Power Surge
Kimberly stretched and yawned in the pitch black room. She reached out an arm for Peter, but he was apparently up already. The roof of her mouth was glued to her tongue and she felt totally drained, not an unexpected feeling considering the events (and activities) of the last few days.
She gingerly got out of bed and stumbled to the door of the living room. Reaching for the knob, she felt Peter’s hanging bathrobe and slipped it on before pulling the door open. The light hit her like a train and it only took an instant for her to realize that she was once again invisible.
The sleeves of the robe hung emptily at her sides, lower than they would normally be. Kimberly stepped silently to the couch and sat down, dumbfounded and discouraged beyond words. It was a minute longer before she noticed Bennett standing in the kitchenette. He was stirring a pot of something that was steaming hot and looking right at her, or through her as the case would be.
"Good morning."
He grinned a grin that gave her reassurance, against what she wasn’t yet sure. She weakly replied:
"It’s not morning, is it?"
"Not quite. You’ve been asleep for a while. A couple of days, actually."
"It feels like a year."
She pulled the lapels of the robe open and stared down through her chest into the bottom of her seat.
"I see that I’ve left us again in my sleep."
"More than that. I think it’s the reason for your little nap. Here, I made some soup for you. You’ve lost a lot of nutrients."
Bennett poured her a bowl. The spoon lifted a small amount of soup into the air and poured it into the neck of the robe, where it disappeared from immediate view. After a few sips, she felt her energy returning. Her posture returned somewhat, which Bennett took as a cue to start the conversation rolling.
"Your becoming visible...and then invisible again...we can be reasonably sure it’s a hormonal thing. The strain of doing both in less than 24 hours took a lot out of you, enough to put you out of commission for a couple days. We’ll have to be more careful next time."
He turned a little red. "Next time?"
"Next time we have sex. Your invisibility has a weird on-off switch."
"That would explain some things. Like why my libido seems to be off the charts since the accident."
"It is?"
"I keep forgetting how little we really knew each other before I came here. Yes, it is. At first, I attributed it to walking around naked all the time--kind of a voyeuristic thrill. I guess it’s not me at all, though. It’s just my new biology. I should get used to being in heat."
"It may very well just be you. Don’t jump to any conclusions. Besides, if a healthy sex drive is the only biological price you pay for control over your invisibility, it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world."
"Of course you’d say that. You have an invisible girlfriend and all she wants to do is screw. You’re living every guy’s dream."
"Trust me, bagging a woman who’s compelled by her body to do it isn’t the most cherished prize I could ask for."
She moved over to him and hugged him tightly.
"That isn’t it at all. It’s you, not just that you’re here. You know that, right?"
"I know."
"When I became visible again, it...hurt. A lot. More than I let on. It’s not exactly what I would call ‘control.’"
"I’m working on it, Kimberly. I’m not going to stop."
"Good."
* * *
Kimberly didn’t want to go through the pain of another change so soon, so she resigned herself to invisibility for a while. Bennett tried to treat her differently than before. She was less of a project now and more of a girlfriend. At Bennett’s suggestion, she tried to live as normal a life as possible, even wearing a full set of clothes in the house.
One of his other suggestions struck her as being long overdue, so she and Bennett went to the library to find out what the world had made of her disappearance. She had shed her thick winter wardrobe in the car--they parked in an isolated corner of the garage to spare the public the view of a bra and pair of panties uncomfortably wriggling in midair. She got them off after a few tight moments and they made their way to the periodicals.
The room was full but not crowded--Kimberly hugged tight to Bennett to avoid passersby until they found a carrel against the wall, where she could position herself outside of the foot traffic. He turned on the machine and started a regional search. There were several articles that mentioned Kimberly’s name--Bennett was about to hit the enter key when he was jostled by a teenager who had obviously been smoking pot in a nearby area. Bennett reached out his arm to steady himself and felt it stop against Kimberly, a foot short of the wall. Her body was warm and soft and he wanted to leave his hand to linger, but she gently (and silently) brushed it away.
The newspapers had indeed taken notice of her accident, taking up a few columns in the Metro section on a strange industrial accident and a missing scientist. There was concern for her safety, as well as that of the building, culminating in a month-long search that turned up nothing. Her car and home abandoned, credit cards and bank accounts frozen and unused, no witnesses at airports or bus terminals, no friends contacted since. The search remained open, but hope had long since faded.
