Invisible Isabelle
Flash Fiction from 2019. Also became a movie pitch. Still unhit. I have a 1000% movie pitch no-hit record.
Isabelle walks through the aisle like a ghost. She imagines she’s unseen. She dodges carts, and spins around people. It’s fun being invisible. It’s also fun being anything but invisible. As she glides along the end caps, avoiding children and making faces at their parents, she sees her supervisor, Clancy.
She’s lucky Clancy’s had a crush on her since eighth grade. She doesn’t try to lead Clancy into thinking he has a chance, but she does like to take advantage of the privilege it gives her. Clancy asks Isabelle to please stop the improv in the aisles, in front of the customers.
“Isabelle, c’mon, you know there are cameras all over the place in here. What Am I going to tell corporate?”
“Tell them I’m a ghost” She answers.
“I really don’t have a choice but to send you home early. You know that right?” I have to reprimand you and make a report and give you a warning and all that.”
“Clock me out at the end of my shift?” Isabelle queries.
“You know you can’t ask me to do that.” Just go clock out now and have a nice rest of the day and I’ll make it as painless as I can in the report. Go on.” Clancy explains.
Isabelle waves her hands in front of Clancy’s face as though he can’t see her. He smiles, chuckles and rolls his eyes. She makes her way to the corner of the store and slithers sideways between a couple discussing yogurt. Two kids are standing near the double swinging doors that lead to the employees only section of the store and she swings them open in front of them as though they were not expecting to see the doors open.
In back, Isabelle punches her time card and sits down at the break table. She takes the TV remote and puts on a cartoon. She sits briefly, watching, but soon gets up, obviously restless.
She begins going through the employee lockers. Miguel has a trucker hat that reads “42 Express”. She wears it and adjusts a tilt looking in his the mirror on the inside of the door. Sherry has a waist belt hanging in her locker, but Isabelle wears it over her shoulder like a sash. She continues going through Sherry’s locker and finds a half eaten candy bar and some bean dip. She covers her mouth and laughs, shaking her head.
Next is Randy who is a pretty large guy. She slowly and carefully starts leafing through his papers and magazines, grimacing as though she’s afraid of what she might find. She sees a couple of gun publications, something that looks like a manifesto. The title reads “We Know Where this is Going and it’s Time to Get There”. She stuffs that into her smock pocket, and then bending over to the floor of his locker, takes his muck boots, which are so large she puts them on right over her shoes.
Next is Jean’s locker, a nice elderly woman who is kind to everyone, and Isabelle smiles widely as she looks forward to seeing what Jean has. There is a piece of wedding cake in a plastic container which of course Isabelle helps herself to a few bites with the included plastic fork, as she peruses. Hanging on the inside of the door is lanyard with a bingo dauber, a little flashlight, and a laminated picture of Jean’s Collie Lucky she can’t stop talking about. Isabelle begins to hang the lanyard around her neck but thinks better of it. She wipes the fork clean on her smock, puts what’s left of the cake away, and moves on.
Across the room, there’s a mirror on the wall above the counter-top sink. Isabelle admires her outfit. She pulls her hair back and up, under Miguel’s hat. Next she starts going through the various drawers and cupboards. She finds a tray which stores a pile of cheap sunglasses. She finds the biggest frames she can, they’re white, and she wears them. One last time she adjusts herself in the mirror.
She leaves the break room and walks through the stock room where she commanders an unattended shopping cart. Back onto the floor, her stage, she goes. The customers, her audience and her marks. The muck boots, making suction sounds from her shoes inside them, with each step she takes.
dressed in this outfit, with the attention she’s getting as nourishment, she stops in the pet toy aisle. She takes and assortment of cat toys and dog chew leather and begins putting together a sculpture in her shopping cart. she uses a couple of leashes to strategically hold it in place as she slowly moves the cart toward the front of the store. As she moves along through different departments, she adds measuring cups, a clothes hangars, and a funnel to complete her creation.
As she passes through the free sampling demonstrations, she stuffs her face with little pizza squares, some cous cous, a ramekin of sorbet and a couple half-shots of orange vodka.
Miguel spots her from a distance and shakes his head and mouths “what’s up?”, gesturing with his shoulders and hands. He furrows his brow and shakes his head. She acts as though she doesn’t know this strange man whose hat she’s wearing.
Clancy sees her from across the store and for a moment doesn’t realize who it is. She sees him as well, and realizing he’s not onto her, she picks up a bottle of shampoo and feigns reading the bottle while watching him over the top of her glasses. Before she can find an aisle to disappear into he recognizes her and hangs his head, then begins pursuit with a perplexed, crinkled face.
Clancy walk-runs as fast as he can in her direction, but now she’s actively avoiding him. She hides behind an end cap of laundry hampers, then she takes one and balances it on her cart, over the top of her now eroding sculpture. She can see him through the grated plastic as she tries to elude him.
As Isabelle makes a bee line for the front of the store, she begins shedding her costume. First the waist belt sash, then the sunglasses, then the hat. All of the items are thrown haphazardly into the cart. She’s hopping on one foot at a time to get the muck boots off and adds them to her collection in the cart.
Just as Clancy reaches her, she takes the manifesto Randy was reading and shoves it into Clancy’s chest. “I’m sorry I’m so bored at work” She says, holding the manifesto up against him, gesturing down to it with her eyes. She turns around and walks out of the store.
Clancy gathers himself and looks confusedly at the printed document she’s given him. He’s alarmed. He watches her disappear, ghostlike, into the parking lot.
