Trembling With Fear 01/24/21

Ghost Vision by Alex Ebenstein

I used to see ghosts.

Out of the corners of my eyes, that’s where they lurked. I didn’t know they were ghosts, not at first. The frightened, unsettled core of my gut thought maybe, but the rest of me believed the very thought crazy. Had to be medical. Or mental.

I let it go for a while after I first noticed them, tried ignoring those faintly threatening, ethereal wisps. Fear and anxiety eventually forced my hand. I asked WebMD.

Certain I had cancer, I asked my doctor. 

I didn’t come out and say I have cancer. I didn’t want to be that patient. No, instead I told her I was seeing things. Which was true. Not all hallucinatory and schizo, but there nonetheless, in my peripheral. The things I saw, I told her, would come and go rapidly and randomly. A flash across my vision. They were there, but I could never pin them down, never keep them in my sights for long.

My doctor listened and nodded. When I finished she said, “Those are floaters.”

New flashes now, this time across my mind’s eye. Images of corpses, bloated and waterlogged, rising to the surface of a scummy lake to release their rotten redolence. The original homes of the ghosts?—I wondered.

“Eye floaters,” she clarified.

I shook my head clear of the disturbing visions. Questions took their place, which the doctor saw on my face. She explained.

Small imperfections floating around in my eyeballs, within the vitreous—those were floaters.  The doctor said the imperfections, microscopic fibers, tend to clump, and can cast shadows across my retinas. She said those can look like cobwebs, and dart in and out of focus. Despite all that, she told me it was a common issue and not to worry. They won’t cause any other harm, and they’re not a symptom of worse conditions.

“Unfortunately,” she said, “they will never go away. You’ll eventually get used to them, though.”

If I did worry about them, she warned, they would become more noticeable. And the worse I worried, the worse the problem would seem. It was a psychosomatic thing, apparently. So ignore them, she told me. Free my mind of nasty thoughts and worry. Ignorance is bliss.

I wanted to believe her, I really did. Believing her explanation would have made me feel better—to the extent that a permanent issue can, anyway. Her diagnosis even made sense. But…

But I knew better.

I don’t know why it took the doctor’s words to convince me otherwise, to yank the deep-seated fear of the ghosts from the pit of my gut into reality, but it did.

These were not eye floaters. These were ghosts.

How did I know? Because I could feel them. They had a presence. The way they wriggled and writhed. The way they moved in my proximity, slipping into focus from my peripherals, lunging at me. Taunting me.

My fear was constant, exhausting.

The only slight reprieve I could find was by closing my eyes. I assumed the ghosts were still out there, but I couldn’t see them with my eyes closed, couldn’t feel them the same way, either.

But that was no life to live, constantly forcing myself to keep my eyes shut all the time.

I tried to be brave. I tried putting up with the ghosts, hoping—naïvely—that if I showed them deference, they’d leave me alone. Of course they didn’t.

If anything, they seemed insulted by my submission. Infuriated that I failed to fight, failed to engage in all-out war with the specter army. They showed me by getting closer, striking at my personal space until I felt claustrophobic.

Their assault continued, lunge after lunge, but they had yet to touch me. I knew it was only a matter of time. The last ghost I saw got really close. Inches away, I’m telling you. Maybe less. I shudder to think just how close.

At once I knew it was time. The next attack would come with contact. I could not let that happen. And I could not go on like that, living in constant fear of the ghosts at the edge of my vision, lurking and waiting. Attacking.

I did not know what would happen when we did finally collide. Death? If only that was the worst possible outcome.

I had to take action. The plan was clear even. Carefully, I brought my pointer finger and thumb up to my eye sockets, one at each corner…

But I’ll spare you the gory details.

I will say, though, it’s easier than you’d think to remove your own eyes. The hard part was cutting them loose once they were out.

I couldn’t see, after all.