Sinead Overbye

Timezone

It started one day on my walk to work. A man asked me for a cigarette. I stood on the roadside with him, smoking. He told me how nobody ever stopped to talk to him, and how it made him feel like he didn’t exist. I hadn’t considered this before, but I realised I often got that too. People with blank expressions, never looking me in the eye.

We talked for some time. He was very kind, and had blackened fingertips and a ginger beard that turned grey at the ends. Ash got stuck in it when he breathed out smoke. He told me about all the places he’d travelled to— Canada and the United States and all across Europe, with a backpack and white walking shoes. He’d flown across the Aegean Sea and over the Himalayas, and he said I wouldn’t be able to even imagine how high they went.

I’d never been overseas. I was working at an arcade in the mall downtown, to save up money. I didn’t have enough yet, but I hoped to soon.

And where will you go, when you’re gone? he asked.

Maybe Tahiti, I said. They have sandy white beaches and crystal-clear waters.

The man smiled at me, exposing yellow teeth. I told him there was a travel agent in the mall where I worked, and I liked to sit in front of it, crossed-legged, watching the images of happy people in their swimsuits walking in Tahiti, hand in hand.

It’s good to have dreams, the man said. I stomped out both of our cigarettes and we stood for a moment watching the buses groan past. I felt happy and warm.

As I continued to walk, I was aware that everyone was ignoring me. I tried to say hello, but no sound came out. I tried to make eye contact, but no one would look. They all walked forward, eyes fixed unseeingly on a point in the distance. I remembered what the man had said, about not existing, and felt cold.

The mall was one of those bustling places that stretched endlessly, and I’d often get lost in it, it could take forever to find a way out. The surfaces were too clean and white and shining, the tiles on the floor so polished that you could see the reflection of legs as people walked across them. Mannequins struck poses in shop windows, and some of them even had painted faces and real hair so that I got a fright whenever I saw them from the corner of my eye. There were big screens everywhere that advertised perfumes and cars and films and getaways. I liked to imagine my way into the images—there I’d be, Suzanne, smelling like a daisy, wearing a long chiffon dress that floated in the breeze.

The arcade was tucked away on the bottom floor. It was dystopian dark, and mostly empty. There were ice-hockey machines and games where you could shoot things and games where you had to slice giant pieces of animated fruit. Down the back was a basketball hoop with a picture of Chunky the Chipmunk on it, and all the kids took turns throwing miniature basketballs at his face.

Only the stragglers came here during the week, shuffling with small steps, grumbling into the screens. They jabbed at buttons, or tugged roughly at joysticks to try and get the metal claw around the heads of stuffed animals, who sat behind a thick layer of glass. I felt sorry for the animals, trapped there watching the world go by. I felt sorry for the stragglers too. They never seemed to win anything.

The only company I had most of the time was my own reflection. I spent my days behind the glass cabinet full of stale candy necklaces and plastic babies, talking to myself, and peeling the dead flaps off my fingernails. I made up stories about girls with magic in their fingers who could create anything out of elm leaves and who could also fly. Hours passed. I dreamed and the time ticked on.

Jeffrey was my only friend in the entire mall. He was a security guard and spent his days standing outside the giant department store on the second floor, checking peoples’ handbags as they left. Most of those customers were ladies with big purses and clicky shoes. They were often grumpy when he talked to him, and for some reason they liked to steal things—bottles of perfume or moisturising cream or tubes of lipstick that they’d slip into their pockets or their bags.

They just do it for the thrill, he said, They don’t need more things.

Jeffrey and I met every lunchtime at the red formica table in the foodcourt. It was beside the huge windows, so we could stare off into the carpark as we talked. The cars were all old and dented, with cracked paint scraped across their sides. The world outside was grey as death. Sparrows pecked at the windscreens of abandoned cars. Bored-looking women pushed shopping trolleys while their kids mosied in small circles.

I told Jeffrey about the man with the cigarette, and how once, a few weeks before, a woman had sat on me when I was waiting for the bus and said, Oh my, I couldn’t see you.

