Dani Ripley lives in Michigan and loves writing. Check out her website at daniripley.com and follow her on Instagram
THE FLOATER
by
Dani Ripley
Last winter I woke up with a pin-prick of light floating in the lower southeast quadrant of my right eye. Late as usual I got up, went to work, and tried to ignore the little spot while off-loading pallets all morning and afternoon, stacking them in the electronic store’s stuffy, un-airconditioned warehouse.
A couple days later the spot was the size of a pencil point, but I still wasn’t concerned. According to the internet when you’re closing in on forty, eye floaters are just part of the deal. The symptoms I was experiencing fit the description.
It wasn’t until the following week, when the light disruption grew to the circumference of a pea, that I finally saw an ophthalmologist. The doctor found nothing amiss (other than the sheer size of the thing), so I went home with some eye drops and a hopeful attitude.
The following day the floater doubled in size again, and I was astonished to see something inside, like looking into the world’s smallest snow globe or a teeny-tiny terrarium. There were rocks and sand; except the sand was purple, the rocks bright blood-red. Shadows played across the landscape. Darkness fell as if the little world had its very own day and night. I kept watching. Hours later a sensational Lilliputian sunrise filled my right eye.
The strangeness of it consumed me. I couldn’t sleep. I stopped going to work. I remained on my couch all day. One day I focused so hard I suddenly found myself inside, standing on soft sand the color of summer lilacs, red rocks surrounding me. I looked up. Two enormous moons and a ringed planet hung suspended in a star-dappled, deep purple sky.
On the ground beneath the skeletal corpse of a misshapen tree, its dead husk bleached bone white, I sat with only the vaguest awareness of the corporeal body still slumped on my couch at home. But the instant I thought “home” I was back there, blinking, wiping a thin stream of drool from my chin.
The next day the anomaly filled my right eye’s entire field of vision and instead of perceiving my living room through both eyes, my left eye reflected my living room while my right eye reflected only the dusky alien landscape.
That night I slipped inside it again. It was easy. All I had to do was close my left eye. I sat cross legged under the tree until I heard footsteps. I couldn’t see anyone but something approached over the sand, making a soft dragging sounds punctuated by louder ground-strikes: swish-swish-tock, swish-swish-tock.
The hairs on my arms stood at attention. I was getting ready to “think” myself home when a man shimmered into view before me like a mirage. Squinting, I realized it wasn’t a man at all but a fat, six-foot-tall crow carrying a walking cane. A garish red grin decorated the tip of its long, sharp yellow beak; and a shiny black stovetop hat sat upon its head.
The thing stopped three feet from me and screeched “what are you doing here?” in a raspy voice. It was exactly how you’d expect a crow to speak, if one could.
“You speak English?” I asked.
“English?!” it cried. “What are you doing heeeerrrreeeee?”
This close, I realized the red mouth was painted on like lipstick - a grotesque parody of a smile applied purposely by this odd monstrosity. The mouth didn’t actually move. Somehow these thoughts were being shouted directly into my head.
“What are you doing heeeeeere?” it wailed, voice filling my brain like the feedback whine when someone uses a microphone too close to a speaker.
“I don’t know!” I screamed back. “I’m dreaming!”
The thing hopped forward and leaned down, bringing its face close to mine. It had to turn its head slightly so it wouldn’t impale me on its ridiculously long beak. “Ha!” it barked next to my cheek. “Ha! Ha! Ha!”
Then it jumped back and hopped in a wide circle, kicking out its spindly, long-toed feet in an odd dance around me and the tree. “Dreaming yes! Says it’s dreeeeeeaming! It doesn’t know! It doesn’t know! We eat dreamers here!” it sang in my head in its terrible voice.
Hopping closer again it grabbed my right foot with one of its talons, using its sharp beak to nip my big toe through my shoe hard enough to draw blood.
“Ow!” I cried, jerking my leg out of its grip. It pranced a few feet away and tittered.
I squeezed my eyes shut to wake myself up like I’d done as a little kid, snapping awake in my living room, chest heaving. When I yanked my throbbing foot out of its shoe I saw blood soaked through the sock. The crow thing screamed. Its enraged face filled the entirety of my right eye. I jammed a fist into the socket.
“Come back Dreamer, come baaaaaack!” the crow shrieked in my brain. “I’m hungry! Hungrriiiieeeee!!”
I ran to the bathroom and splashed water on my face. I covered my ears to shut out the voice but it just got louder. Dry-swallowing several aspirins I went back to the couch wondering what to do, my saner options diminishing with every scream. It would surely spread to my other eye; and then what?
Knowing what awaited me on the other side I didn’t want to find out. The next morning, I crossed the border and paid a guy three thousand in cash to knock me out and remove my right eye. The guy thought I was crazy. Maybe I am.
But the eye now floats by itself in a jar of formaldehyde on the shelf right above my desk. Sometimes I hold it up to the light and look, trying to see the place I discovered; but the eye has turned opaque and I can’t see inside it anymore. Perhaps it’s because I’m on the outside, looking in.
Still, I keep lid screwed on extra tight. Just in case.