Power Surge
"Kimberly!"
Bennett swung the bathroom door open, battering the knob loudly against the wall. He looked inside to see a pair of hands hanging about four feet above the floor—forearms actually—almost up to the elbow. The fingers were spread open wide and the arms were turning slowly. He took this in for a half-second until he heard Kimberly’s quivering voice echo against the bathroom tile.
"Peter, what’s happening to me?"
He clearly did not know, and didn’t attempt to appease her by guessing. He looked down at the floor in defeat--and saw the feet. Just like Kimberly’s hands, they were completely visible, nearly to the knee. She was all extremities. Peter kept waiting for her head to appear, but when after thirty seconds it didn’t, he put his own head together and started to think.
"Why don’t you come into the bedroom and we’ll figure this out?"
"Okay..."
The feet stepped past him and out of the room. As she walked by, Bennett tried to look and see how her legs...ended. Somehow, even though he was sure he had a good view, he couldn’t tell if it was like a stump or...not. It was as though a distortion of light shielded the ends of the visible parts of Kimberly’s body.
She went right to the bed and sat down, creating a deep sinking on the edge of the mattress. Kimberly looked at herself--apparently, she had not done such a good job of shaving her legs after all. There were small nicks and missed patches running up and down her calves. She was still mostly invisible, but not visible enough to interact with people like a normal woman. At the same time, she couldn’t very well walk around naked now and expect to go unnoticed. It was, it seemed, the worst of both worlds.
Bennett, meanwhile, was in full thinking mode. He paced back and forth in front of Kimberly, turning finally to address her:
"I think it’s fairly obvious what the catalyst for this was."
"Sex."
"Yes. I guess your hormones triggered some reaction."
"But not enough to change me back entirely."
"Apparently not. Whatever effect it is having seems isolated to your extremities and I don’t even know how long that’s going to last."
Kimberly thought about this. "I would agree, except I’ve been with...myself...more than a few times since the accident, and this has never happened."
"It might not be hormones. It could be exposure to the latex condom, or the spermicide on the condom...I have no idea. But it would be a pretty wild coincidence if this wasn’t caused by our having sex."
"That sounds right." She paused for second. "So...If having sex with you stimulated something to make me visible...I guess there’s only one thing to do."
She laid back on the bed and the disembodied calves swung into the air, at first together, then swinging apart. They were in the air, pointing at the ceiling in opposite directions. Bennett got the message.
"There’s no way of knowing if it would change anything. It may make things worse."
"I’ve been a freak for two months now. If there’s a chance I can be normal again, I want to take it. Especially since the cure is so fun..."
Bennett took another condom out of his nightstand and pushed into her again. Her visible calves wrapped around his back while her hands clutched him tightly. She rocked slowly back and forth, drawing the moments out as long as she could. When Peter tried to move a little faster, she pulled him back.
It continued like this for over an hour, with nothing to show for it. The passionate lovemaking of their first encounter had given way to an almost mechanical determination on Kimberly’s part. This wasn’t personal, it was business. She wanted more than anything else to be visible--Bennett couldn’t jump the gun before she got results. Finally, when he could no longer hold back, Bennett released into her again. He pulled out and Kimberly immediately went into the bathroom.
The seconds ticked by painfully slowly as she waited for the initial wave of discomfort that had preceded the appearance of her hands and feet. Her frustration mounted when it didn’t come, until a minute or two later—
Her stomach turned over painfully, and nausea washed over her, much worse than before. She refused to double over, instead staring directly into the mirror in front of her. Kimberly searched for anything—an outline, a visible hair, anything—but she could see only her hands clutching her invisible abdomen.
Bennett stood in the doorway, silently watching for the same things as Kimberly and with the same level of success.
A sharp pain suddenly ran across Kimberly’s gut and she moaned loudly, shutting her eyes tightly as it passed. She had kept her eyes shut for almost a minute before she realized—it was dark. She couldn’t see through her eyelids. For the first time in months, she couldn’t see a thing.
At that moment, she realized that Bennett was saying something:
"Kimberly, open your eyes! Look!"
She did, ever so gingerly, tears running down her face from the pain. When they washed away, however, she knew. She was visible again and standing before her in the mirror were the body and the face she had almost forgotten she had.
Her hair, despite daily maintenance, was a complete mess. There were small bruises in various places where she had misjudged her own position and bumped into tables and door frames and such. They were beautiful and she wouldn’t trade a single one of them for anything. Most of all, she was surprised to see her figure—the weight she lost had clearly changed her, shrinking her waist while accenting her hips, slimming her long legs and giving her a form almost as unfamiliar as her invisible one. Even without the gratitude she felt for just being able to see herself, she had to admit she looked better than she had in years.
