SUPER 0
Daniel
Paulson
Copyright © Daniel Paulson 2019
All Rights Reserved
“Who wants to be super?”
Random person on the street 2019
NIGEL
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, so begins the tired cliché about high school. Indeed, high school has many peaks and valleys but it’s got nothing on the real world so quit whining about the best of times and worst of times when in reality, it’s all downhill from there. Nigel’s high school experience thus far had many valleys but not so many peaks. For him, it truly was a struggle. Nigel had the misfortune of having buck teeth, braces, freckles and a not quite but certainly in the same category of hair style as the bowl cut. Suffice to say, nobody paid him much attention in high school, even the bullies thought he was a lost cause.
Truth be told, nobody paid him much attention at all. In class the teacher would never call his name, nobody would sit next to him in the canteen, and not even his parents seemed to care if he was home or not. To go unseen was commonplace for Nigel, to disappear entirely was a rare gift that was given to Nigel one fateful day.
It was a normal day of high school, neither a best of time nor a worst of time situation, simply normal. For Nigel, normal entailed going to class, answering his name during roll call, sitting alone at lunch, attending more classes while being ignored at all times and then returning home to be similarly ignored by his parents. It had become a routine which would be mundane for some people but Nigel was a creature of habit, he enjoyed the routineness of it all because there were no unexpected occurrences on a routine kind of day.
There were in fact many of these routine kind of days taking place after Nigel became invisible, nobody noticed, nobody cared, nothing changed. Nigel hadn’t realised that he was invisible because nobody had treated him any differently to before the fact. Even when he was sat for dinner with his parents, they didn’t notice that their son suddenly didn’t have a head or any other limbs for that matter, in his place was simply an outfit formed to Nigel’s shape. His parents could see that there was movement in the place where Nigel sat and deemed that to be ample proof of his existence. It’s not to say that Nigel’s family was dysfunctional, on the contrary, they were highly functional and extremely intelligent, yet all three members of the family unit were largely ignored and content to be ignored by everyone including themselves. Most likely the only time Nigel’s parents weren’t ignored was in the four minute act of Nigel’s conception and even then Nigel’s mother felt rather ignored.
Due to being impossibly alone throughout his life, Nigel had a lot of time for self-reflection. He hadn’t always wanted to be ignored, he just fell into that category and never felt worthy enough to get out of it. Then puberty hit him like a train. Suddenly there was a smorgasbord of hormones flowing through Nigel, so much so that he couldn’t control himself and became more rash and erratic. It happened when Nigel came across a solitary hair on his chest the morning he turned invisible. He saw the lone warrior and determined that he was a man, despite looking far from manly. Men have responsibilities. Men are the bread winners of the household. He had a lot of growing up to do and much bread to win despite having an intolerance towards gluten.
Emboldened by his new-found manliness, Nigel set about planning his day accordingly as a man should. He would stand up for himself, be noticed, maybe even talk to a girl. The world was his oyster, but considering Nigel didn’t like oysters, the world was his potato, because everyone likes potatoes and that’s exactly what Nigel wanted to be – a potato. Nigel felt as though his new perspective on life was taking shape. People were turning to look at him as he strode confidently through the school gates. Unbeknownst to Nigel, his fellow students weren’t looking at him as such, but rather the absence of him in that all they could see were clothes strolling into the building. People began pointing at Nigel and showing expressions of shock and awe, he could feel his insecurities welling up inside him but was reminded of the significance of the chest hair, he had to maintain his confident demeanour even though he was struggling internally. Don’t show weakness. All along the corridors there were people gasping and in some cases fleeing at the very sight – or lack of – Nigel. He felt like the big man on campus, so it was about time something happened to knock him from his ivory tower.
