or hears you? Oh lighten up, we all feel like that sometimes.”

Well that’s not what I mean. No one sees me or hears me.

Literally.

Before you think I'm crazy, let me explain. It started a few years ago, back in 2015. My memory of that day is clearer than yesterday's. It was Monday on the 22nd of June. I had been a normal, visible person when I went to bed on Sunday night, with normal, visible signs of trivial everyday stress and the normal, visibly unwashed outfit I’d been wearing all weekend.

A new couple had moved into my apartment complex on the previous Friday. They were young and energetic and happy. I held the door open for them when they were moving in a couch. Not that I’m a good samaritan or anything close to that, but I was coming home from work and on my way in. They were struggling a lot to load their couch into the doorway, especially since the door was particularly heavy and the way it closed on the couch was impeding their tremendous effort. Strangely, they had wrapped the couch in about ten layers of cellophane, which really made sliding it through the door an excruciating ordeal.

So it was not that I’m this nice guy or some helpful person, but I was tired and irritable and I just wanted to go to my overheated third floor apartment, eat my three day old pizza right out of the fridge and watch horrible generic sitcoms for four hours until I fell asleep. I just held the door open so they could get their couch out of my damn way at a more agreeable pace.

It still took them long enough though that they found it necessary to start some polite small talk with me. Somehow I got to asking why they wrapped their couch in so much cellophane (partially because the grating sound of it rubbing together was hard to ignore).

“We’re clean freaks,” the husband said with a modest grin. “We had this tied up in the back of my truck and I didn’t want bugs smashing into it.”

“Most people just use a tarp for that,” I replied with a forced half-smile and a feigned tone of interest.

“It’s the bacteria and viruses bugs carry that we worry about,” the wife informed me. “I can get sick very easily so we’re really careful.”

“She just got over a five year battle with ovarian cancer,” the husband added, as if that somehow had anything to do with anything.

“That’s nice.” Finally they got their couch through, but I couldn’t get around them to get to the stairway. I was forced to follow behind them up the stairs at a crawl. I hoped they only lived on the second floor.

“You must think we’re pretty strange,” the wife laughed, grunting as they maneuvered the couch around one of the stair case’s corners. This building had half stairs, so there were more corners to pivot.

“Not really. I’m a vegan,” I said with a shrug. “Slaughterhouses and animal enclosures are filthy and cruel and most violate health codes, which are too lenient as it is.”

“Oh, we’re vegans too! I guess that doesn’t surprise you though, ha ha!”

I didn’t care.

They did live on the second floor though, so after a courteous, banal goodbye, I was up to my apartment to laze away the evening, ready to enjoy my weekend by sleeping through most of it.

So I didn’t expect to find myself stumbling to the door on Saturday morning, wearing Friday’s clothes (not my work clothes, but a pair of shorts and a t-shirt I changed into), to answer the maddeningly relentless pounding on my door. It was the landlady, and she told me I had five minutes to gather what I needed and evacuate the apartment.

“Black mold,” she told me.

“Black mold?” I asked.

The clean freak couple had been scrubbing their new apartment down with ammonia and bleach and heavy duty anti-bacterial agents, and when they pulled out their refrigerator to clean behind it (their REFRIGERATOR for god’s sake), they discovered traces of what appeared to be black buildup on the wall.

“It can cause cancer,” the landlady explained. She didn’t look happy about it, but I suspected that she was more annoyed at the couple than the mold. “They called the state. They have to send some guys out to exterminate the mold. They said it could be everywhere in the building.”

“Great.”

“Apparently it’s relatively common for old buildings like this,” the landlady exhaled with a sigh. “But now the state has to tear apart the walls to spray for it, or something.”

“How long is that going to take?”

“Well today is Saturday, and they don’t work weekends. I’m not supposed to work weekends either but…” The landlady’s incredible lack of motivation about the whole situation made me smile. She was a smart woman. Probably late fifties. Something of a cynic. I got along with her. “What I’m saying is they can’t start until Monday. They said it would probably take two weeks.”

“You’re joking.” My heart sank as my whole posture slumped.

“I wish.”

“I helped them move in their couch,” I stated regretfully.

“That’s karma for you, I guess. Sorry Liam. Five minutes. I need to get to the other apartments.”

So that’s how it was. Being the environmentally conscious health nut that I was, I didn’t own a car. Not even a hybrid. Just a bike. I called my friend Merrill to help me move a couple duffle bags that I couldn’t just sling off my bike handles like a clumsy double-sided mallet from a Looney Tunes episode.

I realized the hypocrisy in compelling someone to expend carbon monoxide and other poisonous gasses, not to mention wasting fossil fuels, to drive thirty miles to my place so I could load my stuff and my bike and ride back to his house. Yes, I'm the sort of person who's concerned about harming the planet with pollution and global warming and using up natural resources. I didn’t feel very guilty though, considering it was the planet that had decided to put that mold in my apartment building to start with.

He was a weird guy, Merrill. Eccentric, odd sense of humor, terrible color coordination. For sixty-seven he looked and acted fairly young. He had a tan goatee and a gray ponytail retained from his hippie years. Just as outdated as his hairstyle he wore thick, black rimmed glasses. I’d told him there were styles of glasses now that would look much more flattering, but he refused to upgrade. He was a widower, and I wondered if his primary motive was to discourage new women from finding him attractive. Merrill was that kind of faithful to his dead wife.

Now you’re thinking, “I don’t really care about any of this. What about that ‘unusual condition’ you mentioned?”

Well, yeah, sorry, I did digress a little.

My predicament started the following Monday morning. I had spent the entire weekend at Merrill’s reading his anti-government magazines and his conspirator novels because he only had basic cable. I didn’t really buy into it, of course, but it was entertaining.

At seven in the morning my radio alarm clock flicked on. I had it set to the most intolerable classical music station so that I would wake up as fast as I could to shut the damned thing off.

I didn’t notice anything different right away, except that my vision seemed clearer. I guessed it was the carrot-based fruit juice Merrill bought. I wiped my nose, yawned, stretched, and staggered my way into his bathroom. His place smelled pleasant (probably from his cleaners made of natural ingredients) and I was looking forward to a good morning.

It was when I tried to check my weekend stubble in the mirror that I realized something was wrong.

I had no reflection.

(To be continued. Wrote more but it needs editing. :) )

By the way, my name, Liam. It's two syllables.