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You have a near miss that almost kills you (maybe you almost got hit by a car, the plane you were supposed to go on ended up crashing, you narrowly dodged a falling piano, etc) and you're thanking your lucky stars that you're alive...until you realize that no matter who you talk to, no one responds to you. Strangers don't hear you on the street, friends don't return texts or calls and no one answers the door when you knock. It's almost like you're a ghost….for the next twenty-four hours, you appear invisible to every other person on the planet but then suddenly, out of the blue, it's like nothing has changed and none of your friends know what you're talking about when you explain the odd phenomenon. Was it all a dream?
Historically, Sunny recalled, she had always celebrated Halloween to the best of her ability -- special streams, spooky games, parties and candy with friends -- but she hadn't really been feeling up to it this year. Or feeling up to most things, really. It was inconvenient, that people's lives and the calendar still went on while she was sitting around and being a b***h to herself and everyone else -- who did they think they were? Actual sentient beings? Disgusting.
She couldn't actually make the complaint, mostly because she remembered how absolutely petty and trivial and awful it was as soon as it came to mind, but the fact remained that she'd had it in the first place and she had to deal with the fact she'd thought of that scenario. Thinking of awful things never brought Sunny much comfort, except when it did; maybe she just wanted to lie around and be gloomy surrounded by kitchy pumpkin thrift store knick knacks. Had anyone considered that?
Well, she'd considered it, and eventually decided that what the hell, it wasn't like she was doing anything decent. And everything would have been all well and good except a man in a beat-up car had run a red light, managed to come about three inches from killing her (just great, Sunny had thought, frozen in headlights like she had been, first I lose my arm and now I get hit by a car, this year isn't my best, can I get a cosmic do-over) and -- she hadn't died, even though she'd just about had a heart attack -- and the driver had said nothing. Hadn't apologized, like he should have. Hadn't even looked at her.
Actually, she'd noticed, nobody was quite looking at her. At all. Oh, people might have been looking in her direction, but it seemed coincidental: gazing at a perching pigeon, or at the traffic lights -- Sunny wanted to complain, to snap and bite, to let her already - festering anger and spite about how dare he, how dare he, can't he ******** see her, does he have eyes -- but she had never been the sort to give into that urge in the past, no matter how strong it was or how much she wanted to. And it reminded her of Babel, too, how silent those halls had been, with her ancestor leading her through them and turning to sign eagerly about what sort of vile crimes her prisoners had committed and how it had been like none of them actually mattered. It made her sick. Or it made her want to be sick. She gathered herself together and went walking, instead, too angry to let her former desire be anything but barely-guttering embers and quickly dying out even as she thought about it. Pumpkins would wait. Who cared. She didn't.
Of course her day wasn't going to work out, after that. She didn't know why she had ever expected it to. But there was more to it: nobody was answering her texts, she knew her parents had been home but they seemed to be ignoring her -- everything was so muted she almost thought she could have been disassociating, but that wasn't quite like this. It was like she was a walking ghost --
But it was nice, too, and that was the part Sunny hated about it most; nobody looked at her with pity in their eyes, like she was useless, like she needed their help or their judgement. She didn't want to like being ignored. But it almost felt like it could have been a boon to her frayed nerves.