That something came in the form of Chuck, real name Charlie but he preferred Chuck because he liked to chuck things, mostly people, it also shared a couple of syllables with another word that he liked to use on an almost sentence basis. Chuck was the kind of kid that could clear a corridor at the sound of his heavy footsteps approaching, indeed, the corridor was emptying but Nigel was too focused on maintaining his confidence to hear the footsteps approach. Chuck clamped eyes on the strange phenomenon of the clothes floating through the school and did what any less-than-sane person would do in that situation, beat the living crap out of it. He sprinted towards the apparel. Chuck first grabbed the floating jumper and yanked it upwards. Nigel’s chest hair was pleased to feel the breeze. Chuck then grabbed the floating trousers and yanked them downwards. Nigel’s you know what was less than pleased to feel the breeze. The sheer force of Chuck ripping Nigel’s trousers, and indeed pants (the British meaning of the word) from his legs caused Nigel to collapse onto the floor in a similar fashion to when an elderly person falls over as the train accelerates, the kind of fall where you know you’re not supposed to laugh but just can’t help it. Chuck was not the smartest kid in the school, even though the jumper and the trousers were no longer moving seemingly on their own volition, Chuck still thought it wise to pummel them into submission to ensure that nothing unusual ever had the audacity to come into his field of view again. The floor had other ideas though and decided it didn’t like being beaten up by a pre-pubescent boy, that being said, the floor was concrete and so didn’t have to strain too hard to break Chuck’s fingers. The now-empty clothing was thankful for the floor’s efforts in defending its virtue and so the pair shared an intimate moment before the clothes were removed from the corridor and unceremoniously dumped in the lost and found bin.
Nigel watched in amazement as Chuck fled the scene in agony while clutching his broken hand. The entire ordeal had made Nigel forget that he was in fact lying naked in the corridor. He pushed himself up off of the floor and back on his own two feet. It’s not the greatest feeling when one suddenly realises that they are stark bollock naked in the middle of a crowded place full of their peers. Nigel’s instant reaction to the situation was to freeze, and he did so for a full fifteen minutes without once flinching or making any kind of movement. He had heard once that if one remains absolutely still then one would become invisible. Nigel was already invisible and so the notion of remaining still to achieve the same affect was superfluous. The hubbub surrounding Chuck had died down rapidly and people were beginning to resume their lives and go to class or talk about boys or whatever school kids do these days. A lone boy came running through the corridor chasing a hoop with a stick. Nobody paid any attention whatsoever to the naked Nigel standing in the middle of the corridor. All that was visible of Nigel were his shoes, which were rooted firmly in place out of sheer awkwardness. A group of cheerleaders were making their way down the corridor and were right on collision course with Nigel. Before Nigel could react, the girls were upon him, the leader of the group colliding face first into Nigel, almost inadvertently granting him his first kiss. She stood back, looked Nigel straight in the eyes and walked on by.
Tensions eased within Nigel following the collision, they tensed in other regions but thankfully he was invisible, not that that region was noteworthy when visible. It was expected that upon collision with a naked Nigel, the girl should’ve ran screaming
. It was further expected that upon seeing a naked Nigel there would be a cacophony of laughs. None of this happened. The girl didn’t run away nor did she scream. Nobody was laughing. Yet still, Nigel stood in the middle of the corridor naked as the day he was born if he was born wearing a pair of shoes. It dawned on Nigel that something was amiss. Sure, it could be a side effect of the fickle minds of young students whose attention spans barely surmount to ten minutes, but more likely it had to be something more. Nigel, being the little pervert that he was, instantly thought to test his new theory in the girl’s bathroom. He figured that if he could infiltrate the bathrooms and remain there without being seen then he had to be truly invisible.
He powered towards the bathrooms and slipped inside. The girls’ bathroom was so much cleaner than in the boys’ establishment, within there were no wads of wet tissue paper splattered on the walls nor were there overflowing sinks or foul odours. There were, however, strange items in the bins covered in blood, Nigel never knew girls had nosebleeds so often. After several minutes of thinking about blood, a posse of girls entered the bathroom in what appeared to be an attack formation. Two girls headed up the pack with three behind in a wedge formation.
