The INVISIBLE TOMBOY 3: Doctor's Orders
By HENSPURS  cockscomb@juno.com 
Our unseen heroine acts Against Doctor's Advice


Sirens. I had to listen to them, no matter how close or how distant. The whole
world came to a halt as I strained to follow the wail of a siren across the
river. The sound reminded me how tentative my freedom is.

On my own again, walking in the rain, trudging the wet streets---and pissed
off.

This wasn't how life for the invisible was supposed to be.

The new surroundings helped ease the tension, but added the same amount right
back again. I didn't know my way around Gatineau and I didn't want to ask
strangers for directions or go around with a map---advertising myself as an
out-of-towner.

When I stopped to rest in a garbage-cluttered alley between stores, I got
company. A hook-nosed fatso bundled up against the cold burst out of a doorway
and stumbled past me, yanking down his zipper with one bare hand and one glo
ved. Urine trickled before he got his dick in the clear, but he looked like
the sort that didn't give a shit. The stain didn't show up on his pants.

A phone rang in his pocket and he ignored it.

He whizzed and farted loudly not two feet from where I was standing then shook
off his dick, zipped up and shook a cigarette out of a crumpled pack.

Liesurely, he lit up and enjoyed several puffs, blowing the smoke more or less
at me. Fortunately, he didn't notice the curls of smoke traveling over my
contours.

His phone rang again, but he let it go on.

He glanced in my direction, squinting at the latest billow of smoke, maybe
making out my shape. He leaned in closer to me. His phone rang again, sounding
more insistent.

"Uh-huh," he answered upon finally answering the phone. "Sure. Half of it
taken care of. An hour. Yeah. Yeah to that, too. Twenty-two. No, I haven't
seen any of them.

Nope. Nope. None of those either. Nope. No luck. Bye."

Fatso propped his foot up on an old tire in the alley and bore down with a
grunt. Whatever he was trying to force didn't come.

Smoking until half the cancer stick was gone, he whistled and went back where
he came from, oblivious to me.

I felt like knocking people's hats off in the street.

My tightened fists brought up an old memory about the years I had owned a pair
of boxing gloves.

Christmas. The boy next door (let's call him Charlie) had gotten that pair of
kid-sized boxing gloves. After a few months, Charlie's present, hardly used,
wound up in the trash. Charlie probably got too punchy for his own good and
the boxing gloves had to go. They ended up in my care, and I couldn't get
enough of those things.

Yeah, I was a kid, but those gloves were about the best present I ever had.
And I picked the damned things out of the trash. Picked them out and put them
on. Dad laughed at me. What else could he do. The kind of punch a trained
boxer throws is a strong, aimed, controlled reflex that takes a long time to
perfect.

According to Dad, I was just waving my arms in the air in front of me. I was
being pathetic-""imitating what I had seen on TV instead of having the feel
for what real combat was about.

Dad took the pipe out of his mouth long enough to say, "You get into a real
fight with moves like that, and you'll be flattened. Now, you ought to learn
how to throw a punch that will go straight. Remember, this is for
self-defense."

I learned about taping up my "dukes" like a ring fighter, got a pair of
athletic shoes similar to a boxer's and spent hours in the garage beating up a
bag hung from the rafters.

To hell with TV, I thought. After school, provided I had someone to lace my
gloves, I walloped the bag for hours until supper time. My hands were so beat
up, I couldn't hold a pen. I couldn't write. My schoolwork suffered.

But that was the least of my worries.

When I began to turn translucent, all my old habits and hobbies stopped. But I
never forgot how to throw a solid punch. I'd give a lot to be visible for a
few hours a day to visit a gym. Now, even with the fur-lined leather gloves
on, my hands felt cold. I should have worn mitts, I suppose, but I needed the
dexterity of my fingers. The left glove had a sizeable rip in the palm through
which I could see---nothing.

There was a gap between my jacket cuff and the glove, and there too, I
saw---nothing.

I was used to the phenomenon of not being able to see myself, but others
weren't. They never would be, I guessed.

