Intruder

Madness & (May)hem day 10

People often ask me how I come up with ideas for my paintings. I'm never quite sure what to tell them. If I'm being honest, it feels like I'm cheating sometimes. I just paint what I see. No hidden meaning, no deep connection to the human condition. I'm not one to daydream. Hell, I don't even remember my dreams at night, if I do dream at all. I have no inner monologue whatsoever. My mind is nice and quiet and boring.

But what I see. That is another story entirely.

When I found out that both of the lenses in my eyes were quickly deteriorating, there was no hesitation from me: do the surgery in both eyes on the same day. I needed to recover as soon as possible so I could get back to work. There were galleries and clients depending on me to bring them canvases plastered with inexplicable explosions of color and emotive brush strokes heretofore unseen in the art world. Painting was all I wanted to do, and I wasn't about to drop the ball on my dream.

The surgery went off without a hitch, and I was sent home the same day with eye drops, a mask to wear while sleeping, and specific instructions not to rub my eyes, no matter how irritated they felt.

That first day, my eyes burned something fierce and I could barely manage to keep them open for a few seconds at a time. They didn't' lie about the irritation. My eyes felt like they were coated in sand and pebbles. The gritty feeling nagged at me all day and night, along with a strange feeling of a foreign presence in my body.

The next day, I woke with the unsettling feeling of something being a little off, like my eyeballs had been removed, wiped clean, and reinserted hastily. It just didn't feel right. My post-op check-up with my doctor wasn't for two more days, so I called him and asked him, somewhat sheepishly, about the odd sensation. He was shouting at me over the phone, but I figured there may be an issue with bad reception.

He assured me this was normal, seeing as there were new man-made lenses in my eyes. He told me to relax and rest until he saw me in a couple days. I complied, mostly because the constant irksome feeling in my gut made me nauseous. I spent the next two days sleeping, only occasionally getting up to fiddle with my paints and paintbrushes - rearranging them, making sure they still existed, silently pledging them my loyalty.

On the day of the appointment, my girlfriend, Sarah, came over to take me to the doctor. She knew I was feeling pretty down about not being able to work, so she brought her dog, Bart, over to cheer me up. I loved that fluffy ball of energy and couldn't wait to see them both.

Sarah found me in the low light of my living room, in silence, waiting for her. She slammed the door behind her for some reason and the sound made me jump out of my seat. She crossed to me and between my barely open eyes, I registered a smile, so I forgot about the door and fell into her arms. Breathing in the vaguely floral scent of her hair, I reminded myself that we needed to talk about her moving in with me sooner rather than later.

Wordlessly, she pulled back and held me at arm's length. Before she could say anything, I held up a finger. She waited. She knew I was one for ceremony and drama, being the artist that I was. It had been a few days since I'd relished in the sight of her and I wanted this moment of unveiling to be perfect. My new eyes were going to behold my muse, my love, and there was something intensely poetic about it. The "other" feeling in my eyes was still making my skin crawl, but I decided it was worth it for the healing I knew her countenance would bring to my soul.

Slowly, I opened my eyes all the way. Sarah's face was blurry at first, but as I blinked away the mucus that had gathered at the rim of my lids and my eyes adjusted to the low light in the room, her face came into view.

What I saw was not my Sarah. Or, I hoped it wasn't.

Yes, there were her wide, concerned eyes, her button-nose, her dark, smooth skin, and her soft, cupid's bow mouth.

But that was it. No radiating light pulsed from around her visage, like a halo made from solar flares. Her deep brown eyes were flat, not the glittering waterfalls of crystal I had lost myself in time and time again. Around her, the space was empty, where before there had been infrared fireworks, overlaid with meteor showers in colors undetectable to the average human eye.

There she stood, completely unalive to my new eyes. She must have seen the horror and sadness I felt because her worried expression intensified and she opened her mouth to speak.

The cacophony of screeching nails on a chalkboard reached my ears before I could register her words. I shut my eyes and pressed my palms to my ears, but the sound would not stop as she kept talking louder and louder.

Then the dog came running in, barking excitedly. At least, I think he was barking. I doubled over in agony as the ear splitting noise rendered from Bart filled my head with a pressure so intense, I thought my skull was going to cave in. I screamed, but I couldn't hear myself over the sound of Sarah and the dog.

"Shut that fucker up before I beat the shit out of him!"

The voice was a thunderbolt through my mind that sent me sprawling on the floor.

"WHO THE FUCK WAS THAT?!" I shrieked, clawing at my ears.

I opened my eyes to see Sarah standing over me, panicking, tears streaming down her face.

"Has she always been so repulsive?"

Again, the voice boomed over the tumult of the room. Again, I wailed.

"WHO SAID THAT?! WHO FUCKING SAID THAT?!"

Sarah started to back away from me, sobbing, shoulders shaking, her lips wet and slapping together loudly.

"God, she disgusts me."

My throat burned as I let out a scream I never knew I was capable of. Sarah jumped, stumbled backward, and grabbed Bart and ran out of my apartment.

The relief was instantaneous. I lay on the floor, my heart pounding in my chest, sounding like a hammer steadily hitting a nail exactly on its head. It was better than the dog's barking though.

"Fucking mutt."

My blood ran cold. I sat up and my eyes darted painfully around the room, searching for the intruder.

"WHO'S THERE?!"

The call came weakly, pathetically from between my trembling lips. No answer.

There was seemingly no one but me and my apartment, which now looked gray, sad, and plain.

"It wasn't like this before," the voice, now sounding sad, said quietly.

I spun around, unsure of where the voice had originated, but I saw no blurry figures near me.

"The window. Maybe try the window," the intruder whispered.

This time, I didn't move when they spoke. I stood still, blinking through the grit and accumulating tears. No one showed themselves.

I looked down at my hands, no longer the artist's tools they once were. They weren't vibrating with their usual melody of color and sparkling, undulating light.

"What is going on," the intruder demanded in my ear. I felt so desperate, I didn't bother to look for who had spoken.

Instead, I trudged to the window and placed my hands on the curtains. My eyeballs felt like two skinless grapes coated in thick, sharp salt chunks in their sockets. But I had to see.

I tore the curtains open and beheld the blinding late afternoon sunlight from what used to be the best view in the whole city. The would-be warm light in hues of raucous orange and hot purple, with laser beams of scintillating rose gold that I'd taken sips of every day since moving in three years ago was not there. What I saw, that which penetrated my corneas, slid through my pupils, past my irises, and refracted in my lenses, was as bland and dead as a cheap dentist office’s fluorescent lighting.

At once, the voice protested. It cried out in guttural and despondent howls. It begged the universe for an answer. It pleaded, it denied, it cursed.

And as I stood there, knuckles grinding away at the grit under my eyelids, I joined the intruder in all their torment.

Cover image by Joshua Coleman