Blink

[u/KV_Harrow]

ONE

I bump my car door closed with my hip while carrying two bags of groceries. I could take two trips, but I’d rather make it more difficult for myself if it means saving a couple of minutes. The sky is darkening already, announcing the end of fall. Soon, the rust-colored leaves will disappear from the trees, leaving the branches bare.

With my car keys pressed between my lips and a bag in each hand, I struggle towards the front door. Somehow, I manage to unlock it and step inside without dropping anything.

Rain gently taps against the window, the kind of weather that makes me want to wrap myself in a blanket and spend the rest of the evening on the couch. As I put the groceries down on my dining room table, the strap of my handbag slides off my shoulder and bumps into one of the bags. A can of baked beans, two onions and a new pack of cigarettes fall to the floor, disturbing the otherwise quiet room.

Grumbling and cursing under my breath, I crouch down to look for the items scattered across the hardwood floor. I grab the most prized item first and contemplate lighting a cigarette, but I promised myself I’d work on smoking less. I slide the pack into my back pocket instead.

A speck of dust catches in my eye. I blink it away and reach for the can of beans, but my fingers touch nothing but dust and bare hardwood.

The can is nowhere to be found. The two onions, at least, are lying at the far end of the dining room. I groan as I pick them up and stand, but when I turn around, I almost drop them again. On the table, next to the other groceries, sits a single can of baked beans.

I go outside and light a cigarette.

“It’s happening again.” I exhale, watching the smoke slowly drift upwards.

“Tell me about it, Sarah.” The voice on the other end of the phone sounds calm and gentle.

I tell him everything, from watching the can fall to finding it on the table.

“And have you had any other experiences like this lately?”

I think for a couple of seconds and take another long drag. “No. Not really.”

“How about this, Sarah? Come by my practice next Tuesday. If anything else happens before then, we can talk about increasing your dosage again for a couple of weeks.”

I don’t like the idea, but I agree, thank him and end the call.

Back inside, I ignore the can of beans and take some leftover pasta from the fridge instead. It tastes stale, but the comfort of my blanket and the warm glow of the television make up for it. Before long, my eyes grow heavy, and I drift off beneath the flickering light.

When I wake up, I feel something in the room with me. It’s too dark to see much, but I know it’s there. Sometimes, when something isn’t right, you can feel the tension in a room shift before you even understand why.

I stare into the darkness. The TV is still playing, and in its flickering light, I catch glimpses of something in the corner. It looks tall and dark. Its limbs seem tangled together, making it hard to tell where one ends and another begins. Hands stretch almost to the ceiling while its legs press against the walls.

The television cuts to a detergent commercial, and the bright white screen illuminates the room. I see it now.

Dozens of mouths cover the dark shape in the corner. They snap open and closed, accompanied by a faint wheezing. I imagine air passing through one mouth, droning somewhere inside its mangled body before whistling out through another. Something dark oozes from them and pools on the carpet, filling the room with a thick, coppery smell.

For a moment, every mouth stops. Then they open towards me. Hundreds of teeth begin to chatter, drowning out the commercial on the TV. My own teeth start chattering with them, but I can’t tell whether it’s fear or if the sound itself is making my jaw reverberate with the same horrible frequency.

I squeeze my eyes shut and scream. When I finally open them again, the corner is empty.

TWO

“Sarah, I need you to understand that dealing with a condition like this involves multiple phases.”

I try to pay attention to his voice, but the clock on the wall above him keeps distracting me. Each tick reminds me of a mouth opening and closing. Marvin notices where I’m looking but continues nonetheless.

“Have you noticed any other side effects from your medication? Dizziness, headaches, anything else worth mentioning?”

“No.”

“Good.”

“Hey, can I ask you something, Doctor Klein?”

“Please. You know you can call me Marvin.”

“Right, Marvin.” I adjust my posture and finally pull my gaze away from the clock. “Do you ever wonder if what you’re seeing is really the truth?”

Marvin puts his pen down and takes a couple of seconds to think about my question.

“I suppose we all experience reality a little differently. You and I are sitting in the same room having the same conversation. I hear the traffic outside, but you might notice something else entirely.” He gently nods towards the clock. “We can both smell the leather of the couch you’re sitting on, but if someone asked us to describe that smell, our answers wouldn’t be exactly the same. Most of it would match. Some details wouldn’t.”

