I See You Invisible Man [Flash Fiction]

The wine was rich and sharp to Doctor Zurlo’s palette, he wet his lips with the blood red drink and licked about his pointed moustache. He was sat in his study, a melancholy place despite the room’s attempts to feel warm and homely. It was in the ebbing of the architecture, that feeling of strangeness unfounded but still palpable. Doctor Zurlo liked it, he felt as if he was in a place of historical value, even though nothing remotely memorable ever happened in the study of Maras Manor.

“Heavenly,” he said, taking another sip of his mulberry wine. He savoured the taste and then went about his work. The typewriter in front of him was brand new, the lettered keytops were shined silver and even the platen knob had this dark sparkle to it. He enjoyed fiddling with it, making sure the paper sat nicely and that the knobs clicked with the right amount of pressure. It wasn’t until a few hours into the early morning that he started his work.

Chapter One:

A day to remember…

That’s how it started and by Doctor Zurlo’s standards it seemed rather fitting. After writing such a perfect beginning he felt the need for a break, his back had become rather stiff from the first few hours and it seemed beneficial to stand up and stretch it out.

He pondered through his library of books, most of which were medical journals, thousands of pages on the human anatomy and the various methods of healing the body. He picked up a small dust covered book, he blew away the cobwebs and flicked through the pages. It was a step by step guide on the importance of cleanliness when undergoing surgery, Doctor Zurlo had always felt it fascinating to read, the concept of microorganisms causing infection and the unproven fact that hospitals were more dangerous because of this, always made him chuckle. He would always harken back to his days in Africa, sewing up wounds with his bare hands, cauterising amputated limbs with the hot stove they had used the night before to cook their sausages.

But he could never linger long on those far past memories, although there were times of great triumph. Times when he looked across the endless desert and found himself looking back. These weren’t the moments that sizzled on the top of his hob of memories. He had seen something in that arid place, something that his scientific mind rejected as delusion. But he knew it was true. There was a figure, a figure without form or substance and yet it stood in the same searing sand as he. The Invisible Man.

As Doctor Zurlo closed the book resting in his palms, a pulse of air brushed past his shoulder. He turned towards the window expecting the curtains to be fluttering as they were one to do but they were still and the window was shut. He rubbed his forearms and sat back down at his desk. He poured a second glass of wine and swilled it as he surveyed the room.

“You didn’t follow me, did you?” he said, idle of expression. He sipped the mulberry and then continued on with his novel. His plan was to capture his glorious successes in wistful prose, to freeze in bountiful words that distant continent. He rested his fingertips on the keytops and closed his eyes. He had written many books before, scientific essays for the most part, but they were published just the same. That wasn’t what troubled his aging fingers, it was having to remember it all, to rip back the curtain that he had hung and look boldly at those darkened nights. Those nights that are better left forgot.

A book fell off the shelf and shattered his concentration. He huffed and checked the window once more before picking up the stubborn wrapping. It had a hard blue jacket, stained leather with a string of red silk to guide the pages. He didn’t need to read the title to understand the message that hid inside its pages. The corners were worn and several of the pages had been thumbed down at the top edge. The Mind and Morality. He squeezed it shut until his knuckles simmered white.

“I see you, I know what you’re trying to do and it’s not going to work,” Doctor Zurlo said, his moustache seemed to straighten and he furled his eyebrows. By the feel of his bare arms you would have been right to think that the room was suddenly drenched in a wave of cold. But it wasn’t, in fact, it was far warmer than it should have been. Doctor Zurlo looked between each corner of the room and looked for him. That figure he saw so many years ago in the sand. That wandering man that walked alongside him, lurked in the bright light of the sun and left open his soul for that soldier to look upon.

He sat, slumped, back into his desk chair. He pulled it so his knees were tightly wedged beneath the flat of the counter. He, regretfully, cracked his knuckles and then wiggled the tips of his fingers.

“I’ll show you,” he said, tapping furiously without thought on his typewriter. The ink whipped onto the page and words begot sentences begot paragraphs. His mind was freed and shackled at the same time, he had been overwhelmed by the opening of his thoughts. They unfurled onto the parchment, raw and unedited. He typed into the night and then into the second. His fingers were strained but he typed through the pain. His eyes were reddened and his lips dried and scabbed. No one disturbed him. No one dared to.

It wasn’t until the third night that he sat back from his tirade of jumbled words and gave a moment to reading them properly. He twisted the parchment free and held it beneath the long necked lamp on his desk.

I see you invisible man, I see you invisible man, I see you invisible man, I see you invisible man, I see you invisible man, I see you invisible man, I see you invisible man, I see you invisible man, I see you invisible man, I see you invisible man, I see you invisible man, I see you invisible man, I see you invisible man, I see you invisible man, I see you invisible man, I see you invisible man, I see you invisible man, I see you invisible man, I see you invisible man, I see you invisible man, I see you invisible man…

Each ream of paper he had set to the side of his typewriter had been marked the same. The same phrase repeated over and over. He rubbed his thumb against his forefinger and noticed he had worked them bloody. The edges of the parchment printed with his mottled fingertips.

“Have I gone mad?” he whispered, his trance broken and now he sat slouched, dazed and exhausted.

“What has brought me so close to this absurdity? My folly is not my own, it can’t be, I’m…I’m not that man. That is not who I am.”

“Are you sure?”