My Eyes Are Black Holes Read online

  MY EYES ARE BLACK HOLES.

  MY BRAIN IS A WORMHOLE.

  Logan Ryan Smith

  Transmission Press

  Chicago, Illinois

  First Electronic Edition

  Transmission Press, Chicago 60625

  © 2015 by Logan Ryan Smith

  All rights reserved. Published 2015.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written consent of the author, except where permitted by law.

  My Eyes Are Black Holes is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, and incidents are inventions of the author, only. All persons, living and dead, are purely coincidental.

  for Cameron

  I trace the outline of your eyes

  We’re in the mirror hypnotized

  I’m haunted

  —Love and Rockets, “Haunted When the Minutes Drag”

  Don’t frown, don’t frown

  ‘Cause everybody’s wearing black clothes and I’m wearing white

  Don’t frown, don’t frown

  And there’s your sister with her answer and she’s always right

  —The Twilight Sad, “The Neighbours Can’t Breathe”

  Oh, sweetness, sweetness, I was only joking

  When I said by rights you should be bludgeoned in your bed

  —The Smiths, “Bigmouth Strikes Again”

  The better you look, the more you see.

  —Bret Easton Ellis, Glamorama

  PART ONE

  PART TWO

  PART THREE

  PART ONE

  “Jack, come on. Get up. Get up.”

  Some fucking bitch keeps nagging at me and I was so warm—so warm and far away and gone—so gone. And now my stomach is blushing with acid while my lids remain tethered to cinder blocks. The beetles start to crawl into my skin and tingle, but I will them away. I will them dead.

  “Jack—you’ve been lying there for damned near five days straight. You need to get up—get up and get some sun and some air. You understand me?” she says, and I feel the weight of her dimple the bed at my side, feel her hand up against my clammy forehead. She pushes my scraggly hair back and behind my ear.

  “Fuck off… fuck off… FUCK OFF!” I finally yell, yanking the comforter out from under her and rolling over, hiding my head. Cocooned, my stomach aflame and my lids still impossibly heavy, I’m forced to breathe in muggy nostrilfulls of anxiety sweat, the pungency of my unwashed cock and balls, stagnant body odor from my pits, and rancid breath from not brushing and all the bile and poison erupting along my esophagus like a yellow geyser.

  The imposing weight to my side recedes and she sighs and says, “Goddammit, Jack. OK. Listen, I’ve gotta run. I’ve got errands to take care of and I have to see Sam’s lawyers about some… legal stuff. I’ve left some apple slices, toast, and tea here on the nightstand. OK? Please promise me you’ll try to eat something.”

  There’s a pause as if this fucking bitch expects me to answer her. All I want is for her to go away. All I want is for the world to go away. But the very idea frightens me. The burn in my belly chooses to play seesaw with the lead ball-bearings in my lungs while my heart decides it’s high fucking time to ready itself as a contender in Olympic gymnastics.

  Through my closed eyes and semi-translucent cocoon: white light. She opened the goddamned curtains. She opened the goddamned curtains!

  When I finally hear the pitter-patter of her tiny goddamned feet lead away and the clunk of the heavy door shutting behind her, I feel a mild form of tranquility but don’t move a muscle and remain swaddled and hidden from the world—hidden in a fog of my own stench.

  My lids—so heavy. And my breath—I will it to slow, hoping it’ll stop altogether.

  Now, again, warm darkness. A return to temporary eternity. Sleep.

  ***

  “Jack, I know you hate doctors, but I’m going to have to bring one out here if you refuse to get up. Eight days, Jack. In case you weren’t counting. It’s been eight whole days since you crawled into this bed. Did you even know that? Do you think I like living here with a ghost? Some zombie sleeping here in the guestroom? I’ve got more than enough ghosts living here already. I really don’t need this. Please, get up and get showered, for crying out loud. I promise you’ll feel better if you just get up, get cleaned up, and get some sun and some air. Please, Jack. For me?” Her small voice is pathetic. I feel sorry for her. Because I feel sorry for her I’m tempted to open my eyes, to look at her, to let her know I’m here—I’m really here. But, I’m not. And, still, she has left those goddamned curtains open this whole time!

