Every hero is at least a little famous. Even the small town heroes are known by the community, but what happens when your superpower is literally “being unnoticed”? Growing up, I never had an easy time making friends or playing with other kids during recess. I always believed that I just wasn’t good at sports, so no one passed the ball to me. The other kids acted like they forgot me, or would just straight up ignore me. I thought it was because they didn’t want to be associated with me that they always picked me last in games. Always putting myself out there asking others to join their groups or recess hoping for a game in which I would actually play with everyone else instead of ignoring them just led me to close myself off from reaching out to others. Just as much as I felt pushed away from my fellow classmates I started pushing myself away from others which made things much worse at home. This is because as time went on and I reduced interacting with those close to me, my unnoticed issues became more apparent. When I was in elementary school, my parents always remembered to pick me up when school was over. However, once I got into middle school, my parents would occasionally forget to pick me up. After the second mistake my parents blamed it on just getting off late from work so they suggested I start bussing home. This made things worse as the only time we ever interacted anymore was sitting across one another at dinner. It was only at those times when I watched them jump when they noticed me across the table with fear and worry in their eyes they remembered who I was.

At first, I felt alienated and neglected. I thought that no one loved me and everyone forgot about me. What can I say to them though they raised me am I going to blame them for going out to dinner together leaving me home alone to make my own food. They raised me fairly independently I thought so I was fine making myself a packed lunch in the morning and dinner at night. It was in highschool when my power started getting so strong that looking away from me that people forgot I was there that I truly understood that this wasn't natural and if I didn’t do something soon things might get a lot worse. So I sat down with my mom and dad to talk about my pridictment. Every five minutes felt like Groundhog's Day or 50 First Dates needing to explain what was going on and what we had planned out on a list of things to do. The future planning as we wrote as to do lists was the best we could come up with to make sure I had a future. I mean hey, at least a bank account still exists even if my family forgets about me.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

Now that I have graduated from high school and my power has progressively gotten stronger, I’ve thought about how I could use my power for something other than the easy evil it could be used for. It’d be easy for me to commit crimes and get away with it, and I have some reasons why. Money is hard to come by. My parents stopped paying my phone bills. My boss forgets that I still work for him or even worked there in the first place, so I don’t get scheduled sometimes on shifts. It’s hard to make money. I know I could rob any bank, and they would just ignore or forget me. If I do, I’d give up on the person I grew up to be and just become a conduit of my power.

Speaking about banks, I had a peculiar incident just a week ago. I was applying for a remote data analyst position at my local bank. I figure that I can just deal with numbers and not deal with coming in to work every day with no one noticing me. I pulled a number tag when I came in, and when the teller called my number, I came up to her desk. After an hour of fighting my power dealing with a social interaction, gunshots started firing into the ceiling behind me.

“Everyone get down! This is a robbery. If no one acts like a hero, no one’s gonna get hurt,” the balaclava-clad man yelled behind me. Everyone except me dropped to the ground, coward, and screamed. I, on the other hand, lazily turned around in my pajama bottoms and mockingly snarked back: “Why do you even yell ‘This is a robbery’? As if the gun and balaclava didn’t give it away. Heck, why do I even say anything? It's not like you’re paying attention to me.” I continued talking to myself while the thief wrestled the guards to the ground and disarmed them. Now he was the only one in the whole building with weapons.

After the guards were disarmed, the thief traveled to the only open register, which happened to be the one I was standing near. “Put the money in the bag! And there better not be any paint bombs or trackers. All I want is what's in the register, not your life. Do you understand,” the thief commanded. As the teller sobbed and got the money out of the register, my chest swelled with anger. I have been neglected and forgotten all my life, and that has left a scar. But to see people hurt each other over money that they could easily make in an honest job, it just pisses me off to no end. I couldn’t just stand there and take it like I usually do. I finally felt compelled to do something about the situation. I wound up my fist and threw a punch that the world would forget, but inevitably changed it and me.