Kimberly still felt cramping in her muscles, causing moments of brief shooting pain to course through her, but she forced herself to her feet. Bennett put a gentle arm around her and helped her back into the bedroom. He offered her a bathrobe, which she turned down.
"If you don’t mind, just for a little while..." She limped into the living room and suddenly felt hungry. Bennett, who had been content up until now to fulfill his role in her cure and then stand back, spoke for the first time in minutes.
"So...what are you going to do now?"
Kimberly looked caught off-guard. For all of her thinking about this moment, she hadn’t really thought past it. She started making a sandwich.
"I can’t go home. There’s too much to explain. I have a whole--ow!"
She doubled over again.
"Are you okay?"
"It’s just...a cramp. I guess becoming visible used up a lot of energy and water. I’m going to need to rehydrate, that’s all. Anyway, I have a whole new identity set up, though, and she’s got enough money to live on for a while until I can get back on my feet."
"You’re leaving."
"I have to, don’t you think? It’s easy to hide an invisible girlfriend, but what happens when she suddenly pops into view? We’re colleagues. What happens when I meet your co-workers and one of them recognizes me from a conference? Sooner or later, someone will come looking for me. They may already be looking. They may know exactly what happened. What happens if they come here to ask you about me and I’m sitting in the living room?"
She was right--he knew it. It would be better for both of them if, now that she was visible, she disappeared for a little while. Bennett, exhausted from the evening’s lengthy activities and energies, went into the bedroom without another word and closed the door.
* * *
There was only one outfit of clothes for Kimberly to wear--the mismatched collection of shoplifted brand names that had helped her escape the airport and get to Bennett’s apartment. He had been kind enough to lend her a credit card so she could replenish her wardrobe before moving on. She bought several new ensembles at the local stores, taking at least five minutes to talk with every single person she made contact with. It turned out that she needed the conversation more than the clothes, and it took her over six hours to return to the apartment.
Bennett was still at work--he had left in a particularly bad mood this morning. Kimberly’s pain had mostly subsided and she tried talking with him, but he seemed in a hurry to leave. The night before had obviously meant a lot to him. It did to her as well (she had deep feelings for him now, not just gratitude but concern and possibly love?), but she didn’t know how she could stay.
The task ahead of Kimberly now was to find a new city to live in. After another hour, she decided—she would go to Texas. San Antonio was far away from her hometown, her old lab, and far enough from Denver to avoid immediate suspicion. She could start a new life there, not as a scientist, but something more low key. She’d be okay. She’d meet somebody else and she’d have a normal life one day. Leaving was the right thing to do.
* * *
Bennett came home and before she could speak, he had started:
"You should stay here. You don’t know if this is permanent or not and if it isn’t, it may not be as easy to get back here to the lab. Plus, you may go back into partial invisibility, which would be worse, because you couldn’t hide if you were to be discovered. Plus, we really don’t know what caused you to become visible last night and it would be irresponsible to assume things were okay before we find out if they are."
She was taken aback by the forcefulness of his argument. She was also slightly amused. "That’s it?" she asked.
"What do you mean, that’s it? You don’t think any of that is true?"
"But those are the only reasons I should stay? You don’t have any other, say, motives for wanting me around?"
A swift pain traveled across Kimberly’s back and into her legs. She fell to her knees in agony. Bennett ran over to her and held her until it subsided.
"I thought you weren’t in any more pain."
"This is worst of it today. Besides, I didn’t want you to worry."
"You’re staying. That’s final."
"I’ll stay...for a little while longer."
She looked up at him and smiled.
"You didn’t even notice my new outfit."
They kissed. The tension in her back loosened almost instantly and soon they were back in the bedroom.
When they had finished, Bennett looked across the mattress at Kimberly. Even though this wasn’t their first time, it was the first time he had this opportunity to watch her in this moment. She was absolutely beautiful, more beautiful by far than the night they had met at that conference a few years earlier. He couldn’t believe the forces that had brought them back together, but he was grateful to them, whatever they were.
Kimberly’s leg occasionally tightened up, but during their lovemaking she had felt only pleasure, and now she felt completely relaxed for the first time since becoming visible. There were no cramps, no aches, no nausea. She felt fully human again.
They kissed each other good night and went into a wonderful, dream-filled sleep.
* * *
Bennett was the first to wake. He decided even before waking that a full-scale breakfast feast was in order--eggs, hash browns, French toast. He was going to fill the kitchen with food, call into work sick, and they would spend the day together out in the city, doing all the things couples do when both of them are visible. He smiled to himself--it was going to be a good day.
He leaned over to kiss Kimberly, but to his horror he was confronted with only a bubble under the sheet and a long depression in the mattress. She had become invisible again during the night. It hadn’t even lasted 24 hours.
Bennett didn’t have the heart to wake her up, so he just lay there in silence next to the invisible woman.
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