u/Extra-Marionberry805

https://www.reddit.com/r/DestructiveReaders/s/qAOCdkfHbg — critique 1384 words

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1m8wQUnH2MX\_2QUAWwfRZ5NoSaWs8A-EvPiBucJ1o5go/edit?usp=drivesdk - My work

All and any critique is welcome! Be harsh!

The man looked down at the toes poking out at the bottom of the bed. They were bright pink and wiggling gloatingly at him, and, although they were connected to the two long mounds under the sheets that seemed to be his legs, they did not appear to be his. Or rather, despite appearances, he did not believe they were. They had almost entirely divorced themselves from their identity as toes, becoming instead ten strange and hairy eyeless monsters dancing at him, when a woman entered the room.

She was in her 30s, but the deep purple crescents under her eyes made her appear much older. Upon seeing the man she pressed her lips hard together and screwed her eyes shut, then when she spoke she spoke not to him but to an apparently very interesting spot on the wall above his head. 

“Darling,” she said, her voice wavering, “Darling, are you feeling any better?”

The man frowned. He was feeling perfectly fine and wasn’t aware that he had ever felt any different. 

“I’m great. These weird little creatures at the end of my bed have been getting on my nerves a bit–” He gestured to his toes, “but I s’pose they’re harmless enough.”

The woman closed her eyes again, she nodded her head very slowly, angling it away from him like she was turning her face from a very bright and painful light. 

“Sorry Miss, uh… who are you?”

The words hit her like a slap in the face. She brought her hand to her mouth and let out this strange, guttural sob that almost folded her at the middle, making her whole body rock with the force of it. Then she shook her head rapidly, took one huge breath out, straightened, turned, and left the room. A little sliver of gold on her left hand glinted as she went. 

The man sensed he should be moved in some way by this display. He had never before witnessed such emotion– and over what? Him asking her name? Perhaps he already knew but had forgotten. 

He felt a flicker of guilt stir in his chest, but it passed quickly like a wave lapping against a distant shore. He resolved to go back to sleep.

As he slept, muffled voices drifted in and out of the darkness, fragments of words that he couldn’t quite make out.

“Going on about his toes…lost it…hospital…completely mad”

“Who’s completely mad?” he asked into the void.

He woke up to the monotonous beeping of a heart monitor. His room, with its familiar comforts, had melted away. He was now somewhere bright white that smelt like laundry detergent, as comforting as purgatory. Where his desk had been there now sat a huge metal machine, grotesque and inhuman in its amalgamation of wires and screens. His beautiful bay windows with their soft velvet curtains had been replaced with a porthole and a steel cage. The carpet was laminate. The mattress cover was tarpaulin. His silken sheets now crinkled when he moved like tissue paper. 

He was in hospital. 

Was he hurt? He didn’t feel hurt. Was he mad? No he was perfectly sane, he was...

He had forgotten. He didn’t know who he was. He didn’t know what he had been doing. He didn’t know why he was here. 

Fear reared its ugly head. Not an acute fear, there was no dropping of his heart or constricting of his throat, just a dark cloud that settled into the corners of his mind. It was like stirring slightly from a bad dream, when you feel around blindly in the covers, aware, for a fighting second, that you’re on solid ground, before slipping back into the land of the unconscious. 

The man let himself fall back again. 

In another room two men dressed in white sat at a table, one was reading to the other from a clipboard.

“Patient 32, Mr Edgar Othelswaite. Seems to be experiencing acute psychosis, symptoms have been worsening over the past month, now unable to recognise close familial relations and has apparently lost all sense of self.”

“Medicated?”

“He’s been pumped with anti-psychotics since he’s been here. The psychiatrist has tried to talk to him as well but no luck.”

The doctor looked up from his clipboard, an odd, far away look in his eyes.

“There’s something stranger too. Throughout his decline he’s been increasingly fascinated by his toes–”

“His what?”

“His toes. At first it looked like a sort of localised derealisation, but we’ve taken a toenail sample and have detected within it a… a sort of parasite. Cells from an animal that don’t resemble anything I’ve seen before, and whatever it is seems to have gotten into the flesh too.” 

When the man came back to he was on a metal table with no sheets at all, his body laid bare before him like a slab of meat on a dining table. It was limp and fleshy, oddly devoid of colour against the glinting metal.

The two doctors stood over him talking quietly. He wanted to ask them what was going on but his mouth was slack.

One of the doctors waved someone in from the door. It was a short woman wearing pristine blue scrubs and holding something with both hands behind her back. Her teeth were clenched causing little hollows to form either side of her jaw, and though she looked at him on the table she did not meet his eyes. He became acutely aware of his heart beat in his skull. 

“Are you sure this is necessary, Doc?” she said when she got to the bed.

“It’s the only chance we’ve got.”

She frowned at him but nodded. Making her way to the bottom of the bed. As she walked around the object cast a dark shadow over him, short at first, then reaching longer and longer until it spanned the whole room. As he followed it desperately with his eyes he saw that it ended in a long, menacing point.

