Invisible Domain

By Douglas Faber

what do you do when you wake up in an alley, invisible, with no memories of who or what you are? and when you find a flophouse to gather what bits of your life you do remember, fall in love with a beautiful pixie princess? and when you start to research your past together and all heaven and hell would rather you stay under the radar with no memory, is a white wedding still a possibility?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Douglas Faber
• Release date: Nov 25, 2012
• ISBN: 9781301876792

Douglas Faber

I am 54 years old, born in Wisconsin, married a second time to Marie.I have a daughter, Kayleigh, 18 years old, three cats who drive us nuts and are or will be in my books. I love music, reading, writing, cats and my family. I work at Wal-Mart(8 years & counting) and hope to write full time for a living.

Book preview

INVISIBLE DOMAIN

D.D. FABER

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Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2012 Douglas Dean Faber.

Excerpts from Invisible Paradox Copyright 2012 Douglas Dean Faber.

Cover Design Airwalker Crest Copyright 2012 Paul Simmeman

Based on an idea by the Author and a very rough sketch.

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CHAPTER ONE

ONE

People are gonna want information about me, proof, I suppose. Proof that backs up the truth of what I’m about to reveal. Reasons, scientific or otherwise, that will explain, or try to, anyways. Put an official stamp on my condition, my situation or, barring that, an educated guess. So, here goes.

My name is Michael, or Mike, if people need a handle to hold onto. Well, at least it used to be. I don’t know if a Christian or Family name applies to what I am now. It’s all I remember about myself from before whatever the hell happened to me or as I call it, the Incident. Family history is all forgotten, though, Mom, Dad, siblings, cats, gerbils, so on. Job, girlfriends, friends, sports or other interests-all gone, forgotten or, just never existed. I’m only seventy-five percent sure about my name, so let’s move on to something else, okay?

The Incident. Another conundrum, at least to me, maybe not to Others. Most of my best guesses, when I’ve been able to focus long enough to form one, are as follows and mostly come from scattered memories of science fiction shows. One)Governmental scientific coverup[The X-Files];Two)Radiation exposure[comic books]; Three)Accident of birth[not really sure where that one came from; Four) Alien abduction[again, The X-Files]; Five) Well, I don’t really have any more ideas, I’ve run the gamut.

Now, as to what really happened, I don’t know. What I do know is this:

I’m invisible.

Completely.

Permanently? I don’t know. Yet.

All I do know is that I’m going to try like hell to figure it out-somehow.

TWO

In case people’s minds troll the gutter like wind blown trash, I am wearing clothes. Basic tee with short sleeves, blue jeans and the quietest shoes I’ve been able to, um, borrow. I did leave money with a UPC(Universal Price Code) at the cash register. Never could get any individual customer service, though, since the Incident. Oh, plus sunglasses, as the invisibility doesn’t include protection against the weather. In other words, I am corporeal. Solid. So I shop during regular store hours, I try not to set off the alarms and I try not to do anything that would alert the authorities.

Food and eating. Those would be compelling subjects to cover next, perhaps? Or how I even put on clothes without acquiring some degree of visibility or undue attention? Everything I put on or in my body disappears. Takes on a cloak of invisibility, one might say, though technically it stays corporeal, just like myself. Mostly. One has to understand, I have become ethereal, a few times, for a short period of time. The duration being usually an hour or so. I believe that it is willpower that produces these changes to my state of being(and yes, I know I said changes). Another change or side effect of the Incident is that I can also become visible and for a somewhat longer time, give or take, than the other changes. My Life has become a series of ongoing adventures, an experiment in motion, constant motion and I learn as I go. Maybe it was a government conspiracy/shadow science experiment that created me, but it will be my lifes’ work, literally, to understand myself.

THREE

I have listed some of my Wellsian experiences in exploring my limitations and various stages of being or non-being but not all. Some things I will give out as we go along and yes,people may view that as cheating but I view as keeping my own counsel. Secreting an ace up my sleeve, so to speak, keeping something in reserve with other changes I have yet to find out for myself.