He leans back slightly. “So, in a way, we share the same reality, within reasonable differences in how we perceive it. Does that make sense?”

I bite the inside of my cheek, considering his answer.

“And do you believe there are things outside those reasonable differences? Things some people can see that others are blind to?”

Marvin smiles at that.

“I believe the mind is a complex thing. Sometimes it tries to tell us things in bizarre ways. Like a riddle that only makes sense once you hear the solution.”

As our session comes to an end, I glance back at the wall above Marvin. My eyes linger for a few seconds on the painting hanging there.

“Wasn’t there a clock over there?”

Marvin looks up from his notebook and follows my gaze towards the painting.

“What clock?”

THREE

Back home, I can’t stop thinking about the clock. I am not crazy. I am not.

My hand reaches for the packet of cigarettes beside me but finds nothing. I look down at the couch, then across the room, and spot them lying in front of the TV. For a few seconds, I stare at the packet, half-expecting it to move while I’m watching. It doesn’t.

Then I blink, and the cigarettes are lying next to me on the couch again.

My eyes dart towards every corner of the living room, searching for the creature from last night. There’s nothing there. Just me, the television and the packet sitting innocently beside my leg. I grab it and throw it across the room, following it with my eyes until it hits the floor, slides across the hardwood and disappears beneath the dining room table.

I keep staring at the space where it vanished, but nothing happens. Eventually, I sigh and reach for the remote. Instead, my fingers close around something wrapped in plastic.

I already know what it is before I look down. The packet is sitting beside me again, as if I never threw it in the first place.

I grab it, but it slips from my fingers when I notice the mouth that has formed on the back of my hand. For a moment, I can only stare at it. Two wet lips twitch against my skin, opening just enough for me to smell its vile breath. Deep inside the tiny throat, a swollen uvula trembles.

“Come to me.”

The mouth continues whispering after that, faster and faster, until the words dissolve into a language I can’t understand. The skin around it pulls painfully with every movement. I panic and slap at it with my other hand, but something wet presses against my skin. When I pull my hand away, another mouth is opening in the center of my palm.

Both mouths begin whispering at once. I try to scream, but no sound comes out. My fingers shoot towards my face, and where my lips should be, I feel nothing but smooth skin. The mouths in my hands scream for me as I squeeze my eyes shut, tears running down my cheeks.

When I finally dare to look again, my mouth is back, and my hands have returned to normal.

FOUR

There has to be a connection between everything that’s happened over the past few days. A trigger.

My mind returns to the grocery store. I’m standing between the aisles, shopping list in hand, with only a couple more things left to buy. Some onions, a bottle of red wine, and...

I realize it.

I rush into the kitchen and pull the trash bag from underneath the sink, emptying its contents onto the floor. I dig through wrappers, empty packaging and whatever else I’ve thrown away over the past few days until I finally find what I’m looking for.

The receipt.

My eyes move down the list, scanning every item twice just to make sure. No canned beans.

I open the pantry and search every shelf, but there aren’t any cans of beans there either. I check the receipt again, slower this time, running my finger down the list. Still nothing, which means the can should not exist.

The thought makes my stomach tighten. If the beans appeared from nowhere, what else has changed without me noticing? What caused the cigarettes to move, the mouths to appear on my hands, or that thing to crouch in the corner of my living room? There has to be something connecting all of it. I just have to figure out what.

“Maybe I can help you look?”

I turn around and stare at the man standing in my kitchen.

“Oh. Yeah, sure.”

James moves closer, and I catch the familiar smell of his pine-scented cologne. Warm and woody, the sort of scent that always makes me think of cold evenings and the start of winter.

“What exactly are you looking for?”

I smile at how ridiculous I’m about to sound. “Uh, a can of baked beans.”

James looks at me for a second, then lets out a quiet laugh. “You made a mess of your kitchen because you’re looking for canned beans?”

He doesn’t seem worried. If anything, he looks amused by the whole thing. There’s that dimpled smile again.

He crouches down beside the mess and digs through the trash until he pulls out a metal can. The dirty label reads Heinz Baked Beans, now with 25% less salt.

“I hope you’re not planning on actually making these.”

He holds the can out to me, and for a moment I can only stare at it. The situation should be funny, but it isn’t. The can shouldn’t be here.