“Watch the door” The apparent leader of the pack signalled to two of her lieutenants to stand by the entrance.
Nigel had reasoned that if his plan failed then at least he would be able to solve the mystery of why females insist on going to the bathroom in groups. There was a sobbing from one of the cubicles.
“Who else in here?” The leader of the posse inquired as she kicked the cubicle door. Two of her squadron went into the adjacent cubicles and stood on their respective bowls to peer inside.
“It’s Gertrude!” Nigel knew Gertrude from one of his classes. She wasn’t the prettiest girl by a long shot but she had a sharp mind and was highly intelligent. Nigel admired Gertrude greatly, and in her saw a kindred spirit that had also been shunned from society. By now, the leader had kicked open the cubicle door and pulled Gertrude out by her hair.
“You gon’ get it, nerd” The leader raised a fist and presented it to Gertrude. By all accounts it was a well-manicured fist and had a lovely form, however, Gertrude wasn’t in the mood to appreciate the fist’s finer attributes as it swung down to greet Gertrude’s face.
Nigel wanted to step in and help his kindred spirit. He’d just built up the courage to intervene when Gertrude more than easily defended herself. First, Gertrude took the leader’s fist and twisted it around her back, flipping the leader onto the floor when Gertrude promptly knocked her out with a single punch. The so-called leader’s head slammed into the hard floor and was then still as a pool of blood formed around her head like a gruesome halo. One of the two lieutenants had managed to get down and join the fight but just long enough for Gertrude to grab a hold on a chunk of her hair and rip it out with the scalp included. The second lieutenant was pulled down from the toilet causing her chin to hit the top of the cubicle. Her chin played the part of a plough, the cubicle wall played the part of a field. All that was being sown was her teeth.
Both Nigel and Gertrude stood motionless, trying to catch their breaths. Nigel was inhaling and exhaling so hard that he would’ve been heard easily were it not for Gertrude breathing just as heavily. Nigel was staring right at the blood-covered Gertrude, at one point they made eye contact and Nigel felt a new sensation.
“Gertrude” Nigel wasn’t sure if he had said it aloud at first, but when Gertrude looked right at him with a puzzled look, he was sure that she must’ve heard. Alas, Nigel didn’t get a chance to speak to Gertrude as she bolted out of the window. He was left in the bathroom thinking about what could’ve been if only he’d said something. Such thoughts lingered in his mind until his eyes fell upon the unconscious bodies on the floor and then onto the likely dead body in the cubicle and he soon realised that he should probably leave the bathroom.
The hallways were empty save for the occasional over eager hall monitor jumping round corners to the surprise of no one. One such guardian of the sacred halls of learning leapt from a corner just as Nigel was turning causing him to gasp in terror and the monitor to believe she was hearing voices in her head. It was learned that twenty years later, that former hall monitor listened to the voices in her head and was lobotomised after they told her to do unspeakable things involving goats and parsnips. It took Nigel a few moments to regain his breath, by that time the monitor had moved to lurk around the next corner. Once he was at full strength, which wasn’t much considering the pencils he called arms, Nigel set off to cause some mischief.
Every child goes through a rebellious phase, it’s a grand sweeping claim to make that may come across as presumptuous. To counter, rebelliousness is subjective. Some people consider themselves rebels for putting the cap of a blue pen on a red pen. Some people consider themselves rebels for rising up against their oppressors and fighting for their freedom. Two sides of the same coin, therefore, every child – and by extension fully grown-up child – goes through a rebellious phase. For Nigel, being rebellious was more akin to the former. There was never a reason for Nigel to go to the Principal’s office as he had never been in trouble nor had he been esteemed as such to merit a trip there. It was a land of mystery to Nigel and one that he wanted to explore. He crept up to the door and turned the handle to enter. All Principal Simpson could see was a door inexplicably opening by itself and not a naked Nigel entering.
