Lotus17

Content Warnings for suicide ideation, severe depression, and dysphoria. The former is at its worst in this chapter, but all three elements remain through the story.

“Have a nice day, sir!” the nameless fast food employee cheerfully said as she handed the old man in front of her his change. She never noticed the boy who snuck on the other side of the counter, or saw his small hand slip into the food heater to steal a burger. The boy knew someone would probably be yelled at because of his actions, and already felt guilty, but he didn’t have a choice.

The boy left the fast food restaurant in a hurry, an irrational part of his mind urging him on by trying to convince him that he would be caught. He knew he wouldn’t be, he never was, but that part of his mind refused to be silent. He didn’t slow down until he got to his ‘home’, a small pile of blankets and pillows underneath a highway bridge. Even then, he made a habit of looking back and forth to make sure nobody had followed him. 

But nobody ever did. As far as he could tell, nobody could follow him. It was like he didn’t even exist. The only proof of his existence was the effect he had on the world, which people always seemed to write off as anomalies, or them misremembering details of things that had just happened. He had even shoved someone, once, just to confirm that he could affect people, and the subject of the boy’s shove acted as though they had tripped over themselves.

More than once, the boy had woken up to find his little makeshift home taken apart, the blankets and pillows either thrown away or shared between other folks without homes who thought they’d just found an unclaimed space. He was always able to go to a department store and steal more, but it still hurt. 

What had to hurt the most, though, was how alone he felt. The boy had been stuck like this, invisible to everyone, for over three years. 

It had started small, in a way that almost felt like a relief. Around his twelfth birthday, he’d felt disgusted at the sign of himself in the mirror, at the dark, slowly growing facial hair sprouting on his face. Almost as if in response to his disgust, the mirror had just stopped showing his reflection. The boy had been terrified, at first, especially when nobody else seemed to notice anything, but in time he managed to ignore how scary the situation was. The bigger problem was the difficulty, adjusting to getting ready without being able to see himself. It was slow going, but he adapted.

But then it expanded. Something about the way people talked about the boy just irked him, made him feel wrong in ways he couldn’t describe. In response, people just stopped addressing him. They’d respond to him, of course, even engage in conversation, but from then on nobody called him by his name or used any of the many forms of address that made him uncomfortable. Initially that felt nice, but things like not being called to dinner or basically being ignored until he spoke up quickly made the entire situation feel creepy.

And finally, it exploded. Not even a month after the initial incident with the mirror, one final event triggered the worst thing of all. The boy was sitting down with his mom and dad, who had pulled him aside for a conversation that sounded serious. His dad, who was somehow able to ignore the rule that everyone else was following, called the boy by his name and it hurt so much and he just wished he could disappear and never have to hear that name again.

As if a switch was flipped, his parents’ demeanor completely changed. They seemed to forget he had ever existed, to the boy’s growing terror. They acted like his room was a guest room, and tore down every sign that he’d ever lived there. They never acknowledged him again, even as he screamed in their faces that he was right in front of them.

Eventually, he left. It hurt too much to stay with his family, and he couldn’t understand why they pretended that he wasn’t there. He tried walking to his friends’ houses, but at every place he went, it had been the same story. It was like they had never heard of him, couldn’t see or hear him, and couldn’t even tell he was messing with them when he lashed out. 

His wish had come true, in the worst possible way. Sure, he could do whatever he wanted and nobody would care, but he couldn’t be with anyone. He couldn’t share a hug with his mom, or celebrate beating one of his best friends at a game, or even just hang out with his grandmother on her porch, listening to stories from when she was little. 

The boy didn’t cry, couldn’t cry, but that didn’t stop him from wanting to as memories of everything he was missing moved to the forefront of his mind. He missed his life. He missed homework. He would have done a whole book of assignments if it meant just one of his teachers would say hello to him. 

But that wasn’t going to happen. He would fall asleep, trying to no avail to cry into his pillow, and would wake up the next day. Maybe his shelter would still be around when he woke up, if he was lucky. That cycle would continue, over and over again, until he got sick or hurt and died because there was nobody who could help him. Or maybe one day he would just decide to stop existing completely, and whatever curse had affected him in the first place would oblige.

He almost looked forward to that.