What about you? I asked. Do you ever feel like that at all?

Jeffrey nodded, sipping his chocolate thickshake through a plastic straw.

Do you think it’s sad?

He thought about this for a minute. His eyes narrowed.

There’s so much in the world to be sad about, he said at last, but we’re alive, and that means an awful lot.

On the arcade wall was a sign that read ‘Cameras Watching’ but the cameras didn’t really work. It was my job to see everything. I had to be alert, so people didn’t try to steal money from the gaming machines or smash the glass when they got mad.

Everything beeped at me. The racing cars on the screens drove madly around looping tracks. Pixelated birds flapped over large green pipes. An endless snake grew larger and larger until it ate its own tail.

The stragglers nodded at me as I went past. This had never happened before. I noticed that their faces were glowing, like there were light bulbs underneath their skin.

Hello, I said.

Hello, they replied. Is this where you live?

No. I live in a house by the river.

They turned back to their games but I felt warmed at the attention.

I sprayed green glass cleaner onto the machines and hummed as I wiped the dust, thinking of my magical girls, flying up through the mountains, higher than I could possibly imagine. My brain started to hurt. When I looked into the black screens, I couldn’t see myself. Tiny greyish spots began to dance before my eyes. I felt like I might faint.

The woman in the pharmacy had round cheeks and white hair and asked brightly how she could help me. I went to tell her what was wrong, but I couldn’t make a sound. I kept opening and closing my mouth, and she looked at me strangely, like I wasn’t quite alive.

I’m sorry, she said, sounding sad. I don’t know what you’re asking for.

I left right away and went out into the mall. I couldn’t catch my breath. There were so many people wandering by, and they kept walking right into me and scowling, like I’d gotten in their way on purpose. I manouvered my way out, feeling like a pinball.

The greyish spots eventually disappeared, but my face was unpleasantly numb and I was shivering. I stood outside the travel agents and looked at the pictures of Tahiti, imagining that I was warm and swimming in a tropical sea, coconut palms waving at me from the shore.

Are you okay? asked Jeffrey as he walked me home that afternoon.

I don’t know. I can’t really tell.

It’s just, there’s kind of a haze about you.

Jeffrey pointed to my arm. He was right. My skin was blurring at the edges. I still felt cold.

Don’t point at me like that, I said. I must’ve sounded angry, because he didn’t say anything else until we’d reached the road I lived on. We continued walking past a row of tall elm trees with their leaves turned brown. The river whispered next to us.

One of the stragglers, he said at last, was caught passed out in the toilets today, and his arm had the same blur that your arm has.

I didn’t want to hear about that. I walked up to my front door, which was blue and had a yellow daisy painted on it, and said, I’ll see you tomorrow.

Take care of yourself, he said.

Don’t forget about me, I said.

The arcade games had started breaking. I didn’t know what to do. Maintenance wouldn’t pick up the phone for me, and my boss was in Las Vegas for the next three weeks, I kept getting automated emails saying, Sorry, I’m out of office at the moment.

One after the other the machines went out. I wrote ‘Out of Order’ onto pieces of paper and cellotaped them onto the screens. The arcade got darker as each game died. The noise diminished. There was a bad burning smell. The stragglers eventually emptied out, because their favourite games weren’t working anymore, and I sadly told them there was nothing I could do about it.

All the while, my skin was fading. There were holes in my stomach and legs that you could see all the way through. My head ached constantly. My back and legs and shoulders were sore. I had to keep napping behind the glass counter during my shifts because I had no energy. It was like I too was a machine, and someone had pulled the plug out from the wall.

Jeffrey started to call me Suza, because the last letters of my name had disappeared from my name badge. He came looking for me late one afternoon, when I didn’t show up to meet him. The rest of the shops had closed, but the arcade doors were wide open, because I’d fallen asleep. He brought me a bottle of tonic water and I sipped slowly until I felt strong enough to stand.

How did you know that would work? I asked. He showed me his arm, which had holes in it too.

