@OriginalWorks Fiction Writing Contest #1: The Invisible Meeting

Thanks to @originalworks for hosting this excellent competition

https://steemit.com/fiction/@originalworks/originalworks-fictional-writing-contest-1-the-invisible-meeting

It had started at school, the class had started to ignore her and she had slowly, steadily and oh so surely started to slide out of existence. She still went to classes but even her teachers did not see her anymore. Coming home in the evening her mother would leave out a meal, she would eat it, go to bed and when she got up in the morning her mother would still be sleeping from her nightshift. Every day she just got less and less until here she was invisible and living a life of lonliness. Her mother had passed away and no-one had came to the funeral, she could remember standing at the grave with the priest saying a final Amen and he walked away and as if a final nail had been hammered into her own life her total and absolute invisibility was sealed from then on in.

The man sat at work on his own, typing meaningless words into the screen, he could hear laughter in the cubicles behind him, but that laughter never made it’s way to his own cubicle. “You coming for break”, “You heading to the pub tonight”, “What did you do over the weekend” these words never coming his way, he worked eight hours a day five days a week, his money electronically sent to his account each month. Breakfast on his own, people averting their eyes, no-one wanted him to join them, maybe deep down they felt sorry for him and did not want to look at his naked and open loneliness. He was as invisible as the elderly, no-one saw him, heard him or even noticed him.

It was a bright day outside and putting on his warm coat, he went out for a walk, even the lure of another box set could not keep him in his empty flat. She needed some milk, the shop was around the corner, she didn’t really like to leave her house anymore but she couldn’t wait for the online shopping to deliver her milk, her one true pleasure in life, a nice cup of tea could not wait.

The man walked past the shop and looked in the door, he didn’t look where he was going and didn’t see her, BUMP…he knocked her to the ground and bent down to help her up.

“Are you okay?”, he asked….this was the first person he had spoken to in a long time.
“I’m fine thanks”, her voice sounded funny in her head.
He put out his hand and helped her up, he smiled and without thinking said “would you like to go for a coffee”, for the first time in a long time, neither were invisible.