Invisible

"Imagine this: a family huddling together by the fireplace for a photograph, the proud parents and their smiling offspring, holding their glasses of wine up high. They're all as happy as they can be, ten men and women who always had everything they wanted, and will accept nothing to the contrary. I'm not in the frame. I've never been there. If you think I'm the one holding the camera so everyone else can have their moment of glory, think again. I'm either sitting in the bathroom or smoking a cigarette outside. When I return to their midst, they ignore me like they did the rest of the night. It's always been like this. This will never change."

Paul Wallace stopped talking and sighed. It was a Monday afternoon, and he sat on the leather sofa of Dr. Madsen's office, left hand partially trembling, and the other one hidden from view. It had been almost seven hours since the last nicotine intake and his body was resenting it. Aged thirty-four, Paul was an English teacher at Richmond Community High School, Virginia, and the only member of his family that loathed hospital life and wanted nothing to do with it. A tall, stout man with dark blonde hair and sad eyes, he was only attending a therapy session because he had been forced to. Ten minutes in the one-hour appointment and he was already fed up with it.

The company wasn't to blame, for he was in the presence of quite an attractive woman. Two years older, Dr. Vanessa Madsen, a buxom brunette with a penchant for masculine, striped suits, was the only daughter in a group of five. While she was familiar with the problems that often come with large families, not once did she feel left out or invisible to the rest of the world, unlike her latest patient.

"How long has this been going on?" She crossed her satin legs behind the futuristic plastic desk and looked at him, notepad in hand.

"I just told you that, Dr. It's been this way since forever." Paul grumbled, one eye on the clock above her head and the other on the pack of cigarettes in the inner pocket of his coat.

"Do you feel like your family doesn't respect you or acknowledge your life choices seeing as you've gone against the norm?"

"They don't acknowledge me at all, period. Being around them is the same thing as not being anywhere. They never wanted me. Even if I had gone to Medical School, they would still not want me."

"Why do you say that? Has anyone ever told you such a thing?"

"They don't have to. I was the last, okay? The ninth child no one was expecting. I was the untimely accident that almost killed our mother trying to find my way into this world. She never forgave me for that, and neither did everyone else. I've felt like a pariah since day one."

Dr. Madsen continued to jot down some notes. Dealing with feelings of inadequacy was her bread and butter, but his qualms ran deeper than most. Paul's frustrations haunted him every single moment of his life and, after years of incessant bottling up, they were seeping through in his interactions with his students and his peers. If not dealt with, they could lead to an explosion of devastating consequences for himself and everyone around him.

"Are you feeling like one now?"

"Of course!" He grumbled in his seat. "How can I not? Especially after what happened yesterday..."

"Please, tell me everything."

"It was my birthday, and no one remembered... again! Not even a text or an e-mail just to pretend they care. I never forget about anyone. Is it too much to ask for such a simple courtesy?"

"No, it's not, and believe me I understand how..."

"Do you, Dr.?" He interrupted her, suddenly standing up and gesticulating like a madman on the street. "Do you really understand or are you just saying that to make me feel better because it's your job after all? I don't need neither pity nor faux sympathy from you or anyone else! Hell, I don't even want to be here talking to you so I'm out of here, okay? Nice knowing you!" He headed for the door.

"Paul, please return to your seat. We're not done yet."

"I am. See you never, Dr. Madsen."

"NO!" The good doctor slammed her perfectly manicured hands on the table, a tuft of hair falling over her eyes as if she were a lioness on the hunt. "No problem has ever been solved by running away from it like a coward. We still have forty minutes left. You're not getting out of here until they've run their course. Is that clear?"

Paul stopped by the door, completely befuddled. Who was this fierce lady and why had she been in hiding until then? Suddenly, he saw himself as a naughty student in dire need of discipline and blushed.

"I don't think you're supposed to say that..."

"And why not? I'll say what I must if it gets you to snap out of it. Your mind is amplifying your fears. The more you listen to your own thoughts the less in control you feel. This flight response is as unnatural as everything else. We need to address the elephant in the room otherwise you'll be stomped by it."

"Do you have a suggestion?" He hid both hands in his pockets and avoided looking at her deep and intimidating gaze.

"I have plenty, but one I'm sure will help you out." Dr. Madsen opened the top drawer to her right and revealed a small, spiky, translucent rotating lamp that reminded him of a Fugu, the Japanese term for puffer fish. The base was made of black plastic with a switch at the center.

"What's that?" He approached her desk to take a closer look, head slightly tilted to the right.

"Something for you to focus on. Consciousness is usually a blessing, but it can also be a curse. I have no doubt that's the case for you right now. What I'm proposing is a little distraction so we can get to the root of what's really troubling you and work our way from there. With your consent, of course."

She pressed the switch and laid the lamp atop the closest edge of the table, producing a series of rotating concentric circles of light that bathed the walls and her green eyes with a mesmerizing aura.

"Are you talking about hypnosis? Isn't that just a bunch of malarkey?" He asked, giving his best impression of the President of the United States.

"Altered states of mind are as real as you and I talking and, in a day, the average human being goes through them more times than he can number. When you were sitting down a few moments ago pouring your heart out to me, you were almost in a light trance and you can go there again as easily as you wish if you just stop to take a breather, relax, and look at the colorful spectacle before your eyes."