We’re disappearing, Suza. We need to start making future plans.

The idea of a future with Jeffrey made my head spin. My breath disappeared for a moment. He went to put his hand on my shoulder, but it went right through me, and I shivered.

Yes, I said softly. Let’s make plans.

The man at the travel agents was so glossy he seemed like a cardboard cut out. I asked him about Tahiti, having to point to the images in the window until he understood. When I showed him my passport, he laughed in my face.

How did you get away with this? he said, There’s nobody in this photo.

I looked at the blank space he was pointing to and shivered.

Suz, he said, I’m afraid you’ll have to get a valid passport if you want to travel.

I want to travel everywhere!

He turned to his computer and ignored me. There was noting he could do. I started crying. He couldn’t hear, or else he was pretending that he couldn’t, perhaps to be polite. The next customer stepped up to the desk, and walked right through me. It was the first time that’d happened. I felt my body ripple, and there was a shock, like I was holding onto an electric fence with both hands.

I shouted out, and no one turned to check on me. I shouted again. Still, nothing.

I ran up the escalator to find Jeffrey, but I couldn’t see him anywhere. The space where he normally stood was empty. I felt cold.

Then I noticed Jeffrey’s uniform, floating on a nearby seat.

Jeffrey! I said. They’re walking through me.

He sighed, and I sat next to him, watching a half-faceless woman in front of us, mopping the floors. She moved easily, like it was hardly an effort at all. It was like a dance.

I guess you won’t be going to Tahiti after all.

No, I said, as the mopping woman turned and vanished, I don’t think I will.

Almost all of the games were broken, except two of the old pinball machines. I kept an eye on them, but it seemed hopeless. The arcade had given up, and the games had decided to give up with it. The stragglers were all gone. They weren’t even in any of the corridors in the mall, or outside in the carpark, they’d disappeared completely— moved on to nicer things, is what I hoped.

I forgot where I lived. Jeffrey forgot where he lived too. We wandered around the streets one afternoon for hours looking for the blue daisy door, but couldn’t find it. We searched down by the river for any clues we might’ve left before, or to see if we could recognise any of the buildings, but we couldn’t. Even the trees weren’t familiar anymore. Everything seemed warped somehow, like the world had grown too tall.

We went back to the arcade and decided to sleep there, in a cupboard out the back, amongst the cords and the wires, with the dead machines sitting silent in the next room. It wasn’t uncomfortable. In fact, I couldn’t even feel the cords or the floor underneath me, and I felt safe because it was warm in that cupboard, and Jeffrey was there too.

After a few moments, he started crying. I could hear his sobs, and feel him shaking.

I miss my body, Su, he said. And I miss my home.

The arcade is our home now, I said, trying to judge where his shoulder was so I could pat it. There was nothing there. He fell asleep after a long time crying. I slept too, with my arms stretched out before me, trying to hold him.

The mall was filled with Easter eggs and giant chocolate rabbits with large tinfoil teeth. We started eating them when we were hungry, and nobody knew we were stealing, because there were just so many. It didn’t make a difference what we did. We could take anything we wanted from anywhere in the mall, and completely get away with it. I thought it would be fun to try on some fancy outfits, but it was disappointing. The clothes floated before the mirror, and I was less than even a mannequin— I was nothing.

We took all we needed to survive—loaves of bread, and blocks of cheese, and small bottles of medicine and tonic water, of course, to keep us both awake. We sat by the window, and the carpark was filled with gleaming cars now, like the ones on the big screens. Long-legged ladies and men in tailored suits filtered through the mall. I’d never seen people like this in real life before. They looked like the glowing people from the make up ads in shop windows, or the couples in Tahiti, just with proper clothes on. I reached out to try and touch them, to see if I could steal some of their glow, but it didn’t work.

We made a life in the arcade, Jeffrey and me. For that short week we were happy, though Jeffrey still cried at night, and sometimes I couldn’t help it, and I cried too. He stopped going to work completely, because he saw no point in being an invisible security guard. I only worked because I wanted to check that the pinball machines were still running. Their lights began to flicker, and some of them went dark.

