My Invisible Lover

by Jamie Athelstan

  “What the hell are you talking about?” Jada asked, fishing in her handbag for her phone. She was ready to call the police again, even if they did think she was crazy.

  “I know what he told you, but he twisted it,” the man said. “Garrett is… really persuasive. He told the truth, just changed it around. I came to your apartment to stop him. He’s the one that has been attacking all of those other girls. Please, can we talk about this? I’d like to explain everything.”

  “I think I’ve heard enough,” Jada snapped, dialing three numbers on her phone and holding it up to her ear.

  The blond man stuttered for a moment, holding up his hands to try and placate her, but she was already listening to the voice in her ear instead. “I need the police,” she said, fixing him with her eyes so that he could see how serious she was.

  He seemed to give up, under the power of that gaze; he stopped protesting, and simply hung his head for a moment. He listened while Jada gave the details of her location, and he even flinched slightly when she told them that she was being followed by a crazy attacker.

  The dispatcher reassured her that someone was on the way, and Jada half-smiled. It was a crooked kind of victory smile, the kind that said she hadn’t let him beat her.

  She turned to glance out into the street, to the cars passing by, although she knew realistically that the police wouldn’t arrive this quickly. Then she turned back, and –

  He was gone.

  Chapter Five

  “He was here,” Jada insisted, sighing. “I spoke with him. He was trying to tell me some crazy story about his brother – the guy who broke into my apartment. But he had the mark on his arm. Don’t you see? They must have both broken in.”

  “What a coincidence that, on both occasions, these two men you described had managed to vanish into thin air before we arrived,” one of the officers said. He had a sarcastic edge to his tone and a sour look on his face. Jada didn’t like him.

  She hadn’t liked him when he had come to her apartment the first time, either. The same two officers that had come before were here again, and although the second man seemed nicer, he also had an impatient air about him.

  “It’s not like I had any way of stopping them from leaving,” Jada said, a little sullen. “They’re big guys. I couldn’t exactly tackle them to the ground.”

  “Look,” the nice officer sighed, flipping his notebook closed and stepping closer to Jada. “I’m sorry, ma’am. We had a look around, and we couldn’t find any evidence of these alleged attackers – on either occasion. Is it possible that you’ve been watching the news too much, maybe working hard and not sleeping enough, and this is all the product of an overactive imagination?”

  Jada scoffed, throwing her hands up in the air. “So, you don’t believe me at all, now?” she said, disbelief coloring her words.

  The sarcastic officer practically rolled his eyes and started to reach for his radio. The nice officer sighed, however, and adopted a more sympathetic look. “The truth is, we did believe you. While I was asking you about the encounter and brought you up here to your apartment to be more comfortable, my colleague here was investigating the area. He searched on foot and found no sign of the man you described.”

  “But -” Jada started, only to be cut off by the officer’s raised hand.

  “Of course, that’s normal. We wouldn’t expect him to stay on the scene after you called us. However, my colleague did notice a CCTV camera which covers the entrance to your apartment building,” the officer said. “So, he was able to take a quick look at the footage.”

  “So, you found him?” Jada asked, a little excited. Maybe there was a little hope, after all.

  The officer cleared his throat, a little uncomfortable. His unimpressed colleague moved forward to hand him a phone, and he started pressing the screen for a moment in silence. Then, he stepped forward and held it out for Jada to see.

  “There’s an online cloud back-up of the feed, which we’ve been granted access to,” he said, clearly a little uncomfortable. “This is the footage from around the time that you placed the call to us.”

  Jada watched the screen, open-mouthed. She could see the street, plain as day, and herself in detail. Though the resolution wasn’t perfect, she could see her own face clearly enough to identify that her mouth was moving and her eyes looking across to the left.

  To an empty space.

  There was no one else there.

  “Ma’am, I’d like to respectfully suggest that you get yourself in to see a doctor,” the officer said, gently. “We won’t charge you with wasting police time, but if this becomes a habit, we may have no choice. Please, get yourself treated before this becomes a bigger problem.”

  Jada gaped at him. She had nothing to say. Slowly, she sank down onto her couch and buried her head in her hands.

  Jada called into work the next morning and invented a migraine. She couldn’t face it. Everything was going around and around in her head, and none of it made any sense. The attack in the middle of the night. The disappearing men, the arm that came out of nowhere, Garret in her apartment. The blond man, whose name she still didn’t know, appearing in front of her apartment. The police. The camera footage. All of it. Was she really going mad?

  It felt like it, wrapped up in an old ratty cardigan and shivering on the couch. She had cried for most of the night until her eyes were red and puffy. What was going on? She could have sworn all of it really happened, but then – for a moment, she had believed it was a dream – could that have been true all along?

  Around midday, she decided it was time to pick herself up. Jada had never been the kind of woman to sit around feeling sorry for herself – usually after a harsh break-up, she had been known to viciously spring clean her room or apartment and throw out half of what she owned, then emerge gloriously like a phoenix from the wreckage. Action was her forte. Sitting around and moping was not.

  “Come on, Jada,” she muttered to herself. “Get going.”