I came to myself , as it were, on the fifth of September, finding this out via a discarded newspaper in the alley I woke up in.My next clue was an old drunkard stumbling into my" alley and lurching to an unsteady stop, pissing not six inches away from me. The scraggly haired rascal then ran into me with his willie still outside his zipper and fell back down to the dirty alley cement, muttering profanities with a slurred accent.

He hadn’t seen me. Nor, as he regained his footing shortly thereafter, did he see me then, even as he leaned on my arm as he tried to pass on by. I was slightly bemused, thinking that in his condition, the drunk had just not noticed me but then I was really taken aback as a police officer on horseback trotted past me, unseeing as well. The horse noticed something,snorting and pulling back from where I stood, but the policeman reined in his mount and set off after the stumbling drunk.

This is now the seventeenth of September and as I barely know my own name, have had no luck at all in finding my home, my place of residence. Spending several days in apartment hunting, I finally came across a somewhat dilapidated Apartment complex with very few residents calling it home. I carefully canvassed the lower units(it being a four story building, with a basement)as it seemed I might be in need of a quick exit strategy and lucked out, finding only one set of rooms(#101) occupied.

Good luck doesn’t always last or at least, not for long, as I’ve since found out and as I was moving in some of my necessities, newly purchased, ran full frontal into my idea of a very lovely young woman. She had short red hair in natural curls, lips devoid of psuedo color-all together a very beautiful and sensually attractive young lady. She then stunned me in a vastly different way by apologizing to me. She seemed quite calm about it even while I was searching for the right words to say. Suddenly lacking all powers of simple talking, I finally noticed her eyes and long white cane carefully held in both hands.

Blind.

I was invisible and she couldn’t sense my lack of physical form.

Are you alright, miss? I finally wrestled my tongue back from the proverbial cat.

I’m fine, sir, and you?

Startled, a little, but fine. This is your apartment? #103?

No, I’m in apartment #101. First off the lobby,easiest to find. All things considered, the best apartment of this fine establishment.

Sarcasm becomes you, Miss-?

Helen, Helen Callahan. Pleased to meet you, Mr.-?

Michael, Michael, um, Wells.

As in H.G. Wells?

Helen, as in Hellen Keller?

She smiled, it was full of mischief. My mother had a wicked sense of humor, my father kow-towed to her on everything he believed unimportant, my name being one of many such things. She shifted her hold on her cane and shuffled her feet.

Are you moving in? That’s a somewhat intrusive and flighty young girl question, I suppose, but…

Yes. Yes I am, actually, already,um…Most of my stuff is here, and, um, I just bought some groceries and such. Is there a landlord or a manager here?

Smiling without malice at my verbal miscues, Helen replied, Not in the truest sense of the word. The few people here are visually or otherwise impaired, physically challenged, I suppose the proper term is. So no manager per se, our rents are covered by unseen insurance companies and any repairs that we can’t do on our own, are done mostly by college students from the local community college for class credit and an occasional home-cooked meal.

As I made no verbal reply, she quickly grasped my reasons for asking and continued on with her explanations of the situation the residents were in.

If you’re in need, Michael, feel free to stay. Oddly enough, no-one ever shows up from the insurance company and the students wouldn’t even notice an extra resident or two. Please call me Ellen, not Helen,. I don’t much appreciate my darling mother’s sense of humor.

Helen Ellen Keller?

Like I said, a wicked sense of humor.

Nice to have met you, Ellen.

Likewise, Michael.

I made to scamper off to my appropriated domicile but Ellen stopped me cold with one last bon mot.

Nice cologne, Mr.Wells.

And she was gone, out towards the shabby room loosely referred to as the Lobby. Inside my room at last, I hurried to the bathroom while tossing my bags on a second-hand evil pea green soup colored sofa and sat on the closed toilet lid, trying to catch my breath. I looked up and into the mirror, spying my bedraggled appearance and wondering.

This might just be the ideal hideaway for me. An invisible man in a house of the blind.