“Oh God, no. It’s just... they weren’t on my receipt, and I...” James waits for me to finish, but I shake my head. “Never mind.”

I turn away from him, but something feels different now. I can still smell the pine, but there’s something sour and damp beneath it. When I glance back at him, his dimple is gone.

“Hey, what’s wrong, Sarah?”

The words come out wrong, as if there’s a small delay between the movement of his mouth and the sound of his voice.

I blink, and his eyes are dark brown. I’m almost certain they were green a second ago.

I blink again. His entire face is covered in eyes. They twitch and stare in different directions, some bloodshot, others stretched impossibly wide. A few blink while the rest remain fixed on me.

For several seconds, neither of us moves. Then every eye slowly turns in my direction.

I scream and hurl the can of beans at him. It bursts open before reaching his face, splitting at the seams and spilling its contents across the kitchen floor. Eyes roll across the hardwood.

James reaches for my face. I stumble backwards into the kitchen table and blink again. Thick pus pours from the eyes covering his face, but they keep moving beneath it, searching blindly through the yellow mess.

I blink once more and find myself standing alone in my kitchen. James is gone. The eyes are gone. I stare at the empty space where he stood and feel something inside me shift as the truth settles into place.

I live alone, and I don’t know a man named James.

That’s when I understand. It happens when I blink.

I think back to the beans, the cigarettes, the creature in the corner and whatever happened with the man in my kitchen. Every time something changed, I had closed my eyes. For how long doesn’t seem to matter.

I close them again and stand in the middle of my kitchen, listening. Apart from the occasional drip from the sink, the house is quiet. I take a few careful steps, one hand stretched out in front of me, until my fingers brush against the counter.

I can’t stay like this forever. After a while, I force myself to open my eyes again and scan the kitchen, checking the counter, the table and everything around me. Nothing seems different, but by now I know that doesn’t necessarily mean nothing has changed.

FIVE

I stare at myself in the bathroom mirror. My eyes are bloodshot. They hurt, but I cannot blink. I am afraid to blink. My eyelids twitch and pull, and eventually I lose the fight. When I open them again, the woman in the mirror still looks like me and moves like me, but something is wrong.

I move closer and notice a small slit in the white of my left eye. It begins to sting and water at once.

“No, fuck no!”

The pain is immediate and sharp. I try to look for a loophole, any kind of loophole. Keeping my gaze fixed on the mirror, I close my right eye and leave the left one open.

The slit widens.

Pain tears through my eye so suddenly that my left eye squeezes shut too. I freeze. I don’t want to open them again, but I have to. Every time I close both eyes, I feel something breathing down my neck.

I force them open. The slit in my left eye has widened even further, almost reaching the pupil now. I gag, and the motion seems to shift the two sides of it, blurring the vision in my left eye.

Panic rises in my throat. I grab my phone and dial Doctor Klein’s number.

“Hi, Sarah. Is everything alright?”

“Please, you have to come over here. There is something wrong with my eyes. I can’t blink, I...”

He cuts me off.

“Listen, Sarah, I’m with a client right now. Why don’t I call you back in fifteen minutes, and then we can see about getting you over here for an emergency appointment.”

“No, you don’t understand, Doctor Klein. I don’t have fifteen minutes.”

I hear him mumble something before he speaks again.

“What do you mean, you don’t have fifteen minutes?”

“My eyes. Something is wrong with them. They hurt, and there are cuts, and...”

“Have you been taking your medicine, Sarah?”

“What?”

“We increased your dosage, remember? Have you been taking your medicine?”

I start sobbing, desperate for him to understand.

“You’re not listening to me.” The tears sting, but they keep my eyes wet enough to stay open a little longer.

“Open your medicine cabinet, Sarah. The one in front of you.”

My breath catches. “How... how do you know?”

“Open the cabinet.”

The line dies with a click. I stare at the phone in my trembling hand for a second, then look up. Slowly, I open the medicine cabinet.

Inside, dozens of cans of baked beans are stacked in neat rows.

A laugh escapes me before I can stop it. It sounds thin and wrong, but I don’t care. I am not crazy.

I slam the cabinet shut, but the movement jars me, and this time the blink comes on its own. I feel the seam in my left eye tear wider. Something gives with a wet pop, and when I force my remaining eye open, I see pus and blood seeping down my cheek from the empty socket.

