Pressing On
One morning, when Gregory Samuels woke up from particularly normal dreams - his normal dreams consisted of him picturing himself in the throes of a bare knuckle gypsy fight with Des Lynam, being egged on by a noisy gang of anthropomorphic ZX 81’s, while a brass band played entirely by his sister refused to play any music that wasn’t an exam. But when he awoke that morning, from his particularly normal dreams, he discovered that he was no longer there.
He was no longer there.
He wasn’t dead. He sat up in his bed, which felt like he was sitting up in nearly set jelly, and moved gently through the duvet. He stood up, feet squishing into the hard bare floorboards of the spare room, and he couldn’t help noticing that there was nothing of him. He was entirely transparent. He couldn’t see himself. And the world was behaving oddly around him. He couldn’t touch anything. Trying to pick up his glasses was like trying to pick up a draught.
Gregory tried to remember everything that had happened the night before. Had he done anything the previous evening that would make him go invisible. He came to the conclusion that he hadn’t. Though he did remember the fight he had with Sarah right before bed. Which explained why he had woken up in the spare room. OK. So now he could start to piece things together. He had got back from the little office he rented in town. He was so near the the end of his book, but not quite there yet. When he arrived, he and Sarah had a late supper, and watched a little television. He’d gone upstairs to give Henry a goodnight kiss, being careful not to wake him. He and Sarah had drunk most of a bottle of red wine, and then they had argued about...now that he couldn’t remember. But they had clearly felt strongly enough about it to sleep in separate bedrooms. So - he’d gone to sleep, and then..somehow....during the night... had gone invisible. It wasn’t very satisfying.
His thoughts were interrupted by the door opening, and Sarah entering. She looked like she was still cross. Gregory spoke to her, he tried to say he was sorry, for whatever it was they had argued about. HE tried to hold out his arms and stop her, and say ‘Let’s forget everything. I love you, and I love Henry, and I love our life’, and then kiss her, and then make everything the same as it was yesterday.
But he couldn’t touch her. And she couldn't hear him. She walked through him with only the slightest resistance, and threw the duvet from the spare bed.
‘GREG!’
Yes, said Gregory. Yes.
‘GREG!’ she called again, and picked up his glasses from the bedside table with an ease that Gregory had always taken for granted. She looked at them, and went through to the bathroom where Gregory also wasn’t, but in a different way. Later on, she cried.
Gregory noticed that he was sinking slowly into the floor and went downstairs to make that stop happening.
He thought, of course, that this was the dream. Not all the other stuff. That he would wake up. Wake up and be normal and there and visible and in his family. But it wasn’t.
Gregory Samuels wasn’t there anymore, and that, it seemed, was that.
He stayed in the house for the next few weeks, and watched his beloved wife Sarah try to piece together what had happened. He listened as the police came and took down statements, and saw in their eyes that they thought this was just another case of a husband running away.
He watched Sarah cry and cry and cry and cry, as the endlessly cheerful Henry gurgled from his cot, unaware that the first eighteen months of his life were going to be different to the rest of it.
He learnt the rules of his new life. He didn’t need to eat, to sleep, to drink, to breathe. He was made of nothing, and needed nothing. But his shape was still the same. No one could see it, so what was the point, but his shape was the same. He could feel all the way down his legs, and round the back of his head, and feel that everything was just where it was before.
He watched Sarah’s parents come, and watched her regress to a little girl who needed her mummy, because her world had fallen apart. Where had he gone? Had he left her? Had he been kidnapped? Run down in the road? Was he alive? How could he do this, how could he do this? How could he do this?
He watched his own parents visit, and hated the fact that there was shame in their faces as they tried to placate their daughter in law. They didn’t say it, but he could see it. How could their son do this? Was she still even their daughter in law? His mother held Henry like she’d never see him again. That was what had happened when her sister’s husband had left her. When he’d just upped sticks and gone never to return. Stupid Uncle Frank, she used to call him. Stupid Uncle Frank who couldn’t face up to his responsibilities. They hadn’t wanted Frank’s parents to call. She hadn’t seen their side at all.
Weeks turned to months, and nothing changed. Gregory lived silently in the house, watching his son grow older, and his wife change. Change from a woman who’s life felt like it was all finally there. It had all finally dropped into place, into a woman who no longer had any faith in the world, that it could shake her up so badly.