  “There’s a nice fruit dish here and some toast and tea. Eat something, Jack. Drink a little tea. It’ll help clear your mind.”

  Again with the hand to my clammy forehead. Again with the brushing of hair away from my face.

  “I see you’re taking your meds, at least,” she says, trying not to sound defeated.

  I have taken my medication. But not for her. I’ve taken it a few times, late at night, when I’ve woken to a fit of dry heaves, my parched mouth tasting like dirt, my lips cracked and bleeding. I’ve woken to that and to a blackness in the corner of the room blacker than the rest of the room yet shimmering, almost imperceptibly, like a sliver of moonlight on a lake at midnight.

  That may have been the only time I’ve opened my eyes (only partly) these last… eight (?) days. Has it been eight days? That’s what this bitch says, but who knows. Time is irrelevant and just another trick. If time was real, it should be malleable—it should be mutually experienced, at least. But it’s neither. It’s just something that happens to an empty mason jar waiting a healthy poor from the wine jug so it can be emptied into another vessel and turned to piss.

  The bright morning light (or is it afternoon?) burns up the large guestroom window and I’m guessing if I opened my eyes I’d see it for what it is: Not nourishing sunlight, but a blinding portal to places I do not want to go—a magician’s grift, or maybe it’s just some illuminated quicksand.

  “Try to just get up and walk around today, please,” she says, running a hand along my blanket-covered back. Though I wish I could withdraw and shrink from this touch, like all feigned signs of affection, I cannot will it.

  “There’s plenty of clean clothes in the dresser if you decide to finally venture into that oh-so scary shower over there in the corner—Jesus, Jack, it’s not even down the hall. It’s right there, for crying out loud. You have your very own bathroom and all the privacy it affords. You should take advantage of it because—P.U.—it smells like kielbasa and your armpits had a baby in here. I’m not even joking. OK?”

  Mocking me. She thinks mocking me will motivate me? I don’t know why I don’t kill myself. I’m sure she wonders why I don’t kill myself. I wonder why I don’t take her with me when I do—the uppity bitch.

  Thud.

  The click-clack of the latch sinking into the strike plate. My leaden lids. My agitated breath lulling. My sinking into a crevasse while my odor remains to provide proof of existence.

  The corner’s full of light, I imagine.

  Just as terrifying as a wavering patch of darkness inside the pitch black.

  Eyes. Closed.

  I remain. And sink.

  ***

  “Jack. Jack!” an intruding, forceful, unwanted, and male voice says. “Jack, open your eyes for me. Come on now, open them up. I just need to take a look at your pupils. Then I’ll need you to open your mouth. We have to see how green your tongue is, yeah?”

  Pulling my cocoon around me, I turn over and breathe through m
y mouth, having learned my lesson. The intruder pulls the blankets away from my head and leans over me, pressing his weight onto my shoulder, his coffee breath offensive even though I’m trying to breathe through my mouth, only. Somehow I can tell the fucker is smiling, amused by this. Like I’m a child. Still, I recognize his voice, somehow, and I’m comforted against my will.

  “Jack, it’s Dr. Wilson. I’ve got a lollipop for you if you’re a good boy,” and another waft of old-man breath spills past me as he guffaws.

  Jesus, it’s Dr. Wilson. Really? Dr. Wilson? My goddamned childhood doctor? I’m really not sure what this is about. Does she think this will comfort me? Will draw me out of myself?

  There’s a rattling of metal instruments and I know that old piece of shit is just having the time of his life, finding this all so very funny—me, his once-bratty and spiteful patient as a child, still bratty and spiteful to this day. But, it’s not the same. And no one understands. If I open my eyes, I cause ripples in reality. Not just for me. For everyone. My brain is a wormhole and my eyes are black holes that suck everyone in and destroy them.

