I walked out of the Empire State building, at 10:59 pm. A minute before it closed.

A faint voice called something from behind me but I couldn't make it out.

I whipped around and saw, Jesse, she was calling for me. "Wait for me!!!"

I flipped her off, ran past her and sprinted towards the closet shack I could find.

\|/

The next morning, I went to the bathroom and went piss.

I washed my hands and looked in the mirror. Nothing. My reflection. Gone.

What happened?

I brought my hands up to my face, feeling the distinct grooves and roughness of my flesh. I was here, alright. But I wasn't there. I examined the mirror closely, searching for a hint of warping that would provide proof that I was still visible. When I looked down at myself, I could still see me. But the mirror couldn't.

I could sense the beginning of a panic attack, but I tried to hold it off for as long as I could to rush out of the bathroom and into my bedroom. I fumbled for my phone on the nightstand next to my bed, my shaky hands struggling to tap in the password. I managed to unlock it, and Facetimed the first person on my call list: Jesse.

She took so long to pick up. Too long. My mouth flapped uselessly to expel short puffs of hot air, and my lungs laboured to draw in more breath. My phone fell from my hands and I dropped onto my knees on the ground just as Jesse picked up the call. I saw her furrowed brows and downturned mouth as I scrabbled for the phone.

"William? Is that you?" I put a hand on my chest, feeling the rise and fall of my lungs slow down as I grounded myself by focusing on the small screen I held before me. "Yes- yes, it's me. Jesse, you can see me, right?" She squinted her eyes, shaking her head. "Is this some sort of prank? God, I never should've tried to hope things could be fixed between us if you keep pulling shit like this." Jesse ended the call, and my worst fears had been confirmed. I had, somewhat ridiculously, become invisible.

I got up from the floor, my hands still quivering. I crammed my phone into the pocket of my pyjama pants, shuffling over to the floor length mirror to try spot myself again. I pressed my fingers to my cheek, pulling my hand back to find little droplets of residual tears on the tips of my fingers. I hadn't even realised I was crying. My eyes drifted back up to my reflection. Or, rather, my lack of a reflection. Still gone.

I decided to call work and stay in for the day to grapple with the fact that I had basically disappeared from existence. No one could hear me or see me. I sat in bed all day, spooning mint chocolate chip ice cream straight from the tub into my mouth and occasionally sobbing into the ice cream. It was pathetic, but I couldn't seem to rise from the slums.

Until I heard a knock at the door. I got up, already miserable knowing that whoever was there would think the spirit of their dead grandfather was opening the door to usher them into the next life. I opened the door anyway, and right before me stood... Jesse?

"Listen, William... William?" She peered into my entryway, looking for me. "Right in front of you, Jesse." I murmured bitterly, aware she couldn't hear me. She took a step forward and crashed into me. "What on Earth?" She stood stock still, her eyes nervously darting around the spot where I waited for her to maybe, just maybe, realise I was there. "Wait, I know what this is. William, you're wearing camo, aren't you?" A laugh unwillingly fell from my lips, as I turned her words over in my mind.

That was just a myth... wasn't it?

It was a stupid urban legend with honestly pretty tragic beginnings. It started, as most urban legends do, as the intercept of neighbourhood kids scaring each other, mothers easing some amount of pain amongst themselves and their children, and the grief-addled young mind mixing up fact and fiction. It was my neighbour, Mikey Kloss who had told it to me first, claiming it had been passed down from mother to older brother, to him, and then, to me. When a man puts on camo, he disappears. Just like my dad did.

He was seven, and his dad had been deployed some months earlier.

But I wasn't an army man. So why was I...?

Suddenly, my stomach sank like a stone.

The Empire State building.

I'd gone up there alone, the same way I did every year on this exact date, watching the city sprawl out beneath me like a circuit board lit up at night, all those little lives buzzing away in their little boxes. It was the anniversary of the last time I'd seen my father in uniform, standing in our driveway with his duffel bag at his feet, already looking like a stranger in his camo fatigues. Already halfway gone.

I pressed my back against the wall of my apartment and slid down it until I was sitting on the floor. Jesse was still standing in my doorway, her head swivelling slowly as she tried to locate me by sound.

"William, I swear to God, if you're just standing there watching me look like an idiot--"

"I'm here," I said, knowing she couldn't hear it.

I'd worn my father's old jacket. It had been sitting in the back of my wardrobe for eleven years, folded exactly as he'd left it, smelling less and less like him with every passing year until it smelled like nothing at all, just the must of old cotton in faded green and brown and tan. I'd put it on before I left the apartment because it was cold and because sometimes grief makes you do things you can't explain to anyone, least of all yourself.

Jesse took another cautious step inside, her hand outstretched, fingers splayed. They brushed against my shoulder.

She went completely still.

"...William?"

Her voice had dropped to something smaller, a tone I hadn't heard from her in a long time. Not since before everything went wrong between us.

"Yeah," I said quietly, even though I knew it was useless.

She pressed her palm flat against my shoulder, then moved it upward until she found my jaw, cupping my face like a fragile ornament.

"You're wearing camo," she whispered. And then, very slowly, the corner of her mouth pulled into something that wasn't quite a smile. "Mikey Kloss," she said.

I stared at where I knew my reflection wasn't. "Mikey Kloss," I agreed, to no one.