The Invisible Boy

It didn’t take Jason long to figure out he’d turned invisible overnight. When his mother walked through his bedroom that morning to open the window – as she did every morning, just to let him know he stank now that he was a teenager – she didn’t even look at him. She did look in his direction once, but her gaze went right through him, as if she was admiring the poster of Fergie from the Black Eyed Peas on the wall behind the bed. He even said ‘morning, mum,’ as she walked back across the room, which he never did. And she just kept going through the door, which she didn’t bother to close - it’s not like an invisible boy needs privacy to get dressed.

He could see himself, which was weird. He could see all too clearly the white, freckled skin of his puny arms, and the pasty, speckled flesh of his stomach, slashed with the vicious impression of the waistband of his pyjama bottoms – the label inside them read ‘age 10-11’. He was 13.

He’d first noticed something strange three months before. It had been the day after his father had come home drunk and hit him – usually it was his mother he punched, but this time it had been Jason. His father had crashed into his bedroom, slurring something about a ‘lazy little brat’. Usually it was the ‘stuck up slut’ or ‘the stupid whore’ who took the brunt of his temper, but that night - perhaps because Jason had stood up to him earlier in the evening when he’d tried to force his mother to drink milk three days past its sell-by date – Jason was its focus.

His father had torn him from the bed and slammed him against the wall. His breath stank – not just of booze, but of decay and rot – like the bins smelt after festering for a week when Jason’s mother forgot to put the rubbish out on a Tuesday night. The punch itself hadn’t hurt as much as Jason expected, but when his father finally left, Jason had sobbed for more than an hour, trying to soothe his stinging cheek on the cold side of the pillow.

In the morning, when his mother had come in to open the window, she’d ignored him, just like today. He’d stared at her, touching the swelling on his cheek, waiting for her to comment, but she’d hurried from the room without even glancing at him. Later, he’d become visible again, but the black and red bruising was never mentioned. His father was taken away by the police a week later when neighbours reported the latest attack on his mother. This time she’d taken action to keep him away and he now lived in a hostel somewhere.

Jason believed the invisibility process was now complete, but decided to test out his theory a couple more times before taking any risks with his new state. Firstly, he considered whether or not to get dressed. In films where someone turned invisible, people could still see their clothes. But Jason wasn’t willing to risk exposing himself to his mother. He pulled on a pair of tracksuit bottoms and a t-shirt and headed downstairs to the kitchen, where the table was laid for breakfast. It was laid for two people, with a bowl and a spoon at each place setting and several boxes of cereal and a jug of milk – a jug, mind, not just a two-litre plastic carton like most mornings. His mother was busy fussing around the toaster, trying to retrieve two fat slices of bread that had wedged themselves between the elements. Sitting at the table, shovelling spoonfuls of mushy cereal into his mouth, was Barry Wade.

That Barry Wade from next door was sitting at the breakfast table in his house was bad enough; that he was sitting in a pair of underpants and a loose-fitting, flimsy robe that hardly covered anything, took the situation to entirely new levels of disturbing.

Jason didn’t speak. He didn’t see the point. Neither his mother nor Barry knew he was in the room. Obviously, his clothes were invisible too. His invisibility meant Jason could stare contemptuously at Barry for as long as he wanted without getting told to ‘take a picture it’ll last longer’, which was the kind of line Barry liked to come out with. He never delivered these lines aggressively. He’d always chuckle afterwards and slap Jason across the back before Jason could move out of the way.

Barry wanted Jason to be his buddy, the very idea of which made Jason want to vomit, just as the sight of Barry Wade gulping down Rice Krispies, wearing baggy boxer shorts made him want to puke. The only time Barry had come close to getting angry was when Jason had scratched the side of his car with his door key – the fact that the scratch had formed the words ‘fat fucker’ hadn’t helped.

Jason walked right up to Barry so that there was only a couple of inches between them. He leaned over the table and dipped his finger into his cereal, flicking milk into the hair on his exposed chest.

‘Fat fucker,’ he whispered.

Barry gave a small, startled laugh and tried to wipe the milk away with his hand. He frowned for a moment at the now still surface of the milk in his bowl, then continued to eat.

‘We should drive out to the countryside today,’ he said, as if talking of some mythological land, rather than a few sad fields two miles south of where they lived.

‘Oh yeah, let’s find a nice pub for some lunch,’ said Jason’s mum, dropping the burnt pieces of toast, now retrieved from the toaster, onto a plate and joining Barry at the table. She was wearing a purple satin dressing gown that Jason had never seen before, and her short blonde hair looked remarkably tidy for first thing in the morning.

Jason jumped around the table and whipped a piece of toast from his mother’s plate. She stared open-mouthed at the floating slice for a moment, then picked up the second piece and began to munch on it.

‘We could try the Plough,’ she said to Barry, who appeared not to notice the floating toast either. ‘I like the prawn cocktail there.’

Maybe once he picked things up they became invisible too, thought Jason.

He wondered if the can of paint he’d used to spray ‘paki bastard’ on the local convenience store’s shutters had been invisible to the old couple passing by as he inscribed the classic phrase on the grooved metal. That had been last night, and while the couple had glanced at him, their expressions had quickly flicked from shock and disgust to neutral, gazes fixed straight ahead. Had they seen him – maybe a blurred outline, or perhaps just the can floating, red firing from the nozzle like dragon’s breath?

Mr Patel, who owned the shop, deserved it. He’d threatened to call the police the week before when he’d caught Jason nicking cans of lager. The old bastard had known Jason since he was two-years-old, but he’d still have seen him carted off by the filth – for the sake of a few cans he and his mates wanted for a session over the park.

‘I’ll get dressed,’ said his mother, wiping her thin lips on a paper napkin decorated with reindeer and holly symbols.

‘Well, I’d better get dressed too,’ laughed Barry, indicating his semi-naked state with an effeminate flourish of his hands. He made Jason think of a faded children’s entertainer – the type that was a bit too keen to have a little girl sit on his knee and tell him a story.

Barry and his mother kissed. It lingered too long and when his mother pulled away, clutching her dressing gown at the throat with false modesty, her lips were speckled with bits of cereal from Barry’s mouth.

Jason wanted to hurl again. He headed upstairs.

He hadn’t intended to trash his mother’s bedroom, but when he saw the tousled sheets through the open door and smelt that musty, unpleasant stench of sex, he couldn’t resist. He grabbed the can of spray paint from the bottom of his wardrobe and began to spray the same word over every available surface – every wall, the mirrored doors of her wardrobe, even the windows: ‘Slut’.

She might not be able to see him anymore, but she’d remember he was there after this.

He pulled the sheets from the bed and ripped them, gritting his teeth with the effort, then sprayed the heaped quilt with the remaining paint, so that it resembled a slaughtered sea creature dragged onto shore. Or his mother lying crushed on the living room floor, blood pouring from her nose, arm twisted at an ugly angle behind her back.

He heard his mother and Barry climbing the stairs, laughing. Jason realised it was the first time he’d heard such genuine laughter from his mother in years. He looked at the devastated room and felt his stomach lurch with guilt.

He saw the accusing word scrawled across the room and felt like crying. It was the shock of looking at the mirrored doors of the wardrobe that stopped the tears. All he saw reflected behind the emblazoned word ‘slut’ was the overturned room.

The process was complete.