SFW's FEATURED FICTION
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INVISIBLE PEOPLE
James S. Dorr
Genre:
Horror
Format: PDF
Words:
4,700
Price:
$0.99
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SHORT EXCERPT |
Manuel Peterson got the notice with his paycheck. Termination.
He had lost his job. It happens, he thought, still not quite believing the next Monday morning when he came in to clean out his desk. The people who worked in the office with him--all middle management just as he was--refused to look up as he walked to his cubicle. Refused to speak until he was finished.
Even then, only one touched his hand.
"Tough luck, Manny," Dick Anton said. Peterson nodded and clapped his shoulder, trying to smile. Anton had been with the company eight years, almost as long as Peterson had. Possibly he felt vulnerable too.
After Peterson left the building, he took a five dollar coin out of his pocket, scarcely thinking. He almost dropped it into the hand that suddenly thrust at him out of the air. He squinted. Stared. Began to make out a shadowy figure.
He snatched the coin back. He turned and ran. The air tasted good today--not so thick that it might impair vision. And yet, he thought, he had never seen the beggar before. Only dropped a coin out of habit, every day when he left the office, as if into nothingness.
Anyway, he told himself, he could no longer afford to give his money away. Not even fivers. Not until he had found a new job.
He hefted his briefcase, amazed at the lightness of the few items he'd had to pack in it. He turned toward the monorail station--again out of habit--then changed his mind. The day was a pleasant one for the city. The temperature just right. Perhaps he would walk to his apartment and use the fare money on fax credits.
Start sending out application forms for new employment right away.
Manny Peterson was a businessman. Yet, after eight years with the same company, going on nine, the job he was doing had reached a dead end. His work had never caused any problems but, at the same time, he had not risen into the ten or twenty percent who might have progressed further. And so he had been given terminal notice.
The word was out that he was a loser. For all the forms he had circulated, he received only two interviews in more than a week, and, in both of them, personnel officers only went through lists of set questions as if scarcely caring what talents he might have that set him apart.
Then, ten days after his termination, his wife gave notice.
"Manny, this can't go on," she said one night when she returned from her own job. She sidestepped, avoiding his waiting arms as if she did not recognize him, then sat on the couch while he prepared dinner. "I mean," she said, speaking more toward the TV wall than to him, "it's like we no longer do things together. As if you weren't here. I can't go on like this."
"Honey," he said, "you know the reason we don't go out is that we can't afford it right now." He put two plates down on the living room table. "But I have some feelers--a couple of jobs that should open real soon. Things'll get better."
She ate her food as if she had not heard him. Stood up when she finished. "Manny," she said, "I'm going to the bedroom to pack a few things. I've already arranged to stay with friends tonight, then move into my own apartment first thing in the morning. I'll send for the rest then."
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR |
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James Dorr's new book, DARKER LOVES: TALES OF MYSTERY AND REGRET, is due out from Dark Regions Press (www.darkregions.com) as a companion to his current collection, STRANGE MISTRESSES: TALES OF WONDER AND ROMANCE, while other work has appeared in such venues as ALFRED HITCHCOCK'S MYSTERY MAGAZINE, NEW MYSTERY, ABORIGINAL SF, FANTASTIC, TERMINAL FRIGHT, FUTURE ORBITS, SHADOWS OF SATURN, GOTHIC.NET, CHI-ZINE, MARSDUST, LENOX AVENUE, ENIGMATIC TALES (UK), FAERIES (France), REDSINE (Australia), and numerous anthologies. Dorr is an active member of SFWA and HWA, a semi-professional musician, an Anthony (mystery) and Darrell (fiction set in the US Mid-South) finalist, winner of Best of the Web 1998, a Pushcart Prize nominee, keeper of a gray and black cat named Wednesday (after Wednesday Addams of THE ADDAMS FAMILY and whose favorite toy is a plastic fake spider!), and has had work listed in THE YEAR'S BEST FANTASY AND HORROR eleven of the past fourteen years.
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