A long, blaring car horn broke me out of my brown study and back into the cold
reality of the streets. I got to thinking every loud noise is directed at me.

A harsh voice yelled: "HEY! GET MOVING! GET MOVING!"

No collar this time; it was just a truck blocking an intersection. It took
minutes for my nerves to calm down.

I lived (and still live) in an ongoing state of adjustment and insecurity.
Girls my age are concerned with their appearance, but in my case, its my lack
of appearance.

To simplify, I always worry that I come across as unusual. So unusual, I might
be reported, photographed, detained or something else I don't need.

The walk from the neighborhood where I left the VW and Rory stranded to the
doctor's house was long and lonely, giving me plenty of time to think about my
present.

It's a bitch, all right.

This was real life for me, and it was turning out a lot like those movies and
books where the invisible character is distrusted, feared and hunted to death.
Yes, I was an outcast because of my state---a state no one else could ever get
used to or appreciate.

However, I had to contemplate the fact that I was now walking around in a
world where invisibility was now a human trait. In another five years, maybe
there would be more. In another ten or fifteen, if steps weren't taken to wipe
us all out, there might just be a fugitive community of unseen people where I
could be at home.

Grimes was the doctor's name""short, easy to remember. Made me think of a fat,
English country doctor out of a Jane Austen or a Charles Dickens book. His
first name, Toby, stamped him permanently in my mind as a relic from the 19th
century complete with waistcoat and a silk top hat.

Toby Grimes.

I half-expected him to have a dirt carriage drive leading up to his house, but
that wasn't the case. He was just another modern, well-to-do Canadian with a
house I could hide in. And in a place I could reasonably hide and live a few
comfortable days if I was very smart.

Gatineau.

Not a bad town in the right time of year. It wasn't exactly picturesque, but
not an eyesore, either. For someone like me, Gatineau was a risky place to
hole up, given that Ottawa was right across the river.

Yeah, I could see the capital.

That sight alone kept me on my toes.

Ottawa with its government buildings had me thinking of cops morning, noon and
night.

My French wasn't good---oh, I could read road signs, menus and theater
marquees, but don't ask me to speak French or understand it when it's spoken.
Shit, even listening to people with strong French accents trying to manage
English annoys me.

With no other place to go, I trudged uphill and downhill over wet pavement,
jaywalking and ducking down side streets when I saw cop cars.

Grimes' house was at the end of a tree-lined cul-de-sac. Cars no more than
three years old were parked along the curb. I didn't know how Rory knew
someone as successful as an M.D., and that fact made me worry. Maybe Grimes
was a bum of a doc who'd had to run from some other country and hide out here,
unable to practice medicine in his homeland. I was only guessing.

The Doctor's neighborhood was so quiet and isolated it could have been in any
small town in Canada. The two-story, gable-roofed house practically yelled
comfort. Of course, it belonged to a doctor, so I imagined it had an alarm
system.

I had so much stuff with me---if I had to run from this place, I would have to
ditch a lot of it right then and there. My stomach didn't feel good.

Grimes' house was landscaped, which to me means don't step on the grass. Keep
to the pavement.

Dogs at the neighboring house barked at me behind a closed gate. In the
driveway, a huge pickup truck with a shell stood like a giant blue alien
beetle. Its doors were open. Shopping bags from the local supermarket huddled
inside.

Shit!

I saw two bags of dog-biscuits in with the groceries. Unless the dude was
eating them himself, there had to be a dog in the house, the garage or
outside.

In another moment, a dark-haired young man, his clothes wet from the rain,
hurried out of the open front door of the house and resumed his back and forth
trips to the pickup truck.

Mr. Pickup was in no particular hurry.

I knew this set-up by heart.

Naked, I could have scurried into the place while he was distracted.

The idea that this young guy, Mr. Pickup was Toby Grimes seemed so doubtful, I
decided to find out not from asking on the driveway, but from the inside of
the house.

My quick entrance was pulled off with the same panache I use when I'm
unclothed. In a flash, I was inside, and without being noticed.

Crap!

Thick, deep carpeting; the exact kind that betrays footprints. But only
downstairs.

