The morning sun filtered through the gauzy curtains, painting the bedroom in streaks of gold. Arthur Briggs stirred, his eyelids fluttering open. He yawned, stretched his arms, and swung his legs off the bed. His feet touched the cold hardwood floor, but when he glanced down, he froze.
Where are my feet?
He blinked, rubbed his eyes, and looked again. His legs ended at the ankles, as though someone had erased the rest of his body with a careless swipe. Panic surged through him. He scrambled to the mirror above his dresser, heart thudding like a war drum. The reflection showed an empty room—a neatly made bed, sunlight pooling on the floor, and nothing else. No Arthur.
“This isn’t happening, he whispered, but even his voice sounded hollow, as though the air itself swallowed the words. He reached out to touch the mirror. His fingertips met glass, but there was no hand in the reflection. No face. No him.
The First Hours
Arthur stumbled to the bathroom, tripping over the rug he’d owned for a decade. He turned on the tap, splashed water on his face—or where his face should’ve been—and watched droplets cascade through the air, as if suspended by magic. His toothbrush floated when he picked it up, but he couldn’t see his own grip.
I’m a ghost, he muttered. But ghosts were dead, and Arthur felt very much alive. His stomach growled. His hands trembled. He pinched his invisible arm and yelped.
He dressed mechanically, pulling on a shirt and jeans that hung midair, unsupported by limbs. Invisible or not, he couldn’t wander outside naked. But as he buttoned his shirt, the fabric rippled and settled, still revealing nothing.
What do I do?
The question looped in his mind as he paced the apartment. He called out to his neighbor through the thin walls—“Mrs. Henderson? Can you hear me?”—but received no reply. He threw a coffee mug at the floor. It shattered, and moments later, Mrs. Henderson banged on his door, demanding to know if he was “destroying the place again.
Arthur stood before her, invisible and silent, as she peered into his apartment. Weirdo, she muttered, stomping back to her unit.
The World Unseen
By afternoon, Arthur ventured outside. The streets of his sleepy coastal town were bustling—tourists snapping photos of sailboats, children licking ice cream, old men playing chess in the park. He walked among them, a specter in a denim jacket. No one glanced his way. No one noticed when he swiped a newspaper from a vendor or stepped into a café, the bell jingling for no apparent reason.
He sat at a corner table, watching. A couple argued over burnt toast. A barista scribbled poetry on a napkin. A teenager scrolled through her phone, laughing at a video. Arthur realized, with a pang, how often he’d walked through life similarly unseen. A middle-aged data analyst with no family, no friends who’d call him after work. His coworkers knew his name but not his favorite book. His landlord knew his rent was late but not why.
Invisibility, it seemed, was just an extreme version of his ordinary life.
The Temptation
At dusk, Arthur lurked outside the town’s only bank. The idea had slithered into his mind hours earlier: *If no one can see me, what’s stopping me from taking what I want?*
He waited until the manager left, then slipped inside as a teller closed the vault. The man hummed a Taylor Swift song, oblivious to the door creaking open behind him. Arthur’s breath quickened. Stacks of cash gleamed under fluorescent lights. He could pay off his debts. Buy a house. Finally be someone.
But as he reached for a bundle of bills, his gaze fell on a photo taped to the vault wall—a grinning toddler in a sunflower dress. The teller’s daughter, perhaps. Arthur froze. He thought of his own father, a man who’d vanished long before death, leaving behind unpaid bills and empty promises.
Arthur left the bank, his hands shaking, his pockets empty.
The Connection
Days blurred. Arthur learned to eat unseen (messily), shower unseen (water sluicing through air), and sleep unseen (dreaming of faces he couldn’t recognize). He lingered in the park, listening to snippets of conversations, aching to join in.
One evening, he followed a stray dog—a scruffy mutt with one ear chewed off. The animal sniffed the air, then trotted straight to him, tail wagging. Arthur knelt, tears pricking his eyes as the dog licked his invisible hand.
You see me, don’t you? he whispered. The dog nuzzled his shoulder.
For the first time in weeks, Arthur laughed.
The Revelation
The dog, whom he named Jack, became his shadow. They roamed the docks at midnight, shared stolen hot dogs, and napped under willow trees. But as weeks passed, Arthur noticed changes. Jack began hesitating before following him. His reflection in puddles flickered, like a TV losing signal.
One morning, Arthur woke to a faint outline of his hand against the sunrise. He gasped. By noon, his fingers were fully visible—pale and trembling, but there.
He ran to the mirror, heart racing. Slowly, like ink spreading on paper, his body returned. His gaunt face. His uncombed hair. His eyes, wide with wonder.
When the final speck of invisibility faded, Arthur collapsed to his knees, sobbing. Jack barked, tail thumping against the floor.
The Return
The town noticed his reappearance. Mrs. Henderson accused him of “sneaking around like a burglar.” His boss demanded to know why he’d missed three weeks of work. The bank teller thanked him anonymously for not robbing the vault (Arthur had left a note: *You have a beautiful daughter.
But Arthur was different. He joined the chess games in the park. He memorized the barista’s poetry. He adopted Jack, who slept at the foot of his bed, snoring loudly.
And sometimes, on quiet nights, Arthur would stand before the mirror, trace the edges of his reflection, and whisper, I’m here.
Epilogue
Years later, an old man with a scruffy dog would tell children the story of the Unseen Man—a cautionary tale about loneliness, a celebration of second chances.
But how’d he come back? a girl would ask, clutching her ice cream.
The old man would smile. Some say it was the dog’s love. Others think he just needed to see himself. He’d wink. Me? I think he finally realized being invisible wasn’t the problem. It was believing he didn’t matter.
The children would nod, half-understanding, and race off to play. And the old man would scratch Jack’s ears, grateful for the weight of his own shadow in the sun.
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