Seen

The transition was so subtle that nobody, not even myself, noticed that I was vanishing until I was completely gone.

In the beginning, days blended together: sleep, work, sleep, with patches of eating and socializing when I could fit in the time. Artificial light hounded me as I moved from subway to corporate office and then back again, and by the time I had noticed my shadow had stopped showing up to work with me, it was already too late to retrieve the soap to stick it back on.

Some of my coworkers commented about my missing follower by the water cooler, but by the end of the week, wonder and amazement was replaced by the drudgery of Excel sheets and emails. And really, what point did a shadow have in the big scheme of profit margins between PHARMACY A (Otuka) $45,343,235 and PHARMACY B (Blackrat) $13,423,656?

I let my beard grow out soon after. “A style change,” I told my coworkers. In truth, I no longer knew where to place the razor against my skin, as I had woken up without a reflection over the weekend. How odd it was to look in the mirror to see nothing but the back wall of my bathroom as I brushed my teeth, you ask? Well, I stressed about it, and my hair fell out in clumps until my fingers ran smooth over my bare scalp.

Work didn’t appreciate my attitude after that. Called in by my boss for a breach of dress code, he informed me that if I didn’t stop leaving hair all over the office and trim my beard so that I didn’t look like a train yard hobo he would have to let me go.

I tried, but the results made me look like a plague victim, according to Jenny in Accounting, and I was given a warning and a leave of absence.

My appearance waning, the shock cored me from inside out. My mother thought it was depression and tried to check me into a clinic. I knew it wasn’t--as my emptiness wasn’t just an absence of something, but absence itself, as though a black hole had opened up and swallowed my organs. Perhaps it had; I no longer had the need to eat or urinate, and I no longer felt a pulse each time I checked. And I checked often.

When my hands began passing through doorknobs, I sought help. Five specialists couldn’t diagnose me, and eventually refused to return my panicked calls.

In fact, even the barista at the coffee shop stopped taking my orders, no matter how much I waved and screamed at him. The other patrons ignored me--embarrassed for me, I had thought, but now I realize that they just hadn’t seen me at all. I had thought myself dead at that point, as that would be the logical conclusion, but I still aged--liver spots eventually sprouted on my wrinkled hands, and varicose veins cut rivers through my shins.

So I wander the streets as part of the crowd. You may have caught a glimpse of me. Perhaps I was the man in the tan trench coat checking his watch on his way to the office. Maybe I was the person with their neck bent, absorbed in their smart phone, the tourist on the sidewalk who moved one step slower than the crowd, or the gentleman on the park bench surrounded by a flock of pigeons. Or perhaps I was behind you, and when you turned to look, I wasn’t there.

I am here.

Somebody please see me.