The steps to the second floor were bare. I climbed into darkness, smelling
medicine from the open bathroom.

The second floor was a warren of bedrooms. Empty bedrooms.

Wonderful!

The carpet up here was thin and didn't show footprints easily. And it was
warm.

That dude downstairs wasn't Doc Grimes; I guessed he was just a hospital
employee renting a room here. I checked out Mr. Pickup's room (not even
locked) and then laid out my stuff in another room down the hall. After all
the hell I'd suffered with Rory, I needed a hot shower and a long sleep in a
bed.

Mr. Pickup answered a phone after a few warbles.

"I'll be right there. Yeah. Yeah. Right. I'll be right there."

With the groceries still in the bags, Mr. Pickup got things in order, went out
and locked the front door.

I got naked and hung up my wet things to dry off.

A shower too quick to relax me had to do. Then I sacked out underneath the big
wooden bed. Rory told me I don't snore, and I had to believe that.

With my head still crammed of old memories about the boxing gloves, I dreamed
about when I was younger and still living with my folks in the old suburb.

Now, what the fuck?

In Canada, you might think every dog we own is a big Newfoundland, Labrador,
Husky, Wolfhound or Saint Bernard. Not so. The little twerp of a pooch that
came scampering up to where I lay hidden was a miserable little Yorkie,
sniffing and barking.

Flushed out of hiding just when I was getting comfortable, I crawled from
under the bed, grabbed up little Yorkie and went downstairs to shut him in a
place that wouldn't look too strange. The dog made a racket the whole time and
finally, I had to push him outside in the cold even when I didn't know if he
was supposed to be outside under such conditions.

Suddenly, something cold and wet hit me in the back and ran down my butt and
my legs. It had been deliberately squirted.

I turned.

A disembodied head addressed me. "Right on target!"

It was the weirdest face I had ever seen, but I figured it out pretty quick,
especially when I saw the translucent body underneath it. The head and neck
were coated in foundation makeup, the eyebrows penciled in. The mustache and
beard were fake. Likely, tinted glasses (removed for the nonce) hid the eyes.

"Yeah," he said, "I figured there had to be completely invisible people. By
the way, that stuff on you isn't food coloring. It's dye. It takes days to
come out. I wouldn't have used it on you, but you're fucking up."

A pause.

"Chick," he said with a sniff.

"You don't know me," I told him.

"Whew!" he said, "You oughta do a better job at covering up that pussy odor. I
can smell it from here.

While I said that, he stripped off the fake brown facial hair and whisked the
appliances aside. He must have been young. He looked strong, from what I could
see.

I could see. But he couldn't see me. I figured a hard shove would be better
than a punch; not being able to see my fists is a disadvantage. Contact. A
good, solid shove.

Mr. Head reeled. But not as far as I had hoped.

"Hey!" he said.

I was close enough, so I gave another shove, almost grappling with him. The
squirt-gun he had used to spray me had done its work""there was little sense
in wrestling the gizmo away from him.

We whirled on the floor. I let go and ducked. My footprints showed on the
carpet, giving away my position. Swinging for his head (his most obvious
feature) I clipped his jaw and maybe gave his nose a buffet at the same time.

That would teach him to be careful.

My welcome worn out, I had to escape. But not without my stuff. All upstairs.

"Knock it off!" Mr. Head spouted. "I can get a real guard dog in this house in
a minute. And he won't have to see you to take you down."

A bluff? I didn't know. There were those dog biscuits. A lot for just one
little Yorkie.

There was a chance, I thought, that I could wash the dye off if I didn't stand
there like an idiot. I faked left and ran right around him and up the stairs,
locking myself in the bathroom. I turned on the shower and jumped in, using a
washcloth instead of my hand to try to get the dye off my skin.

The threat Mr. Head had made downstairs was founded; the dye was strong stuff.
As good as tattoo ink. It wasn't coming out with soap, water and scrubbing.

Leaving the water on, I got out of the shower just as Mr. Head jimmied the
lock and stepped into the bathroom with me.

I had no other choice other than to fight.

TO BE CONTINUED