Fingerprint not recognised

I swear I am going to throw this phone at the nearest wall one of these days. Or perhaps not the nearest. It might not suffer enough damage if I throw it at the nearest one. But it will end badly for it, that’s for sure.

Fingerprint not recognised

I’m convinced the phone’s giving me this message completely randomly. I haven’t chewed the cuticle of my right index finger, I haven’t scrubbed anything with it, I haven’t done anything that could affect my fingerprint. And yet, there it is, at the bottom of the stubbornly black screen: Fingerprint not recognised.

That’s not my bigger problem right now, however. My bigger problem is that I have to call Pat because she was having some sort of trouble with a kid at school and I wanted to call her and make sure she was all right. It’s kind of stupid when you think about it because in just half an hour I’ll be going to collect her from said school but I’ve learned over the years to not fight the anxiety and just let it play out.

So, I really need to call my daughter but I can’t because my phone is a demon from Hell and not only is it not letting me into its brain through the default door, it is also not offering me the back door, aka, “Enter your passcode for additional protection”.

I glance at the clock – time, at least, is still accessible – and my anger blooms. I should be on my way but instead I’m standing here on the street, tapping the back of my phone trying to put my finger in such a position so the stupid thing recognises it and yet it keeps refusing to do it, again and again, and again. I blink to chase away angry tears and time blinks with me.

I’m still on the street but something has changed. I’m not sure what it is until I see a lonely figure walking up the pavement, head hung low, eyes following the pattern of the concrete blocks. It’s Pat and Pat’s coming home from school alone because her mother was too busy trying to unlock her phone she never went to pick her up.

“Pat,” I call and rush to meet her. “Honey, I’m so sorry, the stupid phone wouldn’t let me in so I could call you. I lost track of time, I’ve no idea how it happened. How was school?”

Pat keeps walking without raising her head, plodding ahead like a convicted murderer on the way to the gallows.

“Pat, I’m really sorry,” I try again, walking with her now, right beside her. I don’t dare try to hug her or even touch her in case she draws away. Teen time is a hard time, I know that, but I don’t think I could bear another cringe without bursting out, which would help neither of us.

We reach the house in silence that I’d like to think of as comfortable but it’s not. It’s a tense silence, with me trying to hold back all the words I want to tell Pat, about how whatever is happening at school, it will pass, because everything passes, sooner or later, because what starts must end, and nothing is eternal, even the fallout with your best friend, and anyway in just a couple of more years she’ll be out of there and moving on to university, and everything will be all right. I don’t know what she’s thinking about but she hasn’t even glanced at me the whole way and this makes me feel hollow inside, like someone has scooped up all my internal organs.

“Dad, I’m home,” Pat says when she opens the door. I manage to slip in after her just before she closes it in my face.

“Hey, what’s this? Have I done something I don’t remember?” I ask. She really was going to slam the door in my face. “Patricia? Look at me, please, however impossible this seems these days.”

Pat doesn’t look at me. She kicks her trainers off, drops her bag and walks into the house, leaving me no choice but to follow her into the kitchen.

Jonathan looks up from his laptop. A weak semblance of a smile moves his lips.

“Hi, darling. How was school?”

Pat shrugs and walks over to the fridge.

“John, there’s something seriously wrong with this phone,” I start. I can see Pat is not in her best shape but I think it would be best to not nudge her into telling us what’s bothering her. She’ll tell us when she wants. “It’s not recognizing my fingerprint again!”

“We’re out of yogurt,” Pat says and closes the fridge door.

“Put it on the list,” her father says, his eyes on the laptop screen. “I just need to finish this and send it to the office and I’ll go do some shopping. Do you want to come?”

Pat shakes her head.

“Excuse me?” I say, my heart beating a little faster. They are both completely ignoring me. “Hello? There’s a mother in the house?”

“You should go out, darling,” Jonathan says gently. He’s got up from the laptop and is standing in front of Pat. He reaches out awkwardly and hugs her. She hugs him back and… yes, she sobs.

“Oh, baby, what’s wrong, please tell me,” I say, close to sobbing myself and I rush towards them to join the hug, confident that whatever it is, we can sort it out together. I blink and time blinks with me.

I’m in the back yard. It’s the only yard we have but we still call it the back yard where I’ve got a couple of flower beds, how empty since it’s November, and a view to the kitchen window. Jonathan and Pat are still in there, hugging, Pat crying on her father’s arm because she’s not tall enough to cry on his shoulder yet. Sobs are making her body shudder and everything in me wants to run in there and help my little girl but I can’t move. I even look down to check if I hadn’t grown roots that keep me in place.