Gregory decided that he must die. His lack of being showed no sign of abatement, and he must do the right thing. Not literally you understand, He wasn’t thinking about killing himself. He wasn’t entirely sure how that would work. No. He knew he must find a way to convince Sarah that he was dead. That he hadn’t left her. That he hadn’t left her for someone better. There was no one better. But that he had died, tragic, but true, and she should move on. And then so would he. Because he wasn’t sure how much more he could take.
So he set about trying to find the way to convince her that he was dead, and found it to be impossible. He couldn’t touch anything, he couldn’t write anything, he couldn’t hold anything, he couldn’t carry anything. What could he do? He was existing in this world, but not existing.
After seven months, he left the house for the first time. The front door was locked but he found that he could push through it, if he tried hard enough. He walked through the door, and into the the world that no longer had him in it.
He went to where his office was. The little office he rented. Where he used to write on his little old typewriter. He typed onto paper, before sending it in to his literary agent, where his assistant would type it into the computer. He’d long ago decided that that would be his thing. His quirk. He was the typewriter guy. You know that guy? He still uses a typewriter? Wow! He must be interesting! Is how he imagined all the conversations went behind his back.
He pushed through the office door, and looked at the room. It was still Gregory’s. The standing order was still paying the rent. Maybe if he hadn’t stayed here so late the night before it happened, it never would have? He looked at the typewriter, and the manuscript that sat next to it. He looked at the blank sheet of paper in the roll of the typewriter.
Then he put his non existent finger about the letter ‘D’ on the typewriter, and concentrated. And concentrated.
And nothing happened. But he had a little faith. If doors and walls had a tiny bit of give in them, perhaps this would too.
So he concentrated, and concentrated.
And he did nothing else for thirteen hours. And at the end of the thirteen hours, the letter ‘D’ depressed, and a faint little ‘D’ appeared on the page. Fourteen hours later, and the letter ‘e’ appeared next to it. The first two letters of his suicide note.
He supposed that sooner or later someone would come into the room, and if they found his note, maybe that would be that. He had simply taken his own life. Sarah could move on.
The electrician. That’s what the argument had been about. It suddenly came to him. The wiring in the office was condemned, and he had promised Sarah he would call an electrician to have it sorted. But he hadn’t. Maybe if he had, and they hadn’t argued, non of this would have happened. But it had.
Some letters took thirteen or fourteen hours to press and some took nearer forty eight. But time was something he had. By the end of what used to be a fortnight he had complete the first line of his note.
He predicted he could do it within the year if he tried. And if he didn’t procrastinate. Which , if he was honest with himself was mainly what he used the office for.
But now he had focus. This was the most important thing he would ever do, and he had to get it done.
Eleven months of concentration later, the note was nearly completed. He was glad he hadn’t rushed it. It was the best thing he’d ever written. Moving, convincing. Final.
And later that night the office burned down. Due to faulty wiring. Taking with it Gregory’s hundred word masterpiece.
Gregory didn’t die in the fire however. He’d given up hope of that ever happening.He decided simply to walk.
So he did. He walked as far as Britain would let him, and then he walked out into the sea. And he didn’t get wet, and he didn’t get cold, and he didn’t drown, because he and the sea lived in different worlds.
But he kept on walking. Across the sea bed. In the darkness. And he didn’t get tired. And he didn’t get scared.
He didn’t know where he was going. He thought he might just keep on going. Round and round. In and out of the oceans.
For years, he walked, now and then changing direction.
Finally, he saw the light. dim and distant, but definitely there. They all saw the light eventually. In the darkness.
He walked towards the light. For days and days.
And then. Nearly fifteen years after he had woken up from his normal dreams, Gregory Samuel saw something he didn’t expect to see.
Uncle Frank.
He was standing with several other people in the glow on the ocean bed. I say several other people. Several hundred thousand other people. A little blonde girl. A crew of sailors.
‘Greg. Greg is that you?’ Said Frank.
‘You can see me?’
‘Yes.’
‘You can hear me?’
‘Yes. Oh Greg. You’re one of us.’
It seems that some people just disappear. No one knows how, or why. Like a virus. Some people just disappear. The crew of the Marie Celeste, Glen Miller, Amelia Earhart. Other people you can read about on Wikipedia.
And this is where they gathered. Under the sea, in a place they called Atlantis.
I’m only telling you this so you know. If you wake up and you have disappeared. You know where to go.
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