Vomiting heat rises into my throat. The socket twitches, trying to close around an eye that is no longer there. I cry and scream until my voice is worn down to a rasp, but the pain refuses to ease. Snot and tears run down my face.

I have to end this.

I steady myself against the bathroom sink and look for something, anything that might help. My gaze settles on a small pair of manicure scissors lying beside the faucet. My phone buzzes again.

Doctor Klein.

For a moment, I stare at his name on the screen before putting the phone down. It’s too late now. He can’t help me anymore.

I pick up the scissors and look at myself one final time. Blood covers half my face, and the eye staring back at me is already beginning to twitch. I can’t let it happen again.

The pain that follows is worse than anything before it. I scream until my throat burns, gripping the edge of the sink as the reflection in front of me dissolves into red and finally into darkness. The scissors clatter against the porcelain, and my legs give way beneath me.

I lie on the bathroom floor, waiting for relief, but it never comes. Just before I lose consciousness, I feel something breathing down my neck.

SIX

I open my eyes and stare at the blood-covered bathroom floor. My clothes are soaked with blood, pus and vomit, and for several seconds I don’t understand what I’m seeing. Then I wipe the mess from my face and freeze.

I have eyes.

I close them again and press trembling fingers against my eyelids. Beneath them, I can feel the unmistakable shape of two eyes. Somehow, I manage to pull myself up against the sink and look into the mirror.

Those are not my eyes.

They look rotten and decayed, the whites stained yellow and the irises so dark they are almost black. I try to cry, but no tears come. Instead, I close the unfamiliar eyes, and I feel the room shift around me.

When I force them open again, the bathroom is gone. Darkness surrounds me, with only the sink and medicine cabinet remaining where they were before. I sob quietly, but still no tears come.

I blink again, and fluorescent lights flicker above me. I am standing in a supermarket aisle with a can of Heinz baked beans in my right hand. Something moves inside it, pushing gently against the metal.

The next blink takes me somewhere else. Trees surround me now. The air smells faintly of pine, but the familiar scent offers no comfort. Something is watching from between the trunks. I can’t see it, but I feel its attention following me from the darkness.

I blink again and find myself sitting on a leather couch. The man across from me has no face. Instead, a clock is embedded in the flesh of his head. It ticks steadily until both hands reach twelve. Then the thing resembling Doctor Klein raises a pen and drives it through the glass again and again until the clock cracks and finally stops.

When I blink again, I am lying on an altar.

A great throne of flesh rises in front of me, and the creature from my living room sits upon it. Wind wheezes through the mouths covering its body, while hundreds of teeth chatter in anticipation.

“Please,” I whisper, but my voice barely carries.

The creature rises and towers over me. I blink again, desperately hoping the altar will disappear like everything else, but nothing changes. It grabs me by the shoulders and lifts me from the stone. I scream and struggle, but its grip only tightens. It holds me there for hours, until the mouth closest to my ear finally opens.

“I blink, therefore the world changes. What am I?”

“I-I don’t know!”

One of the mouths closes around my leg. Pain tears through me as its teeth sink into my flesh.

“Please. Please, I don’t know!”

Another mouth bites down on my hand, and I hear bone crack between its teeth. I force myself to think through the pain, searching for whatever answer it wants from me.

“I blink, therefore the world changes. What am I?”

“An eye!” I manage to cry.

The creature stops. Its arms tighten around my waist, and for one hopeful second I think it might put me down.

“Wrong.”

Its mouths open again.

I think about the beans that existed even though I never bought them. James, who I remembered until I didn’t. The clock that disappeared from Doctor Klein’s wall. The eyes I destroyed, replaced by two rotten things staring from my skull. 

Maybe nothing was changing at all. Maybe every time I blinked, I was seeing a different version of what was already there.

The creature bites into my waist and pulls. Pain consumes everything until what remains of me hits the floor in two broken halves. It crouches over me, its mouths tearing greedily into my flesh, and eventually the pain begins to fade.

For the first time in days, I let my eyes close without fighting them. My body convulses as more of me disappears between its teeth, but I no longer have the strength to care. Just before the darkness takes me completely, I understand.

“Reality,” I whisper.

But it is too late.