Luminescence faded in and out, the spaces between the shadows reflected between them. Despite following a preset, each rotation of the lights inside, coupled with her ballpoint pen waving back and forth above it, created infinite chromatic variations. He followed one until it became another, and the second gave rise to a third, and a fourth, and a fifth pattern, all intersecting one another until he could no longer discern the original. Soundlessly, he returned to his place on the sofa, trying to anticipate the next contrast. Beyond the threshold of white, there was a rainbow waiting.

"How many colors can you see, Paul? I've had clients say three, others say five or six, and even some that see nothing at all. People's responses to having their brain shut down for a bit are always different, yet share one thing in common: a sense of bliss like no other, a wave of peace spreading across their arms and legs, dripping and drifting and sinking down, down, down... They'll be asleep before they know what hit them. They'll be asleep before the next sentence. I think your mind is already asleep now. Sleep, Paul. Sleep so that I can talk to the real you."

Dr. Madsen leaned the lamp forward ever so slightly, just enough for the infinitude of reflections within to envelop his now completely blank visage. It was as easy as she hoped, a prelude to the most important lesson of his life.

"Paul, listen to me. Your public self is now dormant, only your innermost thoughts are awake. I know you think everyone you care about thinks of you as something less or doesn't think of you at all. When you look at yourself in the mirror, you do it not out of vanity but because of a primeval need to be seen without being taken for granted. This longing for recognition motivates you, yet also drives you insane. In your mind's eye, you're invisible and no one would shed a tear if you were suddenly plucked away from this earth. They would have to remember you in order to cry, and they don't. This is what you truly believe in, and I'm here to tell you that those beliefs...

"... are entirely correct. The reason you think this way is because that's how things are. Equality is a word people love to throw around in every conversation, but it's as futile today as it was yesterday. There's no such thing and no, we're not all born the same. Some are naturally better than others, some naturally deserve more than others. Life is like a winding staircase with some people happily up top, and others desperately trying to climb more and more steps without ever making any progress. A select few belong under the stairs themselves, holding them together with no need for recognition. You're it. You're one of those shadows, required but never seen, useful only to be used. It's all true, Paul. No one gives a shit. The day you stop holding the stairs, someone else will take your place and the hierarchy will never crumble. It makes sense and you know it.

"Try as you may, you'll never be as good as your brothers and sisters, your parents will never see in you anything other than a burden. It can't be helped. When inferior creatures cannot realize their place on their own, they need to be cast aside and broken. Loneliness and helplessness are integral to their character. How else would they would become the perfect servants? While sometimes the definition of truth varies, this is something that's immutable. You're weak and you're powerless to do anything about it and though a part of you thinks that rebelling against the status quo is the ideal choice, the one that will finally grant you some form of solace, that's an illusion as elaborate as the concept of self-esteem. None of that is for you, Paul. You don't even deserve to have a name. You should only see yourself as chattel, moving property, as valuable as a piece of furniture, and as disposable as well. That's you. That's what you should see in the mirror. That's what you should think about when you look at someone better than you... someone like me.

"Yes, Paul. you support the stairs so that my heels can step on them. You exist in this life to serve and worship the divine and that is me: all-powerful, all-knowing, wielder of the magic light that binds your weaknesses forever. See it taking hold of every fiber of your being. There's nothing prettier or more enthralling. Once you take it in and absorb it through your skin, just like you're taking in my words one by one without resisting them, there's simply no escape. These ideas will permanently become a part of who you are from now on because they've always been there. No thoughts, only the light. No discontentment, only compliance. No sadness, only obedience. Perfect pleasure and nothing more. Forever invisible at my beck and call.

"Drop even further now. Drown in the pool of hypnotic light until your lungs collapse. Only when it totally consumes you, will you be reborn. Sleep. Mindless. Sleep. Hopeless. Sleep. Invisible. Sleep. Slave."

Paul's heavy head fell backwards, his whole body awash in numbing radiance. Endless stairs fell inside the abyss of his thoughts, crushing his skull, and pulling him further and further down to the very bottom of the food chain, an unseen specter for eternity.

Dr. Madsen turned off the hypnotic lights and admired her new piece of man meat for a few moments, two fingers inside her wet snatch. Putting losers in their proper place got her off, and the rush was even more intense as the hour of the next appointment drew closer. In just a few minutes, another faculty member with a silly complex would come to her, hoping for some friendly conversation to make him or her feel better, and then leave the office an hour later, drooling from inside out in an unaware mental prison. No matter what ailed them, they were all fodder for her perversions, footnotes written and rewritten at will. She had stopped counting after the first ten subjects. Paul was probably number twenty-four or twenty-five. He was also the most exciting one in a long time.

He left her office ten minutes later, wondering why he had dozed off just like that. On his way out, he greeted Mrs. Weathers who was patiently waiting by the water dispenser. The quinquagenarian Math teacher had an irrational fear of dogs except when she looked into her therapist's eyes and then spent the rest of her session time happily barking and humping on her legs.

For the first time since forever, nothing troubled him for he deserved nothing at all. The invisible man exited the school grounds and walked home under a blanket of rain, wishing Monday came soon again.