 Before she bent over his legs, positioning the blade above them, waiting for the signal to strike, the man caught one last glimpse at what he was now more sure than ever were his toes.

The man looked down at the toes poking out at the bottom of the bed. They were bright pink and wiggling salaciously at him, and although they were connected to the two long mounds under the sheets that seemed to be his legs, they did not appear to be his. Or rather, despite appearances, he did not believe they were.

He continued watching his toes wiggle as if they were an entirely independent entity for some time. They had almost entirely divorced themselves from their identity as toes, becoming instead ten strange and hairy eyeless monsters dancing gloatingly at him, when a woman entered the room.

She was in her 30s, and had firmly set wrinkles stemming from the corners of her eyes that suggested a lifetime of smiling, but her cheeks were wet with tears. She hunched over in the doorway, her body making little jerks into itself every now and again, coinciding with these strange little sobs that seemed to come from somewhere deep in her stomach. She looked as if she was fighting against some unseen parasite that was trying to fold her at the middle, and though the man sensed he should be moved in some way by her pain, he contemplated her instead with a sort of detached interest.

“Darling,” she said, her voice wavering as she spoke, “Darling are you feeling any better?”

The man frowned. He was feeling perfectly fine and wasn’t aware that he had ever felt any different. In an absence of anything else to say he began telling her about the monsters at the end of the bed pretending to be his toes. She let out a little shriek, doubled over grasping her stomach, and then ran out of the room.

It was very odd, thought the man, that this strange woman was so upset by his story about the toes. He felt guilt stir up in him, but it passed quickly like a wave lapping against a distant shore. He resolved to go back to sleep.

Some hours later he woke again to the sound of hushed voices outside of his door. They were muffled, but he did catch a few words.

“Going on about his toes…lost it…hospital…completely mad”

“Who’s completely mad?” he asked into the emptiness of his room.

There was no response, but the voices did stop after that, and he let himself drift back into sleep.

When he woke again he was in a different room. It was smaller than the one before, and much more austere. Where the old oak bookshelf had been, there was now a funny looking computer that had all sorts of wires coming off of it, one of which reached to a bandage around his wrist. The machine beeped as well, an annoying, rhythmic beep that seemed to hang in the air around him. For the first time, he felt a little scared.

Then he remembered the voices and the crying woman. What had they said? Something about someone going mad. They could not have been talking about him, could they? He did not feel mad. He was perfectly in his right mind. He was…

Well, who was he?

He looked down at his body, now swaddled in bright white sheets that crinkled when he moved like tissue paper. For a second he felt as if he was a parcel. No. He was a man. A man who..? But he couldn’t quite remember. He must have had a name, and a job, and he felt as though he had lived an ordinary life. What it consisted of, however, seemed just beyond his reach.

Suddenly he remembered the toes. Yes, that was right, before this he had spent a long time looking at his toes. Before that, however, still blurred into obscurity. He could make out vague shapes of who he was and what he might have been doing, tall brown office buildings that towered above him and the various clicks of keyboards and traffic signals, but none of it was quite in focus.

To jog his memory, he decided to go back to looking at his toes. He wriggled his hips around a little in the tight sheets, pushing his legs in and out until he could feel a little opening, then he let them emerge. They startled him in their alienness. They did not seem to be his toes at all.

His breath caught in his throat and he felt a sudden urge to leap out of bed and run away.

Then a nurse came in and flicked a switch on the computer and everything went black. As he drifted into unconscious he heard some words that he could not quite catch the meaning of but that echoed in his mind like a siren’s call.

“He seems to be afraid of his own toes.”

When he came back to he was on a metal table with no sheets at all, his body laid bare before him like a slab of meat on a dining table. It was limp and fleshy, oddly devoid of colour against the glinting metal.

Two men stood over him holding clipboards, talking quietly but pausing to write every now and then. He wanted to ask them what was happening but his mouth was slack.

One of the doctors waved someone in from the door. It was a short woman with bright pink hair, wearing pristine blue scrubs and holding what looked like a large pair of garden shears in both hands. Her teeth were clenched causing little hollows to form either side of her jaw, and though she looked at him on the table she did not meet his eyes.

“Are you sure this is absolutely necessary, Doc?” she said when she got to the bed.

“Positive.” replied one of the men, “The problem clearly stems from the toes.”

She frowned at him but nodded. Making her way to the bottom of the bed. Before she bent over them, hovering the shears around them, waiting for the signal to strike, the man caught one last glimpse at what he was now more sure than ever were his toes.

Olivia hurried along the old alley behind her house to the bus stop, checking the time on her phone every few minutes as if by pure will she might get them to tick backwards. She was late, as she often was, and brimming with anxiety, not least for the scolding words of her tutor, but for the 30 eyes that would follow her into the classroom. The thought of all her classmates staring as she clicked open the door, each observing her pink face from a different angle, made her feel sick to her stomach. She did not like that she, who seemed so all- encompassing and yet contained in the little control centre of her mind, was the subject of other people’s observation.