  There were a missed call and three messages from Maya on her phone; she ignored them. Maya would want an explanation, and although she was done with feeling sorry for herself, she wasn’t quite past being fragile yet. Maya would understand. That was what friends did. She wouldn’t mind being ignored for a little while.

  Jada rubbed her eyes in the bathroom mirror and splashed cold water on her face to get rid of that tired feeling on her tear-soaked skin. A few layers of foundation and concealer later, and her eyes looked almost normal again. A clean shirt, a nice jacket, and a pair of jeans, and she felt just about human. Sane. Stable. Real.

  She picked up a bright blue purse from the coffee table, already packed with her essentials, and took a deep breath. It was just going outside; it wasn’t like she was going into a war zone. Everything would be fine.

  She repeated that to herself in her head as she left her apartment and locked the door, and as she walked down the corridor, and as she went down the stairs to the lobby. It only worked to help her gulp down her fear and actually step outside again.

  Once she was out in the open air, things didn’t seem quite so bad. Jada headed to the nearest store to pick up some groceries and briefly considered buying a new dress from her favorite little boutique a short walk away. But she thought better of it; she was supposed to be down with a migraine, after all. She had enough power dresses in her wardrobe if she needed a pick-me-up.

  As she drew nearer to her apartment, she stopped dead in the street.

  He was there again. Leaning against the side of the door. He looked up, and his blue eyes met hers.

  He came back.

  Jada fought the urge to scream and run, then and there. For a second, she couldn’t think of what to do. Was he real? Was he truly there? Could anyone else even see him, or was this all in her head?

  If it was all in her head, she could just walk straight past him. Nothing would happen.

  But if he was real…

  Jada hesitated for a moment, frozen. What shou
ld she trust? Her own eyes and mind or technology? Herself or the evidence?

  A beggar was wandering slowly along the sidewalk, clutching a bottle in a brown paper bag and staggering from time to time. He mooched past Jada, barely glancing up at her, and held out a hand.

  “Spare any change?” he asked.

  Like that, the spell of the blond man’s eye contact was broken. Jada dropped her gaze to the beggar and shook her head, feeling like a rabbit caught in the headlights. At least she had her hands full with her new groceries. It wasn’t like she could reach into her pocket, even if she had any change to give him.

  He stumbled sideways, away from her, and then towards the doors of the apartment building. “Spare any change?” he said again, his voice distinct even though his back was now towards her.

  “Sorry,” the blond man said, raising empty hands to show he had nothing to give. The beggar stumbled on, obviously disappointed.

  Jada released a breath she didn’t know she had been holding. The beggar had asked him for change. He had seen him.

  He was real.

  Jada hefted her bags with a new kind of determination, balancing them both in one hand for a moment while she fished around inside one of them with the other. She walked towards him now, purposefully, no longer letting fear hold her back. Now it was like a blaze of anger, pushing her onwards.

  “I told you to leave me alone,” she said, reaching just about what she judged to be the right distance from him.

  “I just want to protect you,” he said before his expression changed completely.

  In the split-second, before she pressed it down, he must have recognized the pepper spray canister she had pulled out of the bag of groceries. It had been almost an afterthought, a bit of reassurance that she would be protected. Ironic, really. He had just a moment to realize that she didn’t need any more protection before it hit him in the face.

  He cried out, rubbing his eyes furiously, and Jada took the opportunity to give him a good shove away from the door. She dropped the spray back into her bag and grabbed her keys instead, practically sprinting inside the apartment door and pushing it shut behind her so that it would lock.

  She stood panting inside the lobby, feeling a rush of relief and pride that she had fought back mixed with the queasiness of fear and adrenaline. She looked through the glass panels back to the sidewalk, hoping to watch him suffer, but she only felt the barest flicker of surprise to see that he was no longer there.

  Chapter Six

  The incident with the pepper spray made Jada feel a lot better. Even if the police didn’t believe her, at least she knew that she could protect herself. The pepper spray took pride of place in her purse as soon as she had calmed down enough to put it away, and even holding the cold canister in her hand made her feel safer.

  Jada slept easier that night. She had a hard time telling Maya that everything was fine at work; her best friend could always tell when she was lying, and besides, it wasn’t exactly usual for her to get a migraine like that. Still, Maya gave up teasing her – maybe she could see exactly how shaken Jada had been, underneath.

  “You can always talk to me if you need to,” she had whispered, sliding off her perch on the side of Jada’s desk to head back to her own.

  Having a friend like Maya meant always knowing someone had your back. Jada smiled gratefully, even if she wasn’t ready to talk about it. There was so much to process. She barely knew what to think of it all herself.

  Maybe it was the pepper spray in her bag that gave her a sense of overconfidence as she walked back towards her apartment building after leaving work. Whatever it was that had her forgetting to worry, had betrayed her. Jada was almost at the door, rummaging around in her bag for her keys before she realized that he was there again.

  “Hey,” he said weakly, holding up his open hands to show he meant no harm. His eyes still had a little lingering redness about the edges.

  Jada froze for a second, then started rooting furiously around in her bag for the pepper spray. She wasn’t going to give him another chance.

