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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?
Steele Moore (born Eugene Waldroop, of the year 19something, to his nice but sometimes very irritating parents) was not a man who took being ignored as a good thing - nor a thing which he tolerated under the best of circumstances, though there were exceptions.
He liked being the center of attention. He liked people knowing who he was. He liked having the money, the power, the ability to sweep into a room and charm the pants off of anyone and everyone that he came into contact with, because he'd never before had that ability, and never before had any sort of meaningful charisma to do anything.
And now he did. Now he was a lawyer, albeit a very poor one, though the lack of money came more from Steele's exorbitant spending habits than it did actually earning anything. He may not have been the most reputable of lawyers, but he did at least hold his own in court.
And he knew how to talk. Heaven knew he knew how to talk. It was a strong suit of his, something that he prided himself on more than a little bit, because if there was anything that Steele himself knew he was damned good at it, it was talking himself out of whatever situation he was in and making himself out to be the hero. Or the victim, whichever was necessary.
Most of the time. Again, there were exceptions, though he tried to make sure those were few and far between. It wouldn't do him any good to pretend otherwise, but he sure as hell was going to try, because otherwise he'd be right back where he started.
Struggling just to get people to pay attention to him.
He had not had a great many friends growing up. Rob, for a while, had been his sole source of anything worthwhile, but even Rob was...well, gone, mostly. He was too wrapped up in whatever it was that he was doing these days, which left Steele back to square one. It hurt a great deal, more than he was willing to admit, because his best friend had been just that - his best friend. More than a business partner, more than his law school associate. Someone he could have talked to. Someone who, while exasperated and fed up with him half of the time, understood him and agreed with him and got along with him when no one else had.
But that was gone now too. Steele did not have much left, and he knew it.
Holding onto the last dregs of his sanity was not an easy thing, and it was made even more apparent by the fact that absolutely no one was paying him any attention today. Steele's attempts at getting his morning coffee had gone spectacularly badly; he'd thrown the money down onto the counter in pure frustration at the fact that he'd been ignored by the barista, and when at last he'd thrown up his hands in utter irritation to stomp out, she still hadn't seemed to notice his little outburst.
It was annoying, to say the least. Steele felt unbelievably perturbed by this, stalking through the streets of downtown Destiny City with his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his expensive Burberry winter coat (the one that had cost him almost a month's rent, give or take a few hundred, but that made him look extremely dashing and impressive when he was on appointments and meeting with clients). The damned barista could have at least given him an impatient nod to show that she knew he was there, but instead she'd acted as though he'd been invisible.
He had felt invisible enough lately. He did not need this added to it.
The self esteem he prided himself on most of the time - because he knew he was good looking and tall and impressive and expensive and thrilling and totally awesome - was starting to dwindle, which was both a startling thing and a nervewracking one, one that made Steele feel uneasy, because it was all too close to what he'd been like as a teenager. A gangly, hunched over youth without any sort of prospects, until he'd finally decided to take control of the life he'd been given and make it his own. And he'd found Rob to do that with him; found someone, at last, who understood him.
Well, it didn't matter now. He should have known that he would have to do all of this on his own.
Nora was not in, which left the cranky elderly lady as their temporary secretary. Steele greeted her with a blinding white smile - one of his best - but she did not look up, did not so much as blink in his direction, her attention on the computer in front of her. He felt a flash of annoyance.
"Gilda. Gilda. My messages for the day?"
She continued tapping away. Steele held out a hand and snapped his fingers in front of her face with impatience.
"Gilda. Did anything come in for me today?"
She didn't move. Didn't react. Steele felt the uneasiness grow, felt a strange and unpleasant sense of uncertainty steal over him. After a moment, he reached out his hand again and shook it in front of his secretary's face, but there was no reaction, no acknowledgement of his presence.
Nothing.
Steele jerked his hand back and hastened to his office. The other one, Rob's, was empty of course, lights off and the door shut. Steele sidled into his own and collapsed into his chair, breathing heavily, putting his face in his hands and tried not to overthink this, the leather of his gloves pressing against his wind flushed cheeks.
What was happening? He had to be imagining everything. Steele slowly went over all that had happened in the morning - he'd woken up, played a little on his PS4 in his boxers, finally gotten dressed last minute, hurried down the street outside of his apartment still brushing his hair, and had almost tripped straight on into oncoming traffic in his haste to get to the coffee shop before it got too busy. He'd nearly been run over by a taxi cab, and had stumbled onto the cold and wet ground (extremely unprofessional, not to mention shameful, in his brand new coat), but he'd pulled himself up and together and continued on.
And then there had been the incident with the barista. And now his secretary.
He was just imagining it. That was all. He wasn't thinking straight. Everything was fine. Maybe this was just someone's way of playing a colossal joke on him, and maybe this was just ******** with him. He thought, briefly, with a flash of painful, shameful hope, that it might be Rob. Steele's gaze moved towards the closed door across the hall again.
No. That wasn't it.
He spent the rest of the day getting absolutely nothing accomplished. Steele finally trudged out at a quarter past five and made his way back across town, back through the traffic, and still, no one looked at him. No one spared him a glance, from the boy he almost tripped over as he skated past on his longboard, to the newspaper stand man whom Steele tried to buy a paper from, and then finally gave up after five minutes standing in the cold, shaking his wallet in front of his face.
It didn't matter. It was to be expected. Why should he have thought any different? This had always been his life. This had always been the case, no matter where he went and what he did. Steele had known very much what it was that he was; he was not nearly as impressive or as amazing as he tried to present to other people and now it was back to how he'd always been. Alone. A nobody.
His apartment was cold and empty. Steele sat down on his full sized bed, draping the coat over the back of his chair, and rubbed at his face, feeling the cold air pressing in around him. He did not know what he had expected, but it was not this.
He should have, though. He should have known.
He could not change the past. It ate away at him, regardless of whatever life he tried to live, whatever changes he tried to make with himself, it was always there, a constant presence to remind him that he was not, and never would be, good enough.
Steele rose, changed into his pajamas, and went to bed.
In the morning, when he went to the coffee shop, the barista greeted him cheerfully as he asked for his decaf with no cream and sugar. He gave her a pointed look, irritated and frustrated, and left her with an expression of confusion on her young face, Steele making his way back to his office.
Another day. Another life.
Maybe he'd imagined it.
Or maybe this was the fantasy.