Kimberly felt sad for a moment, unsure if this was good or bad news. Certainly it could be good, as it meant there was probably nobody looking for her. On the other hand, she was officially dead to the world. She whispered to Bennett.
"I guess that’s it. I’m really gone."
The temptation to hold her was enormous, but it would be easily noticed and Kimberly could be easily trapped in the small room. Instead, she tapped him on the shoulder, signaling her desire to leave.
It was dark when they left the library, and all warmth had gone with the daylight. The moment they stepped out the door, Bennett saw the outline of Kimberly’s lungs form in midair. The mist was quickly exhaled and replaced by another visible breath. Bennett got chills, and not from the cold.
"Come on, we’d better hurry."
Kimberly ran ahead of him, kicking small amounts of dust into the air with each step. They made it to the car, Bennett’s keys at the ready. He plunged it into the lock at the exact instant he heard Kimberly.
"Oh!"He heard something hit the roof of the car and looked up--Kimberly’s breath was no longer visible across from him. Bennett instinctively sprinted around the car, but tripped on nothing and fell to the ground with a thud. He rolled over and felt Kimberly lying beside him on the concrete. Obviously, it was her unseen form that he had tripped over.
"Kimberly? Can you hear me?"
He ran his hands over her naked body to check for any bleeding. It was only when her reached her right thigh that he saw it.
A red dart, hanging in space, quivering with Kimberly’s breath. Bennett’s eyes opened in horror. He spun around in time to catch a glimpse of a laser sight dancing on the other side of the garage. He saw it move, then a reflection off some sort of lens in the dark, then darkness itself.
He passed out without even another thought.
* * *
It was when Bennett heard the hum of fluorescent lights that he knew he was in trouble. Nothing good had ever happened to him under fluorescent lighting and plenty of bad, so whatever he did, he was going to wait as long as possible to open his eyes.
How long had he been out for? There was an ache in his shoulder where he was willing to bet the dart struck. Whatever they tipped it with was powerful stuff, he thought. Moving felt like an impossible dream. Then he remembered Kimberly and his energy returned.
"Kimberly?" There was no answer.
Bennett’s eyes fluttered open. He wasn’t wearing the clothes he had been wearing the night of the attack. It was some sort of hospital gown with long sleeves that went all the way down to his ankles. The room he was in appeared featureless. There was one door with no window and a tiny air vent in the middle of the ceiling. The walls were seamless and sterile, with no signs of age or settling. The cot he had been lying on was low, but looked neatly made, as though he hadn’t even been sleeping in it. A stainless steel commode sat in the opposite corner. It didn’t take Bennett long to realize that this was the cleanest place he had even been.
The analysis started immediately. He put his arms out and with careful steps, squared out the room to make sure that Kimberly wasn’t with him, but unconscious. He peered inside the air vent--sure enough, a camera with a fish eye lens covered the room. The cot was too short for him to stand on it and reach anything. He was totally empty handed. So much for analysis. He was going to have to wait for somebody else to make a move.
* * *
Kimberly was standing in the center of an identical room, peering into the lens of her own camera, and she was not happy.
"Let me out of here!"
There was no reply but a faint echo.
She, too, had been issued hospital-like garb. Looking into the camera, she realized that it might be easier to devise a way out of the room if they couldn’t see where she was looking. The arms of the gown reached around and the ties in back undid themselves. The torso tilted forward and the sleeves slithered down her extended arms--the gown fell in a pool at her feet.
"PLEASE PUT THE GOWN BACK ON--NOW."
The booming voice came from a loudspeaker somewhere. She couldn’t see it and the sound seemed to come from all directions. She screamed back at it.
"GO TO HELL!"
She ran into a corner of the room to see if anything followed her. Instead, the voice responded again.
"YOU ARE REQUIRED TO WEAR THE GOWN AT ALL TIMES. PUT IT ON--NOW."
"Take me to see Peter," she said to the camera. This time, there was no answer.
Five seconds later, a hissing noise filled the room and gas spilled from the vent above. Kimberly began to scream as it moved towards the floor. She huddled in the corner, trying to stay under it.
"PETER! WHERE ARE YOU, PETER?"
Kimberly tucked her head down and saw into her own chest--wisps of the bluish gas were entering her lungs. A few seconds after that, and it was all over.
----------------------------------------------
--Click here to read the next chapter.
Back to the Guest Authors section
Back to Main