Nigel hatched another means to test his invisibility theory. He approached the Principal until he was mere inches from her face. Staring right at her, and her at him (unintentionally), Nigel blew on his Principal’s nose. The sudden burst of air on her nose resulted in the Principal swatting it with her hand and in so doing hitting Nigel in the face. The Principal looked at her hand in bewilderment as she tried to deduce how her hand had hit something when to her eyes there was nothing there. Nigel lurched backwards and clutched his nose. It was bleeding. It didn’t take much to give Nigel a nose bleed, a flick, a tap, a finger wedged up inside it, almost any minor impact on his nose would cause it to gush blood. He reasoned that this is what girls must feel like given the amount of blood soaked items he found in their hallowed bathroom.
Nonetheless, the Principal resumed her busywork. Nigel’s blood became visible when it fled his nose, as such, the Principal noticed the sudden appearances of little drops of red on her ledger. She dismissed it as the sudden explosion of her red pen despite the fact that she was using a green pen at the time. Nigel had retreated to the door, fearful that more blood would expose him quite literally. He fled the Principal’s office and returned to the girls’ bathroom to find some fresh sanitary products. The two lieutenants remained on guard outside of the door, it was likely that they didn’t hear the kerfuffle that occurred within the bathroom as they were both nattering loudly about trivial things. So deep were they in conversation that they didn’t register the bathroom door opening and closing behind them.
The bodies remained on the bathroom floor and mid-way through the cubicle wall in an extraordinary fluke of timing whereby none of the female pupils in the school seemed to need to make use of the facilities, though this could be attributed to the guards standing watch outside. A bag had its contents scattered across the room in the melee, Nigel picked up a fresh version of one of the blood-soaked items he saw previously. It was a strange contraption that fitted almost perfectly up Nigel’s nose. It had a little string on the end in order to tug it out with ease and did a great job at absorbing the blood. Why the manufacturer didn’t market this product to men was a mystery, Nigel found it to be extremely practical and indeed comfortable.
Once the contraption was secured tightly up Nigel’s nose, his eyes fell upon the open window. The ledge was crushed slightly from where Gertrude had stepped, forming a neat little footprint. Nigel approached the window with caution and stepped onto the ledge. It would’ve been a tight squeeze for anyone to fit through the window, however, Gertrude had seemingly catapulted herself
through it causing a sizeable hole in the window frame with shattered glass extruding from the wood. Nigel gently raised himself onto the ledge, carefully avoiding the glass, and peered in the general direction Gertrude fled. On the floor were small drops of blood forming a trail. Nigel felt compelled to follow it. He did not feel compelled to launch himself out of the window. There was glass. He was naked. As such, Nigel departed the bathroom and went round the school to the outside of it in order to pick up the trail.
The Hansel and Gretel blood drops lead Nigel right to the eaves of the forest, from there the trail went cold as the blood became lost amongst the undergrowth. Regardless, Nigel entered the wooded area and was engulfed by trees. The sun’s rays streamed through the gaps in the leaves, spotlighting small patches within. The sounds of rushing cars faded with each step deeper into the wood. He was no longer following drops of blood, he was following whatever path his senses had put him on. Nigel enjoyed the forest, nature’s factory sucking in carbon dioxide and pumping out oxygen selflessly, never once asking for anything in return despite constant threat of destruction by the very same people it is trying to protect.
There was the song of a distant bird high up in the trees, if Nigel could see such distances he would notice that the bird’s eyes were somewhat red. The distant tune was replaced with the soft tears of a young girl. Nigel followed the sound, hoping to seek his damsel in distress. Gertrude had not once shown any signs of being in distress in the bathroom and was, to Nigel’s knowledge, more than capable of defending herself resulting in gruesome scenes involving various chunks of flesh and blood soaked everything. Nigel’s single brave chest hair was a testament to him being the knight to save Gertrude’s damsel in his mind, the chest hair justified all and denied any such argument to the contrary. Praise to the chest hair!
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