  This resistance I’m giving is an act of selflessness.

  “How long has he been like this?” I hear Dr. Wilson ask, unwrapping something.

  “Ten days now. Is this a problem? I mean, I’ve read books and seen movies where people do this—for much, much longer periods of time. I just… is this normal, maybe? I mean, given his history and given recent… events.”

  Her voice is a little shaky and I’m not shaken by it but I’m forced out of my self-imposed paralysis by an alcoholic coldness pressed up against my eyes. I attempt to jerk away, but that old fucker’s hand is on my shoulder and he’s got a lot of wiry strength left in him.

  “There, there,” Dr. Wilson says. “I’m just cleaning all that eye-gunk away so you can open those eyes. Your lashes were damn near glued shut.” He laughs, still rubbing the swabs around my eyes like I was the recently deceased body of Christ. When he pulls away from me and stands beside the bed I roll myself back up in my shroud.

  A few whispers crackle the air, then there’s another collapse in the mattress beside me and I await that familiar hand against my sweaty brow—await that same hand pushing my oily hair away from my face. Instead, a large hand grips my bicep and a needle pierces my skin and some goddamned poison flows like a smoke cloud into my blood.

  Pat-pat-pat on my bicep.

  “There, now, that didn’t hurt, did it, Jack?” he asks, pleased with himself. “Just some vitamins, no biggie. I’ll leave the lollipop here on the nightstand for you, son. You be sure to keep up with your medication now, and I’ll be back next week to check on you.”

  The bed reshapes with his absence. I hear the two talk and they decide I just need more time. She says something about my wife. My wife. Like my wife has something to do with anything. She has no right. She tells the doctor she’ll continue looking after me and give me the time I need but I can sense the wariness in her voice. I can tell she’d rather just throw me into a padded room and lose the key. I’m such a bother. I’m such a drag. I bring everyone down with me.

  But, it’s true. And that’s why I keep my eyes closed. Not for me. But for them.

  I keep them closed and they leave. I couldn’t see them and, in a way, they couldn’t see me. I hold my breath and hope I turn blue. I hold my breath and try to imagine into reality a plastic bag around my head and a mouth on my cock, neither leaving their place until I’ve left mine.

  I think I may have just had a wet dream.

  I keep my eyes closed and attempt to splash into another.

  ***

  “Jack? Jack? Are you OK? I thought I heard you scream,” she says.

  A trapezoid of hallway light creeps into my room (I imagine), but otherwise it’s dark. It’s night. And I still can’t open my eyes.

  ***

  I’ve slept for a million years. I’ve been awake for a million more. My eyes still ache from all the seeing and my legs are surely two pieces of petrified wood by now. My hands can’t fix or change a thing, and, so, what use are they? I have outlived the stillborn. I have outlasted my usefulness. I have become an abysmal ocean sponge, ten millennia old, and just as wise.

  ***

  “You know,” she says, cradling me in her arms—in the dark. Into the dark. “If mom and dad were still alive, they—well, hell, they wouldn’t know what to do, either.”

  I’ve woken up screaming again. I opened my eyes, but only halfway, and in the dark there was a wavering movement, like heat off the highway in the distance. A subtle movement that moves nowhere.

  I’m a portal. A passageway. I’m destruction and violence and eternal damnation.

  Let me back into the real world. I dare you.

  My sister continues to cradle me like a baby brother, even though I’m five years older than her. She tells me to take all the time I need, protecting me like a parent.

  So, I keep my eyes closed and let her put the tea cup to my lips so that I can drink. It’s warm, soothing, medicinal. And I sleep.

  ***

  “Just another vitamin shot, Jack,” Dr. Wilson says, patting my bicep. “I’m glad to hear you’re taking a bit more fluids and some food lately. I’m sure that last shot did you some good, and I’m sure this one will help keep you on the right path. You just keep taking your meds and get to eating more, and I’m sure you’ll be out of this bed in no time.”

