Writer's Challenge

Out of the Corner

by John W.

In two weeks I have to go back to the hospital, so Dr. Frey can do my left eye. I don’t know if things will get better or worse. But if something doesn’t change, I’m not going to make it.
If things get worse, fourteen days may be all the sanity I have left.

Two weeks ago--fourteen days--they removed the gliomas from my right optic nerve with the gamma knife.

“Okay, Pete, you’re going to feel a slight pinch,” Dr. Frey said as she presented the needle. I was sitting on the edge of the exam table, the aluminum guide frame over my head like an exhibit at some bio-mechanical horror show. Dr. Frey’s cute assistant stood behind me, holding my head still. The needle punctured my forehead, above my left eye, halfway between my eyebrow and hairline. The pinch was more than slight, my scalp jerked at the prick. Then another stick, above the right eye, and two more at the back of my head.

Dr. Frey wiped away some blood with a gauze pad. “Can you feel this?” she asked, pressing the injection points with a probe.

“No,” I said, miserable.

“Okay. Now, you may feel some pressure.” She used a ratchet handle to screw the frame to my skull, like I was some kind of cyborg! I felt pressure, yes, but no pain because of the injections. Then I was slid into the machine like a slab of meat, and could not move a muscle for the next forty-five minutes.

For three days I was bedridden, eyes bandaged while the nerve tissue recovered. The only thing I saw were phosphenes, the kaleidoscopic showers of light you see on the inside of your eyelids. They make beautiful patterns, and with so much time on my hands I actually developed the ability to manipulate them into whirling dragons, shifting tides, rushing hockey players. I listened to music, to the TV. But it was not enough to make the three days pass at anything faster than a crawl.

In a darkened exam room, Dr Frey unwrapped the gauze, removed the pads, and exposed my eyes to very dim light. She spent more than an hour testing me to make sure there were no complications. She was so thorough, I grew impatient. I wanted to see again! Everything checked out satisfactorily. So, outfitted with a pair of rad shades, Mom took me home.

I don’t exactly remember which day it was when I first saw it. I do remember being alone, it was dark out, I was watching TV through my shades in the living room, eating mint- chocolate-chip ice cream while Mom did the dishes in the kitchen. I saw the drapey form out of the corner of my eye, my right eye, just standing there in the dining room.

I turned to look, but there was nothing there. Maybe it was just a figment of the recovery process. A phantom firing through an irradiated nerve. Maybe it was my unconscious mind run a bit wild, manipulating whatever it was that caused the phosphenes.

In any case, I carried on with life and returned to school the next day. There was the usual reaction: sympathy and extra solicitation from the adults, relentless ball-busting from my buddies. “Hey, Stevie Wonder, nice shades, man!” “Are those the marks from your lobotomy?” Jason asked at hockey practice, talking about the angry red marks where they had screwed the apparatus to my head.

“I’m the bionic man to you, shithead,” I fired back. I couldn’t skate with them yet, so I helped Coach yell at people. "Let's pick up the pace out there, people!" It was cathartic.

I got to wear shades in class, which was cool. I got the pretty girl who sat behind me in Calculus to help guide me to Poli Sci.

That night, I got up to take a leak. And I saw it again out of the corner of my right eye, a humanoid form just sort of hanging there in the hallway. This time it startled me a bit. I pinched it off mid-stream. But, again, I turned to look and it was gone.

And then it happened twice on a Wednesday. Again on Thursday. Always at home, it never showed up when Mom was around, so I started to worry that maybe something went wrong with the gamma knife procedure. Maybe there was an earthquake, and the knife wobbled ever so slightly and hit some part of my brain that it wasn’t supposed to, and started me hallucinating.

But it grew bolder. During Saturday morning breakfast with Mom, it peered in from the living room as I shoveled scrambled eggs down my gullet. Taking a load of laundry down to the basement, it lurked in the webby shadows behind the furnace. Fastest loading of a washing machine in recorded history. Every time I looked, it disappeared.

No, no! It is just a figment of your imagination, your overwrought brain using the

phosphenes to fuck with you. It’s not really there. I do not hear the sound of air rushing through a subway tube when it opens its mouth, I do not hear obscene whispers.

I started practicing observing with my peripheral vision--on the bus, at school. It is harder than it sounds. Try to describe the object to the far right of your vision while keeping your eyes straight ahead. With some practice, you can get more accurate. But you can never really see. Most times, I looked at it right away, just to get rid of the creepy fucker. Slowly, I disciplined myself to not look, but observe. It had never done anything overtly hostile, so this wasn’t too unnerving. It just lurked there, staring.

It knew I saw it. Now it was just fucking with me, coming closer when I took out the trash on Saturday, in the rain, the first time I had ever seen it outside of the house. There it stood, or hovered--whatever it did!--right on the other side of the trashcan, corpse-pale and rocking up and down like it was panting. Or waiting. I could almost feel its breath on me. I could make out four dark patches in its waxen face, where its eyes, nose, and mouth should be. Hard to tell from the corner of my eye as water ran down my face and into my shirt, but they looked like dark holes instead of features. Things seemed to wriggle within the holes.

“Peter, what are you doing standing out there in the rain?” Mom said, startling me.

“Oh, uh, I- Did you see...”

“What?”

“Nothing. I was just about to come in.” I brushed past her, trying to ignore the worried look on her face.

I managed to stay over at Jason’s that night, riding my bike there despite the rain. I didn’t get any sleep at all, worried, wondering what I’d let poor Mom face on her own. At 7 A.M., just as the sun came up, I called her. “Mom?”

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

“Why are you calling so early?’

“Um, I just wanted to make sure you’re okay.”

“Peter, you’ve been acting very strange lately!”

“I’m okay, Mom. Just a little freaked out by the surgery, I guess,” I lied.

“All right then. I’m going back to bed.” And she hung up.

I didn’t want to go home, but it was Sunday, and Monday was a school day, so there was no getting around it. I clogged up the works at Jason’s house for as long as I could, playing X-Box.

“Pete. Pete!”

“What?”

“You’re doing it again!”

“What?”

“Just sitting there staring off into space.”

I looked down, embarrassed. “Sorry.”

“And you were twitching! What gives, man?”

“My eyes bother me after the surgery,” I lied. Kind of.

“You’re really freaking me out.”

I took the hint and rode home.

Picking up the dog dirt. Nothing.

Dinner with Mom. Nothing.

Homework. Nothing.

Flyer’s game. Nothing.

It was past eleven. Despite the lack of sleep last night, I was not at all prepared to go to bed. Mom put her foot down. I went up to brush my teeth.

It came. Standing right there, filling the doorway, just STARING! I stood there, fists clenched, arms trembling, willing it to go away. “What are you?” I whispered. I heard vague noises in response, nothing more substantial than air rushing through the heating ducts. Please, could this just be a figment of my imagination? Maybe Dr Frey had nicked something important when she went after the glioma? I just wanted it to end.

Without looking at the thing, eyes locked onto my reflection in the mirror, I reached down and grabbed the plastic box of dental floss from the vanity top. I chucked the floss to my right. From the corner of my eye, I saw the thing’s pale arm flash up and catch it. My eyes filled with tears. I couldn’t take any more, I turned my head. The thing disappeared. Only then did the plastic box clatter to the floor.

I screamed.

In two weeks I have to go back to the hospital, so Dr. Frey can do my left eye. I wonder, as I run the back of the razor blade over my left forearm, if I will start seeing things out of the corner of this eye, as well. I could not take that. The blade is cool and oily, and leaves little red furrows. If I start seeing things from both eyes, I will turn the knife the other way.

Today, between classes, I thought I saw something waiting near my locker.