It wasn’t something you’d notice, not really. It was as if a single pixel in the middle of my right eye had gone dark all of a sudden, like it had simply decided to stop working right. I noticed it just as I was putting on my going-out clothes – the light was simply gone.
I didn’t think there wasn’t really anything to worry about. A speck of dust, a cell in my retina fucking up, there was definitely an explanation. I mean, a little part of your eye couldn’t just check out, could it? And, I didn’t really know when it’d gone dark: just then, the night before, maybe it’d never been there at all. So, nothing to worry about. And, most importantly, I was planning to get absolutely smashed that night, just black-out drunk. Make-a-mistake drunk, be-physically-restrained-from-driving drunk. So there really was nothing to worry about.
That didn’t stop my heart from flickering when my roommate walked in, though. A cold trickle made its way down my spine, electrifying it, telling me to run, to go away, anything.
Their voice pierced through, its baritone quality giving me something, anything, to hold onto. “Fuck are you staring at me for, dumbass?”
I blinked twice. The darkness was still there – no, wait, there was more of it. My feet pulsed. “Sorry, I’m just on edge for some reason, I guess. Nothing to worry about, though,” I said, while being filled with the distinct notion that this was absolutely something to worry about. Or was it? Maybe I was just being dramatic, I don’t know. “And if it is, I mean, it’s nothing fifteen shots of vodka won’t help.”
“That’s the fucking spirit,” my roommate said. Well, they didn’t really say it, more something they forced out with a laugh. Or did they? I needed a cigarette.
“I need a cigarette.”
“You should really quit, you know. That shit fucks up your lungs.”
“What, and lose my best friend?”
They laughed. “Whatever. Everyone’s like, right outside, so we’re gonna start the pre real soon.”
I nodded. And no, no I wasn’t imagining it – the darkness had gotten larger, almost imperceptibly so, though. It was like a void, engulfing everything around it. And it was in my left eye, too. I could almost feel it wriggling through my skull, enveloping my vision in its jet-black embrace. Pull yourself together, fuckwad. I steeled myself, ignoring the cold down my posterior, the pulsing in my legs, the blackness in my eyes, the fundamental, visceral fear. I was looking good, and this was going to be a good night. It had to be.
“There’s the motherfucker I wanted to see!” my friend said, the moment I walked into our living room. The shots had already been poured. “You gonna join us, or are you too scared?”
“What do you think?” I replied surly. It didn’t feel like the time for banter. It felt more like the time for me to get the fuck out, out out out. “Fuckin’ hell, that goes down well, though” I said, but I wasn’t thinking it. All that was running through my head was out out out out out out. No one seemed like they noticed anything was wrong, though. Then again, one of our friends could be halfway through a major depressive episode and nobody else would notice, but this, this was way too obvious, right? The dark was in my eye. Still, I mean, the alcohol did help. Liquid courage, right?
The darkness had taken over half my right eye and a quarter of my left by the time we left the apartment. I watched someone light a joint, the cherry blazing, pulling back. “Guys, I can’t see.”
“Fuck do you mean?”
“I mean I can’t see, my eye’s half blocked or something.”
Another friend walked over; their forehead scrunched up. “There’s nothing on your eye, dude. I feel like you’re just imagining things.”
“Yeah, dumbass,” someone else piped up. “Plus, you’re walking completely fine.”
I looked down. I was – left, right, left, right, my strides were normal as ever. I exhaled. The dark got bigger. “You’re right, it’s nothing. Let’s get to the bar.”
Out out out out out. My back was close to freezing, tentacles wrapping their way round my hips, up my chest, up my neck. The chill was welcome in the 120-degree weather, to be sure, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was about to take me. I glanced up to a blood-red moon, fibrils of crimson emblazoning the night in indigo, violet, maroon. The wind picked up, whistling its way through the crowded streets, carrying with it whispers, shouts, cries. But when the smell of family, hot cocoa, and warm nights by the fire made its way up my nostrils, I ran.
Away away away away. Through empty streets, my beaters thudded their way past concrete sidewalks, asphalt roads, grassy fields, until I reached the shores of an inky sea, its waves arguing wildly with the dark sands – or was it gravel? No, it was stones, no, rocks, no, boulders. I saw what I saw through the thin strips of light in my eyes the darkness had not yet annexed. Then, when my vision seemed to be approaching its nadir, it pulled back, thankfully, and I felt myself in the loving embrace of that which I knew. I saw eyes, the most recognizable eyes, blink just in front of mine
Out out out out out out but the eyelids flickered and they – were they my eyes? – were gone, and all I saw was the black waters of the ever-reaching ocean of ink churn under my feet, lifting me up, not letting me drown. The chill down my spine had receded up to my neck, and warmth flowed down my throat.
Please please please please. The urge to puke was overpowering, and the smell of vodka was inescapable.
Wait, vodka?
And I was at the bar, staring down the bottom of a shot glass. I shook my head, but I didn’t, and I smiled at the person next to me, but I didn’t. “Say, you wanna do something fun?” they asked, and I heard them, but I didn’t. Stop stop stop stop stop no no no no.
And I was back on the shores of that infinity, that sea of despair, stretching as far as the eye could see. Or at least, I think I could see. I did not know if the sad wails, the terrified whispers, and need to go go go go go were external, or things my mind had conjured to distract me from the blackness in my eyes. And in the confusion, I found myself taking another shot. “Fuck, sure,” I said, and I didn’t. My mind was in some astral plane, it had shut itself off, but there I was, still acting just like normal, like the blackness wasn’t there, like I wasn’t hearing the crashing of a thousand waves against a rocky outcrop, or a sandy beach, or an endlessly stretching area of pure nothingness.
I don’t I don’t I don’t I don’t want want want I watched my friend flash me a grin and a thumbs-up as I felt myself be pulled out of the bar into the indigo night. No no no no stop stop stop And there I was, again at the edge of the sea, watching a figure pour water over itself. I locked eyes with it, and I felt myself falling backwards, into the ground, through the ground, out of the ground, back up again. Its face was mottled green, its flesh sloughing off the bone. I glanced away, but it was still there, its eyes, the most recognizable eyes, staring straight into mine. They were black, black as a cave, black as the dark and all the unknown things that hide within, and I fell inside, down down down.
I found myself wishing, hoping for my eyes to glaze over, for the pixels to darken, but on the shores of the salty, brackish ink, I knew there was no respite.
So my feet walked back. Back past the beach, from rocks to stones to gravel to sand, from grassy fields to asphalt roads to concrete sidewalks, back to the empty streets of the city. The wind whistled in my ears, through the alleys, in my ears. My heart was pounding, but I had found a way back to my apartment. A jingle of my keys, but my legs vibrated, and I lit a cigarette. As the nicotine found its way into my bloodstream, my body lurched forward into calm, but my mind demurred, it raced away, it ran.
The darkness in the eyes was still there, but I suspected the worst of it had passed me by, the terror now a fixture in my house of memories, and not a dark present.
But the body soon found its way back to my bed, and mind found its way to a sickly sweet sleep, the kind that gives the illusion of forgetting all things.
Oh God oh God oh God. I woke up, head pounding, neck burning, arms dotted with little bruises. It was a Sunday, and I lifted a body that was no longer mine, up up up, all the way to the bathroom. The darkness had cleared, and in the mirror, I found myself face-to-face with the most recognizable eyes.