I haven’t grown roots but I am frozen to the spot, paralysed. Something is seriously wrong. First the phone, then Pat, now Pat again and Jonathan not noticing me. There is no way I have gone spontaneously invisible, of course, so what is wrong? Could it be a practical joke? Devised by two people who detest few things more than practical jokes? Doubtful. What then? I raise my hand to toss my hair out of my face and I discover I can move. But I’m in no rush t get back into the house and face the same faces. I need to find out what is going on.

I look at my hand. It is my hand and it looks exactly the same as it looked yesterday and last week, and last year, and so on. My fingerprints are the same. I feel the same as I’ve always felt, up to and including the slight stab of warning pain in my right side. I’ve got a sensitive gallbladder, like my mum. A doctor told her that it’s nothing to worry about, that it’s something you die with, not from, and I hope the same would be true for me because I have no time for surgery. I’ve got too much work to do to sit in hospitals.

Pat lets go of her dad and brushes her eyes with the back of her hand. Jonathan tells her something and she nods. Then she leaves the kitchen. Neither of them looks in my direction.

I’m seriously worried now. Nobody, except if they’re excellent actors and have a very good reason, pretends to not see a member of their family so convincingly. And I haven’t done anything to deserve this degree of ignoring. I haven’t done anything at all. Everything was fine just yesterday when we all went to bed. And now this. Which leaves only one explanation and that explanation makes my heart sink all the way to the bottom.

I’m dead. I must be. I don’t feel dead but if nobody can see me and nobody can hear me, this must be what has happened. That or I’m having a psychotic break, which would be extremely odd since I have never mental problems. Anxiety is normal. Everyone has it sometimes. But psychosis? That’s highly unlikely. I must have died some time between yesterday and today, but I haven’t departed. I’ve stayed behind, for some reason.

There is only one way to find out if I’m right and it makes my heart frantic. I can hear it thumping in my ears. Maybe it is a psychotic break, after all, if I can feel and hear a heartbeat. Some small hope in the face of evidence that points to the opposite. I bite my lip until it hurts and walk back to the end of the back yard. My hands have acquired a will of their own and are currently squeezing and relaxing like the hands of a fighter before a fight. I’ve seen it in movies. Squeeze and relax. I always thought it was because they were preparing for the fight, planning it or something but now that my hands are doing it, I think it’s some fight or flight thing.

Anyway, delaying things is stupid, especially when they’re unpleasant. I keep my hands squeezed into fists, tense and start running forward. The ground feels totally real beneath my feet, the air smells wet and dark, just like it always smells at this time of the year, and it is wet, I can feel the fine mist on my face. Just before I reach the fence at the end of the back yard I jump into the air and all my illusions shatter.

I’m flying. I’m moving in the air without the need to propel myself, about twenty feet above ground and part of me knows for a fact that all I need to get back down is to just decide it. I start crying, sniffing and sobbing, a full-scale emotional breakdown because there can be no doubt now.

I’m dead, I’ve died and left my family behind only not behind but along because I’m still here and I don’t know what to do to move on, I don’t even know if I want to move on and never see Pat and Jonathan again but the thought of watching them grieve for me – because that’s what that was in the kitchen, grief – the thought of watching this for days, and weeks, and maybe months would kill me all over again.

I have to get out of here, one way or another. My heart breaks, I can hear it break, but I cannot stay here and see Pat and Jonathan miss me even if I don’t really think I deserve to be missed all that much. I wasn’t the best mother or wife but they’re clearly not happy that I’m gone. I don’t want to see this. I don’t know why someone – God? – would keep me here to watch it. Maybe as punishment for not being a good person. Or maybe the world’s full of ghosts and we just don’t see them. And maybe I need to give my brain a break and try to see what my options are. There has to be a way to move on and I have to find it. I just have to.

I stand up in the air and gently float down until my feet touch the ground. I used to have so many dreams, in which I was flying. I wanted to fly for real so much. Now that I can fly, I wish I didn’t. The irony of life and, apparently, death. I glance at the kitchen window warily lest I see something heartbreaking again. And I do see it. Jonathan is sitting at the table, in front of the laptop but he’s not typing. His back is shaking. Jonathan is crying and that’s the last drop. I squeeze my eyes shut and pray – pray for the first time in my adult life – to be somewhere else, right now, immediately, please.

After a while I open my eyes and blink. Time blinks with me.

I swear I am going to throw this phone at the nearest wall one of these days. Or perhaps not the nearest. It might not suffer enough damage if I throw it at the nearest one. But it will end badly for it, that’s for sure.

Fingerprint not recognised

I’m convinced the phone’s giving me this message completely randomly. I haven’t chewed the cuticle of my right index finger, I haven’t scrubbed anything with it, I haven’t done anything that could affect my fingerprint. And yet, there it is, at the bottom of the stubbornly black screen: Fingerprint not recognised.