I have begun to worry and thought I’d put my concerns out into the darkness of the internet. For isn’t a problem shared a problem cut in half?
So here’s my trouble: you know when you suddenly enter darkness or are thrown into pitch black, that, all you can see is blackness? But, if you wait, and shapes begin to appear? You begin to see the outlines of things—chairs, lamps, bookshelves or, if coutside, garbage bins or the boats by the water. This return of vision, night vision I suppose it is, calms your pounding heart. It gives you a sense of orientation, control and power that you can now negotiate your way through the area.
But lately, when I am in my own darkened rooms or other inky places, I’ve noticed flickers, shapes of things that are not apart of the normal landscape. They do not evolve out of the darkness into chairs, garbage cans even rats. In fact, they do not evolve at all. No matter how much I blink my eyes or command them to focus, my orbs refuse to bring me clarity. As if this wasn’t fretful enough. But what I find even more worrisome is that lately even in the bright of day I am seeing flickers of forms, movements of some things dark, unclearly shapened, things that should not be there in my rooms or even in the questionable environs I find myself in.
I will be honest. I am heavily medicated. I’ve wondered if this visual aberration wasn’t a side effect of one of the various neurological drugs I must take. But the seeing of things not there is not listed in the copious side effects on the small-print inserts that come with my prescriptions. When I mentioned my concern to Dr. Panchek, he barely glanced up from my chart. He merely snapped it shut and moved the conversation on to how I liked my new abode.
“Rats,” I said. “There are rats in the alley outside my window.”
“And how do you know they are there?” Dr. Panchek asked. I knew what he meant. How could I tell the difference between real and imagined was what he was getting at.
“By the bites,” I said and left it at that.
to be continued…
Wickie