  He’s very sure of himself. My eyes are closed and he’s again making rattling noises with his medical equipment and talking quietly to my sister over in the corner of the room so I know I can’t trust him. Like anyone else.

  “Whispering is RUDE!” I yell, sitting straight up in bed, but keeping my eyes closed.

  I hear them approaching me, and, closer, “Son, I’m going to up the milligrams on your clozapine and Prozac.” He’s again seated next to me and my sister stands at the foot of the bed—I can sense her judging presence there.

  “Now, I know I’m not your psychiatrist,” he continues, “but given your current state I think I’d also like to prescribe Xanax for you. That’s an anti-anxiety medication and should keep your heart rate at a normal level and prevent you from having any panic attacks and hopefully put an end to your night terrors—though there’s no telling as night terrors are a bit of a mystery. We can hope, thought, right? The other two medications you’ve already been taking for quite some time, so, I think you understand their merits.”

  My shoulder remembers the finger-imprints of his grasp, and he’s gone from this darkness. My sister, Karen, lingers for a bit. I can hear her bite her lip. I can hear her cross and uncross her arms. I can hear her eyeballs roll from left to right, up and down. It sounds like Jell-O sloshing down a playground slide.

  I think she wants me dead. I’m sure she’s wanted me dead for a lifetime.

  Pressure on my toes. Karen’s squeezing them.

  “Feel better, Jack. Please get better.”

  Darkness. Welcomed darkness.

  ***

  Sometimes I wake in the middle of the night and, slowly, slip from bed and crawl around on the wood floors, pretending I’m a rat or a cockroach. I do this because I’m a survivor, like them—just less proud. I allow myself to open my eyes, just barely, just enough to see through a crack. I scurry across the floor quick as I can and hide in the corners lest someone see me. The window with its curtains drawn bathes me in shattered white moonlight. I slip through shadows to the nightstand and slink up it and nibble at stale toast for sustenance, lap at tepid tea for hydration. On my belly, like a snake, I serpentine to the bathroom in the corner and slink into the tub and submerge myself in water and darkness until only my unconscious will forces me out from under the water to breathe. I’m trying to grow gills.

  From these nights I emerge anew. Baptized.

  ***

  “Oh, god, Jack. That’s wonderful. You’re eating your toast. And you’re bathing. I can tell—it just smells nicer in here, don’t
you think? Here—let me open these windows. There. Don’t you feel so much better now?” Karen asks me as I try to sleep. In my night-wanders, I’ve managed to close the drapes but she keeps reopening them.

  The bitch is trying to kill me.

  “My eyes,” I tell her.

  “Hmm? What’s that, Jack?” she asks, leaning against the bed because I’m turned away from her.

  “My eyes are black holes,” I tell her, quietly.

  “Jack, you need to speak up,” she says, leaning more against the bed, obviously studying my closed-eyes expression.

  “I’m a fucking monster. I’ll eat your children,” I warn her.

  “Seriously, Jack—come on now. Speak up. Quit that whispering. I know you must be feeling better now. I can see real color in those cheeks of yours. I just feel bad I didn’t get Dr. Wilson out here sooner. He’s really done you some good.”

  “If I look at the world I’m afraid I’ll make it go away,” I say, lying on my side, my back to her.

  “What? Jack? What was that?”

  “Could you… could you ask Dr. Wilson to come back and… bring his stitching set? I don’t want any more shots, please, but… I think it’d be best if he returned and… sewed my eyes shut.”

  “Jack, please speak up. All I hear is mumble mumble mumble.”

  “SHUT UP! JUST SHUT YOUR FUCKING FACE!” I yell, flipping over, facing her, my eyes closed. “You fucking BITCH you fucking BITCH you fucking BITCH you fucking BITCH!”

  The weight leaves the mattress and I can sense her drawing away. I can taste the fear in the air and I know I’ve done something wrong. Like a submissive dog, I roll over on my back and I wet myself, but my sister doesn’t understand my gesture and she’s crying, stumbling back toward the door.