Ray's Glasses
by MR
I’m sitting at Ray’s desk going over some transcripts
when I happen to look up and see his glasses lying
there. The overhead light refracts off the lenses,
and all of a sudden I wonder why it is Ray so seldom
wears his glasses. He’s admitted to me that his
eyesight without them is less than perfect, yet the
only time he puts them on is when he’s using his gun
or needs to concentrate on something. Which strikes
me as odd. Fashion aesthetics aside (for they truly
are ugly, almost endearingly so), why would he choose
to go through life nearly blind when he could simply
get new frames?
I pick them up and study them. The lenses are what he
refers to as “coke-bottle”; so thick it amazes me
anyone could see anything through them.
To my dying day, I don’t know what possessed me to put
them on. Curiosity, I suppose. The desire to
understand Ray better. What must it be like to have
lived your life viewing the world through what amounts
to inch-thick safety glass?
The words on the paper before me promptly became as
incomprehensible as Egyptian hieroglyphics. Somewhat
amused, I move my hand into my line of sight. It
looks obscenely bloated, with fingers the size of
sausages.
Still smiling, I look around the office.
The smile died almost immediately. Because while the
office looks the same, though everything is misshapen
and lopsided, as if viewed at an angle, and my
co-workers have turned into funhouse charactures, that
isn’t what makes my heart pound like I’ve just run a
marathon and a cold sheen of sweat break out all over
my body.
It’s the “things” in the air.
That’s the only way I can describe them. They vary
widely in shape from one to the next. Some are so
small they should be microscopic, beyond my power to
see. Some take up a huge amount of room; there’s a
huge magenta-colored oblong hovering over Jack Huey’s
desk, and it takes all my restraint to not shout at
him to watch out when he stands. Instead I sit there
horrified as his head and shoulders temporarily
disappear into the obscenity, and then reappear a
moment later as he steps out of it and goes about his
business. The oblong remains
There are hundreds of them. Perhaps thousands.
Oblongs, rectangles, trapezoids and decahedrons.
Things that look like thunderclouds, and others that
are mere mists of vapor, like the trail of a jet.
Every color of the spectrum and some, I suspect,
beyond what the human eye can normally see. They
occupy any space not already occupied by a desk or a
person.
They are the very air that we breathe, and I find
myself suddenly choked. Because if they are here in
the office, then surely they are elsewhere. On the
streets, in our houses, at the Consulate…
“Frase?”
I look up as Ray. How long he’s been standing there I
don’t know, certainly long enough to have discerned my
reaction. And it suddenly strikes me that out of
everyone and every “thing” in the room, he is the only
one who looks normal.
Gently, he reaches out and snags the glasses off my
face, folding them and putting them in his shirt
pocket. “You can see them too, huh”
That question takes me totally by surprise. “You mean
you’ve known they were here all along?”
“Not all along.” He sighs and drops into his chair,
fingers toying with the bracelet on his wrist. “Only
since I got the glasses in third grade.”
The enormity of what he just said staggers me; it’s a
moment before I can speak. “For the love of God, Ray,
why haven’t you told someone?”
He smiles a sad half-smile. “Because most people
can’t see them, even with the glasses on. Mom and Dad
never could. My brother Marlon couldn’t. I think
Stella saw them once, but she put it down to being
drunk. You’re the first person I’ve ever met who can
see them too.”
I try to imagine Ray as a skinny 10 year old, being
told he has to wear these glasses because he needs
them, because they’ll make everything much clearer.
“I knew there was something wrong with them the minute
I put them on. I complained to Mom and Dad and the
optometrist and anyone else who’d listen. It took me
a couple of weeks to realize not everyone could see
them, and by then my parents were talking about
sending my to a child psychiatrist. Once I realized
nobody but me saw them, I shut up about it.”
“Ray, what “are” they?”
He shrugs. “I honestly don’t know. In the beginning I
used to watch them a lot, just to see what they did.
But I quit after I got this idea that they knew I was
there. And that scared me, Frase. I don’t know why,
but it scared the piss out of me.”
“That’s why you only wear them if you have to.”
He nods. “If I’m shooting at someone or concentrating
hard, I can sort of tune them out by focusing on what
I’m doing. The rest of the time…I just always know
they’re there.”
“Have you tried destroying the glasses?”
“Doesn’t do any good. I’ve broken them, “lost” them;
hell, I put them under the wheels of a school bus when
I was in fifth grade. And they’d be waiting for me on
my dresser when I got home. They don’t want to be
gotten rid of, Frase.”
I lick my lips, unable to forget what I saw. “Do you
think they’re sentient?”
“I think they’re alive. I don’t think they’ve got
brains like us, but I’ve seen them take steps to
avoid, say, being pulled into an exhaust fan. They’re
alive; just not like we are.”
I realize I’m shivering. “Ray, they’re everywhere.
We breath them, we walk through them, we sit on them…”
His eyes soften and he smiles that sad little
half-smile. “I know. But you can’t let yourself
think about it, Frase. It’ll only make you crazy.
They’re there. Sometimes I get this feeling they were
here before we were. So I guess that makes us
trespassers on their turf.”
Their turf. I manage a half-hearted smile at the
description, and we go back to our study of the
transcripts.
I will put this out of my mind. I will forget the
things I saw swarming in the air, occupying every
spare inch of space. I won’t think about the fact
that every time I breathe, I breathe them in. Ray has
lived most of his life with the weight of this
knowledge; I can do the same.
But God help me, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to
sleep peacefully again.
FIN
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