FOUR

September Eighteenth

I believe I slept away the next 24 hours. The sun was rising when I met Ellen outside her apartment and it was still rising when I woke from what I had thought had been a short nap. So either the sun was a real slow bastard or see the above. I found out that the closet -sized shower ran lukewarm rust-colored water and stood under the stinging spray for another 24 hours. After towelling off and putting on thrift store clothes…a 1975 Rush tour t-shirt and jeans with a small reddish spot on the kneecap, I thought I should begin the SEARCH. You know, the whole identity crisis thingy? But instead I sat down on the evil-colored couch and wondered whether I would like the results of such a search. Something evil, once learned couldn’t be unlearned, um, forgotten.

Michael? Helen, just outside my door.

"Yeah?’ I went to the door and opened it.

She smiled, a red-headed dawn goddess.

I was wondering, have you eaten recently?

Um-

You haven’t left the building since yesterday.

"Uh-

I would have heard you,the hallways to the lobby and exit both circle my apartment.

Ur-

You haven’t cooked anything in your ‘elegant’ suite, I would have smelled it.

She was lovely even while she smirked at me.

Trying to catch up in this one-sided battle of the banter, I nodded weakly before I caught my gaffe and…my stomach rumbled like a south bound train over rickety tracks.

She tried to stifle her laughter with both of her hands and dropped her cane, continuing to snort and giggle simultaneously. So I bent over to retrieve it and when I stood up, Ellen grabbed my free hand with both of hers and yanked me out of my ‘suite’, saying:

Come on sailor, shake your pegleg. I’ve got eggs a’fryin’and bacon in the micro.

Totally captivated and captured, I laughed sharply and asked if she manhandled and/or cooked for every stray new tenant. Shoving open her unlocked door, Ellen replied snarkily.

Only the lost and hungry ones. And when I need a huge favor.

Sobering quickly as Ellen released me, I sat down at her rock steady kitchen dining table(mine wobbled drunkenly) and silently watched her nimbly gather dishes and the afore-mentioned food.

You’re staring at my ass, aren’t you?

Um… I reddened, realising that I had been doing just that.

’They say I have the best ass, below 14th street…’

…is it true?’ Yeah, I recognize the ‘Rent’ reference. You sing very well. Ellen, you do realize that I’m a complete stranger to you, right? Kinda taking a big risk here, aren’t you?

You didn’t answer my question, Mikey? She pretended to pout while piling scrambles on my plate on top of the dozen strips of bacon already crowding the edges of my plate.

Um, yeah, I was. Sorry.

Smirking again! I’d be mad at her if she wasn’t so damn cute when she did it.

No, you’re not! You shouldn’t be. Are you after ruining my virtue and my good name?

Um, what’s the right answer here?

Yes, but not right away. Later, after we get to know each other better. Smiling, she sat down, began to eat, waving at me to start eating myself. Ellen ate daintily but with a fierce hunger.

How did you…

No scraping of the plate, the pepper hasn’t moved nor the catsup.

Barbarian. I smiled and set to eating.

Heathen, no wait, I don’t use catsup either. Not on my eggs at least.

Food’s good, I mumbled through my full mouth.

Surprised that the little blind girl can cook? Slightly knowing smirk this time, then she relaxed and closed her eyes. Yeah it is great, even I do say so myself.

Laughing around toast swimming with real butter, I put down my fork and reached out to touch her cheek.

Seriously though, does my good character precede me or what?

Setting down her utensils, Ellen took my hand and gently but with hidden depths of seriousness, slapped my face.

Masher, she chirped through her eggs. Ellen seemed to study my face, as if her blindness allowed her to see beyond the pale. A few too many seconds passed, then she finally answered me.

Well, I suppose I could do the whole ‘blind girl in the dark, feel your face sorta’ ritual but, truth be told,among such new friendships as ours, I can ‘read’ people better without it. Not that I’m Sookie Stackhouse or Jean Grey or Professor X, but it’s more of a…Damn, Mikey, it’s difficult enough describing it without your hungry eyes roaming my body like a Pac-Man about to gobble up yellow dots.

