Page 10 of The Invisible Roommate

In the kitchen, a green robe and a pair of glasses with thick lenses hung in midair as if hoisted by fishing wire attached to the ceiling. Gerard didn’t move, didn’t blink, didn’t even breathe, despite his impulse to rub his eyes, which he assumed were playing tricks on him.

At his back, the door swung closed, causing him to jump and the robe to move. On the counter, a steaming mug of tea sat steeping. The fragrance of primrose peppered the air.

Should he yell for help or flee for the mainland?

His voice was caught in his throat, and he had already fled once. If he had a single shred of pride left, he was going to fight to keep it.

Aiming for bravery, he held up the rosary as if it were a knight’s shield.

“Don’t you dare scream,” said a deep, disembodied voice that Gerard felt in the very tips of his toes. Where a neck should be, all he saw was the far wall. Where hands should be, all he saw was cluttered counter.

His knees knocked together in fright. If he moved quickly enough, could he open the holy water and spray the robe with it? If it was a fallen angel as Father Daniels had suggested, the water would burn it, right? Send it back to wherever it came from?

“G-ghosts ca-can wear cl-clothes?” he asked senselessly instead. His fear maximized and his arm hairs stood on end.

Silence was a giant’s palm on the roof pressing all the air out of the room. The belt on the robe unknotted, but only for a moment, giving Gerard a glimpse of the nothingness housed inside the silky fabric. He shuddered at the unexplainable sight, or rather, lack thereof.

“Ghosts do not exist,” the voice claimed, clearly aggrieved and with ample superiority. “Scientifically, they are nothing more than misinterpretations of sensory input. Only a fool would believe in them.”

“Th-then what are y-you?” Gerard asked, bypassing the obvious insult. The internet had already called him worse—untalented, ugly, egotistical—too many times to count. Fool couldn’t hurt him.

“That’s none of your business,” the voice snapped.

“Y-you’ve made it my business. You’re in m-my apartment, and you’re drinking my tea!” Gerard protested. Though he had to second-guess himself there, because how could one drink without a mouth?

“You’re disrupting important scientific work with your mere presence!” the voice barked.

Gerard reared back, a smidge of his fear morphing into anger. His whole life he’d been the youngest of three—the baby, the tagalong, the nuisance. Not to mention his atypical qualities, which only made him feel more othered. He refused to be an outcast on Iping. In the apartment he paid the rent for.

“What are you?” Gerard demanded to know by straightening his spine and matching the floating robe’s volume and cadence. Mimicry came naturally after a lifetime of adopting the mannerisms of others in desperate attempts to fit in.

“I,” the voice continued in a lower, slower tone, “am a man.”

“You can’t be…” Gerard marveled.

“I’m an invisible man.”

“Im-impossible,” Gerard said. Logic lost all potency.

The robe floated closer, pulled as if by a hidden puppet master. Behind those hovering glasses, Gerard couldn’t see a face, which made the scene more menacing and surreal.

“Here—touch me if you don’t believe me,” the so-called invisible man dared.

Gerard pressed his back to the door, hand frantically reaching behind him for the doorknob, which seemed to have disappeared right when he needed it most. “No, I— No!”

The enchanted sleeve inched closer. It was hollow, tubular as if something were truly inside, holding it up. “Do it! Touch me. Then try and tell me my discovery is impossible.”

Droplets of spit flew from an imperceptible mouth and landed on Gerard’s cheek. Saliva without a mouth. Glasses without eyes. Someone had to be there, and Gerard had clearly struck a nerve with that someone.

Seeing no other option but to appease the unseeable for fear of its wrath (he’d witnessed what it had done to the bathroom mirror), he waved his hand in front of him, expecting to swipe his palm through thin air. Instead, he smacked what felt like invisible flesh.

“What the—” Gerard shrunk away even more, muscles tight and mind in pieces.

He shut his eyes against the room, squeezed the beads of the rosary still in his hand, and prayed—something he hadn’t done in many years—that the robe and glasses would vanish. That this would be nothing more than a nightmare.

God left him on read.

Uncertain what else to do, Gerard reached out again and was met with the undeniable feel of human skin and solid bone. A small sound akin to a gasp emanated from the invisible person. Gerard swore he felt sudden goose bumps.