The Invisible Man

Lights blurred by droplets, smashed and smeared across my windscreen. A cool voice plinks into the chemical-scented atmosphere, Your destination is on the left. I shift down gears and flick my indicator, scanning for my passenger.

She's beautiful, in a curated, brittle sort of way. Blonde and pink and beige all over. She sees me and skitters over, pulling her small, bulging suitcase behind her. I make to get out and help her stow it, but she scowls at me - barely, her face can hardly move - and makes an impatient gesture.

I'm still, unassuming. A fisherman, fading into the background. Letting my quarry swim closer.

My admiration for her smooth legs is perfunctory, and quickly forgotten thanks to the dark smudge on the side of her pale shoes. Is that...?

Her pocket buzzes. She pulls out an obnoxiously bejazzled phone, answers it with an irritable hiss. I do an excellent impression of a man not listening.

"Of course not, it's too small! I had to cut... well, yes, actually... you wouldn't believe the mess..."

The drop-off is a bridge. I am supposed to see the customer safely into the building, but there isn't one. I purr away at a crawl, my eyes on her shrinking form in the mirror. I watch her heave the case over the edge. I fancy I hear the splash.

When I pull over and pop the boot, I'm unsurprised by the dark sticky smear left behind from her case.

I sigh. Not again...

+ + + + + + +

Thank you!

As always - thank you very much for reading! Extra special thanks to anyone who is subscribed to me and has tolerated me popping up in their notifications multiple times today. I am making hay while the sun shines! I promise this won't be a daily nuisance. Read on for a brief peek behind the curtain, and more info about the challenge.

The story behind the story:

I was nominated by Oneg for the Summer Writing Challenge Extravaganza in the Facebook group Saloon for Writers.

You can read more about the challenge here:

A bit more about this story:

This one is very raw, and hardly polished at all, except to cut a few sentences to get the word count down.

I love this prompt, so thank you to Oneg and James for this.

I think I am supposed link to someone else's entry, but I can't do that because I don't know if anyone else has done this one yet. (When they have, I will come back and edit.)

I'm going to nominate Grz Colm and Leslie Writes to have a bash at this one as well. Apologies if either of you have already been tagged! Feel free to ignore me.

Feedback welcome!

I appreciate your thoughtful feedback. Feel free to dismantle this one - be as brutal as you like! #ironmaiden

Here are my questions to you:

Did anything pull you out of the story?

Did anything stand out positively - a word or a phrase you liked?

Engagement and Reciprocation

I try to do my best to reciprocate as many reads as possible. It's easiest to do that if you leave a comment, so please do! I'd especially like it if you let me know if you have a go at this prompt, and link me to what you write. I would love to see what you come up with! I would like to respectfully ask you not to leave links in the comments *unless* it's to your entry for this challenge. It's a bit of a pet peeve of mine. Thank you 😁