by Shannon Takahashi

Created on: August 15, 2008   Last Updated: April 25, 2009

The Invisible Man

I was terrified to go to sleep. I knew that he was waiting for me in that netherworld, searching for me, with the singular goal of killing me. I thought, at the time, that I tried to tell people that I needed help. In retrospect, I probably did not. To tell might have risked what little security I had. It would have rent the tenuous fabric of my waking world, with no guarantee of gaining the security I sought so desperately.

I am sure that for the generation coming up now, to live in fear of the Invisible Man must seem ludicrous. They have been terrorized in the movies by Freddy and other far more grizzly characters, so a character as tame as the madman portrayed by Claude Raines would seem laughable. Let me assure you that nowhere is safe when the Invisible Man stalks your dreams night after night. You are worn down a little more each day, each successive morning feeling as if you have had less and less sleep, until the exhaustion becomes unbearable. Then you arise and go through the motions of dressing and go out the door to school or work, where you try to pretend everything is normal. You greet the people you count as your friends or coworkers. You hope in the midst of your guilt and shame that they will not ask why you are disappearing. You try to focus on the task before you, knowing all the while that he is waiting for his next shot at you. While you are struggling to achieve normalcy, he has all the time in the world to wait and plan for your return.

Perhaps what I have not yet made clear is that the invisible man who stalked my sleep had a mentor who also stalked each and every step of my day. He paid the bills, made me wait on him hand and foot, made me run his errands when I was old enough to drive, and woke me up at 2:00 a.m. Each night, when he returned from the afternoon shift at the auto plant where he worked, he beat me. When no one was looking he beat me for leaving too much grit in the bottom of the tub I had cleaned. He beat me for leaving the crayons on my sister's high chair tray. from the beginning of junior high through high school graduation, he beat me with a leather belt, a paddle, a yardstick, or his hand until I had welts and bruises that made it near impossible to sit down and be normal during the day. Then, after I had cried myself to sleep, he would crawl into my bed and do more unspeakable things. During those times, it was I who tried to be invisible, and to some extent I succeeded. No one saw the bruises or the

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