A hoard of school children wandered in. They looked strange to me, like many tiny businessmen. When they saw me there— just a uniform with a black cap floating above it, and the dead machines all around me— their eyes went wide. I shivered. They ran away on their small legs, screaming.

Jeffrey started making plans. He said we had to leave this place. There weren’t any people like us left in the mall, and we should go before it was too late. I didn’t want to abandon the arcade. Everything was such a mess, and the machines all needed fixing. It was the only place I knew.

But there’s nothing you can do, S. You can’t fix anything. You don’t have that kind of power. You’re kidding yourself if you think you can change the way things are.

I don’t want to fight with you, I said. It makes me feel shivery.

I’ll find us a new place, he said. Where we can be invisible and still be seen.

I reached out towards the earpiece and touched what I thought was the side of his face. We both shuddered, but neither of us pulled away.

Six men in bright blue t-shirts arrived one day, pushing trolleys. They had thick arms that bulged when they moved. They took the broken machines from the arcade, and the whole time I begged them not to. It was just too much.

But you can’t just get rid of them, I said, You haven’t tried to fix them yet.

They didn’t look in my direction, just parted their lips and whistled like they couldn’t wait to go home. I tried to stand in the doorway to stop one of the men from leaving with a pinball machine.

Take me instead! I yelled.

He walked right through me, and the pinball machine went through me too. A surge burst through my body, tearing at my insides, and I felt suddenly limp. My bones hurt. My throat hurt. My toes went numb.

I stood in the entrance to the arcade and yelled at him across the mall, as loudly as I could. The crowds continued on. I was angry. I tore off my uniform and ran at the people, one after another, rippling each time. My body screamed. I didn’t care. I just kept going, falling down eventually, somewhere in the middle of the floor. Their feet trampled through me. Some of them shuddered and said, Someone just stepped on my grave. It made me feel lonelier. It made me feel dead.

It’s almost the end of days. I can hear the wind rush past. It brushes back the trees, but I can’t feel it against my skin. I’m not even sure if this is skin. It’s transparent like glass, and it feels like empty air.

Nobody can see me, but I can see everything. I can see even the things that most people don’t see, for instance: there’s a crack in the pavement of the car park outside, and in that crack there’s a tiny sprout reaching towards the sun. It’s trying hard to grow, but it won’t make it. Nothing grows here anymore.

I see the cigarette man sitting on a bench at the edge of the carpark. His fingers are still black, and he’s still holding a bottle of pepsi. I run towards him, but he takes three steps back.

I don’t have any cigarettes anymore, I say. But I want to know, why me?

His eyes are drenched in sorrow.

My dear, you were invisible anyway, he says.

I don’t like that you said that.

I turn back to the mall, and I don’t recognise it anymore. It looks so much larger, with giant screens flashing images of womens’ eyes and lips, and videos of fizzy bottles popping, and even the pictures of Tahiti don’t make me feel warm.

Jeffrey’s right, about everything. We can’t stay here anymore. This place doesn’t belong to us, and we don’t belong to it. The people are different. They’re too unsullied, but in an empty way, like clones. Maybe we’ll find a new place, like the arcade, but even more our own.

I tell Jeffrey it’s time to go. The outline of his body glows white and I feel his happiness becoming mine. I look back towards the cupboard full of cords and leave them there. I hang my cap on one of the hooks in the staff room. I fold my shirt and leave it in the locker that now reads ‘S’. The automatic doors don’t open for me. My hand moves through the glass, then my wrist, and my arm. I walk through without feeling anything—what is a feeling, again?

There are people gathered in a group outside. We walk through them all, and this time they do not shudder and we do not ripple—are we walking on graves, again?

We’ll find our own way, Jeffrey says. He hovers his hand over mine, and although I can’t touch him, I am warm. The world moves through us. We’re bright like electricity. We face the world, and we go on.