UNSEEN: Undone Realms Book 1

Transparency

Nolan remembers hearing the phrase "one foot in the grave" several years ago and thinking how perfectly it described his life. Not that he had some incurable disease or anything like that. Instead his life itself seemed devoid of substance, like he lacked some fundamental element that made up the life of the living. One foot in the grave. Nolan saw himself that way for a long time. And he welcomed it. He wore his depression like armor.

That isn't how his life feels now. He would never describe the sensations he's been experiencing with increased regularity as making him one step closer to death. He has toyed with death and he has experienced it happening to the person he loved best in the world. This isn't like that. Nolan isn't depressed. He has taken that armor off and he is utterly exposed without it. Sometimes, he wants it back. He wants to wear it on his way out of the hotel. He wants to find his mother in a field of yellow flowers and he wants to take hold of her hand and never let it go.

When he's on the roof with Clara, when the reds fade to a brilliant starscape, he wants Clara to be the one in that flower sea. He wants to touch her like he touches Clara's hatch and Clara's storage box, and Clara's stolen keys.

This might be possible before long. If his passport doesn't arrive soon. If he doesn't leave the hotel. If he just can't help himself.

Meanwhile, his work life has gone from deplorable to almost tolerable. Every morning, the day manager seems to take less time preparing Nolan's to-do list. Perhaps there's simply less to attend to now that tourist season has ended.

One day, there's no list at all. Nolan asks the manager what he should do and the manager grunts once and walks away. The next day, there's still no list and the manager doesn't even glance in his direction when Nolan asks why. He spends the day in his room worrying about invisibility and its implications for his future.

The day after that, Nolan doesn't even bother to report in for work. He walks right past the manager and out the door and he doesn't get barked at. He almost misses the barrage of swears the manager used to so giftedly spewed at him.

Nolan crosses the street and enters the convenience mart. This is a test. If he can still successfully bring something up to the counter and be rung up, he can confirm that he's still in the land of the living. This strikes him as so utterly ridiculous that he laughs out loud. Of course he's alive. He's still breathing, isn't he?

Before panic can strike, Nolan takes a sharp intake of air.

Right. Still breathing then.

He grabs a pack of turkey jerky and a candy bar and walks over to the check-out register. The girl behind the counter absentmindedly thumbs through a celebrity-bashing magazine.

Nolan clears his throat, but the girl, the same girl who's rung up his purchases dozens of times before, doesn't look up.

"Excuse me," Nolan says loudly. The girl starts slightly, her eyes floating around the store before slowly setting her gaze on Nolan.

"Oh, I didn't see you," she says and scans his meager selection of life-affirming non-food.

She takes Nolan's ten dollar bill and he waits for his change. Her hand hovers uncertainly over the till and she seems perplexed, as if her capacity to handle simple arithmetic has suddenly escaped her.

"My change?" Nolan says and the girl starts again.

"That's right." She hands him what he's owed.

He counts it out and returns it to his pocket.

"Thanks," he says, but she has already returned to her magazine. She doesn't respond.

He should tell Clara this is happening, Nolan thinks as he walks back to the hotel. This isn't normal, to disappear from people's perceptions. It isn't normal, but to be honest, it isn't unprecedented in Nolan's life either. People have been disappearing on him for a long time—first his mother, then his brother. And his father, well, he was never really present to begin with.

Now it's his turn, and why shouldn't it be?

What would Clara think if she knew? Nolan knows, and that's why he hasn't been able to tell her. She will blame herself. She's too good and too smart not to make the connection between her own long-standing condition and his newly acquired one. If she hates being the way she is, then she will hate it for Nolan as well. And she will think it's all her fault.

He would like to keep this from her, but how much longer will that be possible?