Before, no really come on, I mean as I snorted laughter, I could tell that her comments weren’t judgmental. Indeed, Ellen used her free hand to cover another ever growing smile on her intoxicating, smirking, smiling sunshiney lips. I laughed out loud now as those lips spread and I put aside my fork and knife as she began talking again.

Aura! That’s the term I was brainstorming for…

More like a few rain clouds…

Michael! She stomped her foot several times. Ellen tried assuming a stern expression but it was quite beyond her. As I began to form some type of defense of my behaviors, a sudden lightning bolt struck my brain’s memory cells. A vague illumination struggled for exposure, struggled in vain, without much hope of full permutation. My inner turmoils, however did bring an illumination of another,totally different and unexpected kind…My body materialized and I witnessed my visiage in the steel counters behind Ellen.

Did I say something wrong, Mikey?

No, I …

I must have, Michael, I mean you’re so quiet all of a sudden-

It’s nothing, Ellen, merely a memory resurfacing, quite acutely yet without much substantiality.

Someone’s been watching too much PBS!

And you seem to be rather smirky, snarky even, if you will, so soon into our virgin friendship.

She actually giggled.

I believe the term I used was new or fragile or something like that, Mr. Wells.

Fruedian slippers, beautiful, Fruedian slippers.

Beautiful, he calls me. Honorable Sir, I do thank thee. Giggling again, she gathered up the dishes and rinsed them off in the sink I had seen myself in, while I put away the food stuffs. The refrigerator was, I presumed, in a very precise and exacting arrangement and I was proven right when I saw food-specific spaces available for the items we, I mean, Ellen, had used for our breakfast, standing out like the last open spaces of an unfinished jigsaw puzzle.

Keep the order in my ‘fridge, Sir Mikey. Otherwise I might accidentally on purpose poison you, due to your bumbling.

Did you hear any ‘bumbling’?

Ellen actually blushed, though I figured she was only kidding me and I quickly tried to cover up my own joshing.

Helen-

Ellen, if you please. Her blush was fading, as she had figured out that I, too, was only joking and was determined to move past the moment. I take it that you prefer Mike, instead of anything else?

Yes, but from you-I’ll accept any moniker you decide to bestow upon me.

You’re quite shameless, you know that, right?

-as long as it’s spoken with kindness, fondness, etc, etc. I sat down as Ellen did and tried to bring the conversation around to the huge favor she had hinted at before breakfast. But my tiny(compared to me) little angel picked the ‘aura’ explanation conversation and gently(if that was possible), steamrolled me. She put three of her fingers across my slow to open mouth, smiling, and again I wondered about her uncanny ability to know where my face was, indeed, where I was and what I was doing.

"I believe that the floor is mine, good sir, and I will have my say. Auras, to me, are more important and powerful and defining of a persons’ real character and intentions. Some people of ‘great knowledge’(again the smirk!) explain auras as visual characterizations, certain colors suggesting specific behaviors, etc, but I beg to differ and believe otherwise, i.e., that they are aromatic, sensory indications of a person’s soul and original, continuing examples of who and what they are and will do, for the most part, till the end of their days. Barring catastrophic unforeseen circumstances, of course, or even evil, terrible persons that they might encounter.

Thus, your aura as I perceive it, will prove me right in trusting you and seeking you out for our ‘virgin’ friendship.

I think I lost you there for awhile, but thank you for your trust. However, there are some truths about me and my past I must tell you about, before our ‘virgin’ friendship matures, moves on to a different and more complicated level. Um, a lot of my past is unknown to me-who knows but God who I’ve been or what I’ve done-Please let me finish-hopefully it will all come out well in the end, but fair warning must be given.

So when I used your formal christian given name-

"It woke something of importance in my mind, my soul even, that I am not prepared to face or even to understand. I don’t even want to confront or rebel against it. Certain forgotten truths or half-lies should be left lying asleep, undisturbed, till I am best prepared to deal with it.

