CAGI Entry #25

Title:  VISIBLY INVISIBLE

Genre:  YA Science Fiction

Word Count:  50,000

Query:

Zoey chose not to die.  Now she’s stuck transporting souls from their expired bodies to an underground lab, and a science experiment gone terribly wrong. It was a bad decision.

She loves her job, and hates it. Dealing in death carries an incomparable sadness, but no one should have to die alone, and that’s how Zoey justifies her work. It’s a lonely life though. She has no friends, aside from her clients, and they are never around for long.  Occupational hazard.  Another downside of working as a Collector, is being forgotten by the living. It is that way by design – it couldn’t work otherwise.  She has resigned herself to a lifetime of emptiness, until one day, inexplicably, someone remembers her.

Zoey’s connection with Matt is instant, powerful, impossible, but most crucially – forbidden. A relationship between a Collector and the living is not only prohibited, it is punishable by termination.  She could cease to exist at all. Zoey must unravel the secrets of the Collector’s Society to save herself and those around her.  She needs to know if true happiness can ever be hers again.

First 250:

Number 237 was easy. There had been no one around to hear Carlos when he slipped in the shower. No one was there to stop the bleeding, and no one was here now, not even Carlos anymore. The tear was already in the vial. Her job was done. The vial was surrounded by gold, shaped into a heart to mask its true purpose. It was small enough that no one would ever suspect it could have any other function than to be pretty, but it was big enough. Big enough to hold one tiny tear. The last tear. It always had to be the last. That was the one that held the soul. The only one that mattered. Even the strongest, biggest, and toughest, shed that last one. The Tear of the Soul. Of course the living don’t know this. It doesn’t often look like the tear has been shed, but it always has. Always. It’s just been stolen. The Collectors have taken it, and left no trace behind.

Carlos wouldn’t be discovered for three more days, so Zoey took a moment to hold his hand. She held it when it was still warm, when Carlos was still breathing. He must have wondered what she was doing with him in his bathroom when they’d only met a week ago at the car dealership. He was a salesman – single with no kids. She couldn’t decide if this was good or bad in the end. That he didn’t have anyone left here to pass on his legacy, or if it was better not to leave anyone behind.