To distract from this uncomfortable line of thinking, she resigned herself to picking at the skin around her fingernails, which were red raw for being used for this purpose so many time before. Just as the first few specs of blood bloomed up from her right thumb, she reached the busstop.

There were the usual ‘late’ collection of characters, people she’d see only when she was getting the 8:20 bus and not the 8:05. There was Mrs Manly, an old, stooped woman who wore bright coloured knit sweaters and dragged around one of those old-lady shopping trolleys that looked like a squishy suitcase. There was the man in his 30s who always stood a few metres away from the stop, his chin tilted up exposing his prominent Adam’s apple like he was a rabbit sniffing the air for danger. He always wore an immaculately pressed blue suit with a starchy white shirt, and took an awfully long time when getting on the bus, inspecting each seat for chewing gum or other debris before deciding where to plop his tailored bottom. Then there were the three girls from year 9, always stood cramped together peering at each other’s phones or reapplying lipgloss, their well-fitting skirts hiked way above their knees. Olivia didn’t like those girls. They were always gossiping which she claimed to disapprove of, but really they just reminded her of something she had always wanted to be but was not.

As she tucked herself into the bus stop, however, she noticed something seemed off. She mumbled “Good morning.” at Mrs Manly, as she always had to do lest it somehow got back to her mother that she had been ‘rude’, but got no reply. Usually, that would prompt a long and boring monologue from the woman about the declining health of her dog or how the weather had turned miraculously from brilliant sunshine to hurricane Katrina at the exact moment she chose to put her washing out, but today, she seemed not to have noticed Olivia at all.

“Good morning, Mrs Manly.” she tried again, louder this time. Still nothing. Well, at least she’d tried, Olivia thought.

The next odd thing occurred when the bus arrived. It had pulled up right in front of where she was standing so she’d managed to get on first, but the bus driver didn’t even look up.

“One child’s single to Elmstree secondary, please.” she said. But still, nothing.

Perhaps he was wearing headphones, she thought. But just as she opened her mouth to ask again, the rabbity suit man walked right into her, standing with his polished brown dress shoes on her toe.

“Ow!” she said, but he simply frowned, jerking his head slightly as if confused by what had gotten in his way, and adjusted himself so as to be stood right next to her instead of on top of her. He was so close that if she’d have poked out her tongue it would have grazed his cheek.

“What is going on? Why are you ignoring me!”

She could feel the indignation rising in her voice but still, no one seemed to register. It was as if she didn’t exist. It was as if she was invisible.

Well if they were playing some sort of trick, it was their loss because now she was on the bus and still had the two pounds in her pocket for her fare. She would be the one laughing when she was eating a twix from the corner shop.

But the thing is, they weren’t laughing. From her point of view, they were acting exactly as she’d imagine they act on a day when she was early.

She went and sat down in her customary seat at the back of the bus, still completely puzzled. Why would these people, who she only knew by the very small and incidental intersection of their morning commutes, be playing a trick on her?

Suddenly, she felt a sharp pain in her index finger, and was just realising that she had actually dug her opposite nail into the flesh, when a huge shadow fell over her. It was Ms Indigo, a nursery teacher for the pre-school connected to the primary school connected to her secondary school, and her huge floral-patterned arse was descending on Olivia’s face. She was about to sit on her!

Olivia jumped up, knocking poor Ms indigo right onto that same patterned bottom, and ran skittishly right off the bus, barging past a queue of passengers who seemed also not to see her at all. What on earth was happening?

It was completely extraordinary. She could not really be invisible. People don’t just become invisible. Or do they? Children go missing all the time. People seem to disappear from society and you assume they’ve run away or been murdered in a ditch somewhere but what if it’s this? What if against all odds sometimes people really do just disappear?

No. That’s ridiculous. But it would also be ridiculous if Olivia didn’t at least try to test it out.

She was on the high street now, looking searchingly into the eyes of all who passed her to no avail, but that wasn’t enough. She entered the corner shop.

“Excuse me sir, may I have this twix?”

The man behind the counter didn’t look up.

“Excuse me sir??”

She waved her bleeding hand in front of the old man’s face, and still nothing.

“EXCUSE ME?!”

now she leaned forward over the counter, near enough shouting. She reached over and flicked the shop keeper right on his forehead. He finally looked up, but only to rub the spot she had flicked absent-mindedly, staring just above her head without seeing her at all.

She was invisible. She had to be. That was the only possible explanation. A wave of panic took hold of her, it seemed to squeeze like an iron fist in her stomach. Then, suddenly, it released. A slow smile spread across her face.

She was invisible. She was the unobserved observer. The tips of her fingers began to tingle. A warm sensation began to bubble in her skull, a million thoughts of how she might use this terrible, exciting, new ability flooded her mind.

She turned around, grabbed an armful of twix and several packs of gum, and left the shop, hearing the bell ring out behind her.