  “Okay, please don’t spray me again,” the blond man said, starting to back away a little. “I’ll keep my distance, okay? Please just hear me out.”

  Jada scoffed loudly, finally finding the cool metal of the canister in the bottom of her bag.

  “Please! I wouldn’t have come back here and risked getting that stuff in my eyes again if it wasn’t important,” he said, stressing the last word so hard it almost made her stop. “I just want to help you. I know you’ve noticed some strange things. Like the camera footage. The police can’t help you, but I want to keep you safe.”

  Jada waited for a moment, thinking. Her phone was in her hand, the pepper spray right in her grasp. She could call the police right now, and he would most likely be gone by the time they arrived. Or she could spray him in the face again and get away from him, at least for another day. On the other hand, she wanted some answers. She didn’t want him showing up every single time she came home. She wanted this to be over.

  “The camera footage?” she repeated, drawing out the pepper spray so that he could see she was still ready to fight back.

  “I didn’t show up, did I?” he said. “But you’re seeing me now. You know I’m real. I can explain all of that.”

  Jada bit her lip momentarily, caught between mistrust of him and her need for an explanation. Above all, she didn’t know who she could trust, and she certainly didn’t want to be alone with this man. Not even if he said he was there to help.

  “There’s a café just over there,” she said, nodding in a direction over his left shoulder. “We can talk. But I’m not going anywhere with you alone.”

  They took a seat in a quiet corner of the café, in a booth where they had a better chance of not being disturbed. Garrett’s brother went up to the counter and bought them both a coffee, bringing the hot cups back to their table and sitting opposite her.

  “My name is Luke,” he started, staring down at his coffee as if it was giving him the answers. “Garrett is my brother, as you already know. He’s… crazy, I think. Out of control. He’s the one behind the recent attacks.”

  “And you just let him do it?” Jada interjected. She was still trying to decide whether she could believe a word he said.

  “No!” Luke replied forcefully, casting a quick glance around to check that no one was listening before carrying on. “I’ve been trying to stop him. I’m probably the only one who can.”

  “What do you mean?” Jada asked. “The police are already investigating him. They’ll catch him as soon as he makes a mistake.”

  “They won’t be able to catch him,” Luke said, leaning forward to look her in the eye. “It doesn’t matter how many times he slips up. How much DNA he leaves behind. They could even lay a trap and catch him in the act, and it still wouldn’t matter. They won’t stop him.”

  “Of course, they will,” Jada argued, shaking her head. “If they have evidence, he won’t get away with it. They’ll stop him by putting him in jail. Not even Ted Bundy got away with it forever.”

  Luke shook his head back, a fierce look in his eyes. “Nothing can stop him. Nothing and no one, except me.”

  “What makes you so sure about that?” Jada asked. She wanted to mock him, to tell him he was stupid. But there was something about the way he said it that made her believe him.

  Luke sighed and looked out of the window for a moment. Then, as if he had come to a decision, he looked back at her with a new determination. “Look at my arm,” he said.

  Jada was about to ask why again, but there was something in his gaze that made her eyes drop down to his arm. The one with the scratch.

  For a moment, there was only table.

  His arm was gone – totally gone.

  She blinked, trying to clear her eyes, and when she looked again, the arm was back.

  She looked up at his face, not sure of what she had seen. The expression he gave her was completely solemn.

&nb
sp; His whole arm had disappeared and reappeared in front of her eyes.

  Chapter Seven

  “How the hell did you do that?” Jada demanded, staring at his arm.

  Luke made a shushing motion, glancing around to be sure that no one else had noticed. “It’s hereditary,” he said.

  “You have the hereditary power to make your arm disappear?” Jada asked, a little louder than she probably should have. Her tone made it clear enough that the explanation was far from satisfactory.

  “Not just my arm,” Luke said, leaning forward and lowering his voice. “My whole body. I have the power of invisibility. Garrett, too. That’s how he was able to get away from every crime scene. From you.”

  “And this isn’t going viral because…?” Jada prompted, still with a heavy dose of sarcasm. Right now, it was the only way she could process what was happening.

  “We’re kept apart,” Luke said, looking down into his coffee mug with an expression that might have been sadness. “Those of us with powers are raised apart from those that don’t, so we can’t give the game away. We’re supposed to stay away as adults, too. We don’t show up on camera, so there’s never any footage to get spread around. No one is supposed to know. We don’t know what would happen if people found out. But I guess Garrett broke the rules.”

  “There are more of you?” she asked.

  “I guess. I mean, yes,” Luke said awkwardly, shrugging. “But we don’t see much of each other. I know my parents – well, my Mom had it. My Dad was… normal, like you. There were a couple of other families, kids we had lessons with when we were growing up. But since then, nothing. When you’re like us, you learn to keep to yourself.”

  “Yet you’re risking everything to tell me now,” Jada prompted.

  “It’s necessary,” Luke sighed. “And anyway, it’s not my choice. Garrett made that choice for me when he went after you. I have to stop him. If he hadn’t fought me off, I wouldn’t have to do this.”