Without a cloud in the sky, the evil daystar burns my irritated eyes. Though it serves me right for staring at my phone for hours, swapping nudes with DemonTwink on Grindr.
But over the week, my vision keeps lightening, like someone’s slowly turning the brightness up on my brain’s display.
Big black marbles stare back at me from the mirror. Last time my pupils were this dilated, I was tripping balls. (While dressed like a zebra. On a motorized pirate ship crossing the desert playa.)
I inspect the fridge for possible suspects—when in doubt, blame dietary transgressions. But all the aspirational produce smells fresh, the expiration date stamped on the blueberry yogurt still far off in some unknowable future.
By Friday, wearing sunglasses indoors is getting old. I call my doctor’s office, but there are no openings for months. I message him via the patient portal; after an hour, he replies:
people look more attractive with big pupils 🙂
fun fact: women in the 1920s took belladonna to make them bigger
Rude. Borderline inappropriate. I toss my phone in a nearby potted plant, drawing the curtains closed against harsh daylight.
Just then the doorbell rings, but I can’t find my shades. I fumble around my darkened living room, cursing, only to hear a loud crunch underfoot: found them. I creep downstairs, dish towel draped over my head, to my front door, where the mailman stands with a package. His skeptical expression suggests that it’s officially time to give up and go to urgent care.
“Everything seems normal,” says the briskly polite RN taking my vitals. “Follow up with your doctor, and go to the ER if it gets worse.”
His thick neck and kind smile remind me of my favorite bouncer at last call: You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here.
I buy more fashionably oversized sunglasses; people stare at me in the grocery store like I’m a hungover rockstar. I try several brands of eye drops, dousing my corneas in various liquids until they sting with an unholy fury.
In recurring dreams, my pupils liquify, dribbling into the green of my irises, streaking black down my face like sad mascara.
Now the world’s not just painfully overbright; shades of gray disappear, as if someone’s fucking with the contrast slider. Hidden details pop out from the background, newly revealed with sharpened outlines.
In the second week of hell, I start seeing things I shouldn’t. The mailman’s inner ear trouble. My neighbor’s unhealed wrist fracture. Athlete’s foot in the locker room? One hundred percent TMI.
My old work spouse, Jacquie, was a super-smeller. She came with me once to Folsom Street Fair, but refused to enter the most crowded clubs. All those leather-encased bodies packed shoulder to sweaty shoulder. You don’t get it, she’d say, one hand over her scrunched face. It’s like being forced to lick someone’s nasty-ass armpit. (I guess not everyone’s into that? No judgment.)
She clocked the sour milk of secret pregnancies, the office affair pheromones, the metallic tangs of anxiety just before layoffs. Too much information, she complained. Some shit I just don’t need to know, you know?
I sure do, Jacquie. Because next I’m sitting on the subway, twitching under fluorescent lights, when some emo teen kicks his Docs up onto the bench, revealing the violet melancholy swirling under his sternum.
Then amber-rust splotches of entitled rage as an Alpha Mommy barrels through Whole Foods, the little prince in her stroller wearing a paper crown that reads JESUS: The Reason for Easter Season. Steely spikes of homophobia stain the laundromat, hatred directed my way when I pass with my basket of pastels.
I listen to a podcast about manifesting health and shielding your aura from negative energy. Another about magic spells for removing curses.
Because I absolutely did not request these insights. I’ve never been nosy. I exit the party when folks start spilling messy tea and piping hot goss. (Which never stops the drunken confessions–if anything, my lack of interest seems to encourage folks to corner me and start trauma-dumping.)
So I light a black candle, practice the suggested visualizations. Smudge my house with sage left over from last year’s Day of the Dead party.
This neither protects nor prepares me.
***
Braving the crowds at Brewed Awakening for a dirty chai. When the lavender-haired barista takes my order, I clock a foreign mark nestled beneath their delicate clavicle.
I wait patiently for my drink, whispering mantras and breathing calm vibes into my protective bubble. The barista calls my name and hands me a cup, steaming with cardamom and clove. Before I can stop myself, I peer over my glasses at the numbers stamped on their freckled skin.
Tomorrow’s date pulses at me like a heartbeat. I grab my chai and bolt for the door.
Three nightmare-filled sleeps later, I pass by the cafe, where lit candles cluster on the flower-strewn curb. A flash of purple draws me to a photo of the barista’s sweet moon-shaped face. Commemorating the spot where they’d been hit by a car the day after my last visit.
I stagger on to work, eyes watering from the sunny day and reeling with the weight of this new awareness.
Soon, the numbers are everywhere. But not everyone has an expiration date. I’m guessing it doesn’t show up until the end is imminent. I avert my gaze from anyone on the street whose ticket is about to be punched. When a date flashes beneath the skin of a co-worker, I start calling in sick. Badger my manager to let me work from home. Get groceries delivered.
Who wants to dwell on such unpleasant realities? Not me. I don’t do annual screenings. Don’t google random symptoms or lurk on WebMD. So I certainly do not appreciate these little reminders forcing their way into my consciousness.
With one shaking finger, I trace the blank spot beneath my collarbone, trying to ward off the inevitable.
***
I’ve deleted all the apps—I’ve had enough of demonic twinks, thanks—but my semi-regular hookup Benjie won’t stop texting. Nagging me to come to happy hour, sit on a blanket in the park. He’s a sweetie; we originally bonded over swapping mallsoft playlists and vaporwave tattoo pics. But right now I’m betting he’s just looking to get his dick sucked.
Which wouldn’t be the worst idea in the world, honestly. Flashing on his hot breath against my neck, his grassy vegan smell evokes familiar urges, all gone dormant since entering this hell realm. I could use a break from this self-imposed prison, so I give in to his harassment campaign.
I’m not adequately filling out my tightest shirts now, my shoulder blades more defined than my deltoids. Remembering Dr. Inappropriate’s fun fact, I remove my rockstar shades, checking for enhanced attractiveness.
My irises are barely visible, which looks extra-super crazy. So that’s a no.
I emerge from hibernation into the overexposed afternoon to meet him for brunch. He stands in my driveway, hot as ever, beaming that magnetic smile at me.
And there it is, peeking out from beneath his scoop-neck tank. A date that’s swiftly approaching.
My legs robotically march me towards his car, trembling hands shoved into my pockets as I get in. But when we stop at the next intersection, I fling the car door open; Benjie’s expression shifts from confusion to alarm as I spring out and flee for home.
My front door slams behind me, lights already out.
That sweet barista, my co-worker, and now this…this, with Benjie. Why Benjie?
Curious, I stand in front of my bathroom mirror, X-Acto in hand. An experiment: each time I raise the blade to my wrist, today’s date emerges from the depths of my skin. Fades when I remove the imminent threat. Emerge, fade, emerge.
All my life, I’ve stayed out of other people’s affairs, hoping they’d stay out of mine. Hoping we could collectively avoid our animosity towards each other, ignore our inexorable slide towards the abyss.
But neither candles nor sage has shielded me from whatever malevolent force has decided that this is, indeed, my fucking business.
I pull down my lower eyelid, hypnotized by those inky pools, picturing how they spilled down my face in dreams. The numbers disappear as I raise the knife to my face, reasserting my right to ignorance.
This story previously appeared in Weird Lit Mag.
Edited by E. S. Foster.
Joelle Killian is a queer Canadian living in San Francisco whose fiction has appeared in Fusion Fragment, Mythaxis, and Cosmic Horror Monthly. One of her doppelgängers is a psychologist writing about psychedelic therapy; another was once in an undead dance troupe.