Ellen, until a couple of weeks ago or so, my life is quite an amnesiac blank-I’ve no idea of what, whom I might have been or done, so this is sort of a caveat emptor about me that you need to know. I need to make a beginning of investigating my past, no need to rush it, of course, but all the same, it is important to my state of mind and that of my soul’s peace to find out-

Ellen smiled, leaned over the table and kissed me, softly and lightning fast on my lips and said she understood. She kissed me? Nice benefits to this friendship!

Now, about that ‘huge favor’ you hinted at before you bribed me with such a sumptuous repast?

Ellen suggested we remove ourselves outside to the rear gardens behind the apartment complex- rather derelict the gardens were, she stated, but with somewhat comfortable chairs scattered about like menhirs in an old world landscape. It also had a view of the river that flowed past us at the bottom of a gently sloping hill at the outer limits of the sparsely occupied gardens.

I need to grab a light windbreaker, the news earlier hinted at a damp, chilly day today. Wait for me in the living room, Mikey, I’d like to retain some mystery about this form I harbor underneath these natty clothes I’m wearing.

Having said this, Ellen repaired to her bedroom and waved me away, jauntily, pointing to the sliding doors that led to the outside and the previously mentioned derelict gardens. Yet before her bedroom door closed, Ellen crossed her arms in front of her, lowered them to the burgundy-wine colored knitted sweater she wore and in one swift move, pulled it over her head, revealing a beautiful, tanned and muscled back and arms. Then in a teasing mood quite in character with her impish ways and aura, Ellen undid her bra and tossed it over her shoulders, smacking me in the face, as I hadn’t moved, entranced in the powerfully erotic scene I was witnessing. Sputtering as I pulled it from my face, I heard the door slam shut and a wicked laugh issued forth from within the bedroom. I put the 34B lace bra, with both front and back clasps on the chair Ellen had just been sitting in and headed for the doors.

Lost in my swirling and quite deliciously saucy thoughts, I approached the sliding doors and was quite startled to see an unshaven, t-shirted and jeans clad man of tall and muscular stature(and ruggged good looks, with waist long ash-blond hair in an industrial strength ponytail holder) staring back at me. Then just as fast as this vision had been shown to me, it faded and I was once more invisible. I sighed, being in a weird state of contentment, and slid the doors open. The sun was partly obscured by darkening, angry seeming clouds and I plopped my well-fed frame into a tattered red lawn chair nearest to a stone picnic table, with a fully functional umbrella with softball-sized holes that let the diluted sunshine through. As I waited for my mysterious cook/benefactor/beautiful blind girl from next door, my mind went in search of answers as to why the formal use of my given christian name(or at least the one I’d assumed due to the lack of proof for any other name), I wondered if I truly wanted an answer to jump out at me or did I wish my past to remain buried deep within myself.

Ellen wasn’t long in emerging from the apartment and she looked stunning in an original blue Irish wool sweater and a Green Bay Packers’windbreaker over it left unzipped. The deep blue of the sweater set off her blazing jade-green eyes, her curly rusty red hair and her firm but not overly large breasts(sexist cur that I was, I noticed tham first before her gorgeous cat-like green eyes). Ellen dropped her cane by the lawnchair I was slumped in and slowly lowered her lean but supple frame onto a slightly worn chair and sighed audibly.

The ‘huge favor’ (she used her hands as quotation marks around her words) is, well, not so huge, at least not to you, but I would appreciate you joining me in a trip to our local Humane Society, with the intention of picking out a suitable feline companion for me. Ellen paused suddenly, for a quiet moment, and then wiped away a few tears. I’ve recently lost my last cat, Jellybean, from unknown causes and I need to put him out of my heart and mind and replace him, though it’s(her voice caught here and I wished I had a magic wand to wave away any and all of her pain, to be her Knight in shining armor and a broadsword) been only three months-oh damn, I swore I wouldn’t cry about this-

Ellen stopped short and I acted out of impulse and put my arm around her shoulders, pulling her closer to me. I felt her liquid sadness as her face brushed mine and-I kissed her, with a hint of hunger, nothing more. She did kiss me back, so at least I wasn’t a total ‘masher’ as she had called me before, then her tears stopped and she reached into her jeans pocket for a tissue.

"S-sorry, I didn’t mean to freak out on you