The Invisible Girl

By C L Farley

Maggie survived an apocalypse of hungry shadows by becoming invisible, only to drown during a violent telepathic assault.

Living on the edge of Bloemfontein, in South Africa, Maggie scavenges for scraps and grapples with the unreality, a collection of strange visions and slippery thoughts caused by the attack. When she's approa

• Language: English
• Publisher: Luna Press Publishing
• Release date: Feb 19, 2024
• ISBN: 9781915556233

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THE

invisible

girl

cL farley

LUNA NOVELLA #19

Text Copyright © 2024 Caitlin Lyle Farley

Cover © 2024 Jay Johnstone

First published by Luna Press Publishing, Edinburgh, 2024

The right of Caitlin Lyle Farley to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

The Invisible Girl ©2024. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission of the copyright owners. Nor can it be circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without similar condition including this condition being imposed on a subsequent purchaser.

www.lunapresspublishing.com

ISBN-13: 978-1-915556-23-3

For every square peg trying to fit

into society’s round holes.

The Melting Point of Glass

Maggie lifted her hand until her fingers aligned with the cracks in the sky. She traced the bloody fissures across the blue, her fingers travelling into the last light of day while her feet followed. Only the fence bordering the vegetable patch stopped her from chasing the sunset into its eventual death.

She gripped the wire mesh keeping her caged in life; an unfair oversight when so many others had died to the Shadows, died in her hands.

You’re dawdling, girl.

Eya, Mme, Maggie replied.

The marog isn’t going to harvest itself and I still want to eat tonight.

It won’t take long. Maggie turned to Puleng, who sat on a large rock near the middle of the garden. Her hair was neatly trimmed and brushed out, and she definitely wasn’t dead even if Puleng’s lips were red like warning lights.

Sometimes Maggie dreamed about how different the earth smelled when you dug deep enough, and Puleng’s sheet-wrapped body—fragile as a bunch of sticks—exploding into a flock of Mercurochrome red weaver birds when the first spadeful of dirt landed on her chest. But a slippery wrongness lived in the memory. It had something to do with the picture quality on the TV the catfish spat out for Maggie while she was drowning. If Puleng had died, then who had held her tight and stroked her hair during that first night after she was exiled from the zoo? Who was watching her now with pursed lips and tapping fingers?

Maggie frowned against the wall her thoughts had run into. Ideas didn’t used to be this wormy but her brain was all boxes and water slides now. Navigation was a hand finding a wall in the dark. She was giving herself a headache.

Puleng shook her head and said something in Sesotho, too quick and low for Maggie to hear. She turned back to the sunset, to the light, and the monsters roaming the veld beyond the fence.

The creatures were chimeras of mismatched animal parts elongated to weird proportions by the sinking sun, children of light skinned with shadows and fear. One of them stalked wobbly circles on a boulder that rose above the tall yellow grass. Its back half resembled a leopard, the front half an African wild dog, and the massive tusks sprouting from its head were straight off an elephant. The position of the tusks was misleading, a trickery that brought to mind the massive horns of those cattle Uncle Cyril owned in the time before the shadows, but Maggie wasn’t fooled. The curve and tapering of the tusks made their truth obvious.

The shadow’s limbs stretched like chewing gum as the light faded further, its steps growing more uncertain until it collapsed. The remains oozed down the side of the boulder to nestle in the womb of deeper darkness at its base. Light’s children died when she did. Once, Maggie would’ve welcomed the night. She would’ve released her invisibility power and relaxed, but now, she rarely let down the shield that hid her from the world.

Girl, can you hear my stomach grumbling?

No, Mme.

It’s like a pack of wild dogs. They want to bite your nose off.

Maggie chuckled. "Only my nose?

It is a Pinocchio nose, Puleng made a quiet, disapproving sound, and it’s become very long from your lies about hurrying with the food.

No, Puleng hadn’t died. That was just another illusion Arno had inflicted on her the day he attacked her mind. Nevertheless, the guilt that lie had embedded in her chest was real. The pointed tip of it emerged near the bottom of her collarbone, something often felt but rarely seen.

I’m doing it now, Mme. Maggie left the fence and went back to kneel among the untidy clumps of wild spinach.

And you should’ve been doing it just now already.

Maggie sighed and lifted the knife she’d brought to cut the leaves.

You must find something nice to feed those chickens, girl, Puleng said. They haven’t been giving eggs.

There’s probably beetle grubs in the compost pile.

Then you must dig them out. Some worms too.

There’s no way I’m giving them any of my worms!

Who do you think you’re talking to?

Maggie peered at Puleng and withered in her glare. Sorry, Mme.

Puleng sucked her teeth and primly crossed her legs. This girl!

Maggie ducked her head. Mme Puleng hadn’t been exiled. She’d chosen to follow Maggie out here to a lonely house edged by the Seven Dams nature reserve and the Bloemfontein Botanical gardens so she wouldn’t be alone. Maggie had vowed she’d show her appreciation by never speaking back to Puleng, or arguing with her, or being anything less than good and dutiful, but it was difficult to maintain.

Maggie gathered the greens and they left the garden as the jackals started singing in the low hills to the north-east. She let Puleng walk ahead of her on the narrow dirt path curving up the slope to the pale blue house that wasn’t home.

Puleng had started a fire in the pit outside the back door before joining her in the garden. The flames had settled now but the coals burned bright around the base of the cast iron pot. Maggie lifted the lid, releasing a plume of steam with a savoury scent, and threw the greens she’d gathered into the pot just as they were.

What do you think you’re doing? Puleng shouted. You must chop that first. How do you throw marog into the stew without chopping it, Maggie?

Maggie opened her mouth to reply, but Puleng was still ranting.

...not know how to cook even this basic thing? Puleng glared at her, waiting for a response.

But the leaves are small and you’re hungry...

The distant thrum of an engine cut her short. Maggie stared out into the pale night. A few stars twinkled in the blackness beyond the lines of clouds crossing the sky. The wan light of a sickle moon glinted vaguely on the corrugated iron rooftops of distant houses. Further off, the few tall buildings in Bloemfontein rose like blackened fangs around the faint ambient glow of light from the zoo and the nearby hotel where the other survivors lived in their solar-powered paradise. The only other light was a stark white that flickered and flashed, silhouetting pointed roofs and leafy trees in one of the suburbs that lined the far edge of the nature reserve.

That’s Enzo’s bakkie, Puleng said.

Maggie nodded.

Hey! He must be coming to take us home.

Maggie didn’t answer; didn’t want to be labelled a pessimist for stating obvious truths. Instead, she squatted down to tend the fire, secure in her invisibility shield.

"Eish, girl. Are you seriously going to sit here and hide when Enzo’s coming to