It is now

Once a year, you are supposed to get your vision checked.

This year, you have been struggling to get things done, make the appointments, show up.

You get headaches when you look at a screen.

Instagram burns behind your eyes.

You wish you looked like someone else.

The doctor brings you into a room with a line of white machines and a single black stool that rolls from one to the next. They signal for you to take your seat at the first machine, lean forward, rest your forehead, stare straight ahead. Your eyes narrow, work together, adjust. You are peering through a keyhole.

Their voice intones, "You will hear two small clicks, just stare at the blue x."

You position your eyes.

Blackness.

"Look toward your nose."

There is no x, just an endless tunnel of black. Perhaps you are doing it wrong; the doctor's voice fades as your thoughts drift to whether you are performing the test well enough.

Click.

The black morphs. A red rectangle appears, slightly blurred at the edges as if it has been spray-painted onto the concrete blackness.

Click.

The red solidifies, shrinking into a concrete shape. A door. It is a clearly defined door. It hinges open slightly to the right. Your eyes dial in. The door is a mawing jaw.

A deep, male voice booms, "Look at the blue x."

There is no x.

There is only a door.

The red door, an unhinged opening begging you to walk through. It wants to swallow you. It is singular. It is welcoming.

You walk through.

You recognize the smell of bacon cooking when you wake up, comfortable in bed, with your favorite blanket cascading around you.

He made you bacon on Saturday mornings, when you had this blanket and these blue walls to wake up to. You turn your head toward the door. It is red. It was not red. It is red now.

Footsteps.

He enters the room, a plate of bacon in his hand.

"Good morning, sleepy head."

You are wide awake now.

His face looks the same, but slightly different. His smile is wider.

"I knew you would be hungry. I thought we could eat together."

His eyes begin darting back and forth between you and the door, there, and back again. Frantic. Your pulse speeds up.

He settles, extends the plate.

"Eat up, hungry girl."

You don't think you can say no.

The plate is on your lap.

The bacon begins to move. The lines of fat become thick maggots, hooking along the meat, scraping, shredding. You scream, throw the plate.

It shatters on the floor.

"Oh, silly darling, look what you have done."

You rise, instinctively.

He did not like messes.

You never kept clean enough.

You remember.

You are on the floor. The bacon fat is now bacon fat. Plate shards scatter as they run under the bed.

You reach to grab one, peering into the shadow. Eyes stare back at you. Yours. Fearful. A finger to the lips, your lips. Urging you not to make a sound.

You scream.

Race back.

Plate shards discarded.

On your knees, closer to the door.

The red door. It was not red. It is red now.

"Did you have a fright, darling?"

He bends to look under the bed, inhuman, his body folds in on itself and melts to the floor.

You are moving backwards on your hands, closer to the door. You are leaning against it, too scared to rise. Your eyes find the wood-red wood. Scratched into the wood, with a fingernail intact, the words: do not let him see you.

His shape slides, glitches, half under the bed, half out.

He stands, forms, wears your face.

Your voice.

"You found me."

You scream.

Stand up.

The doctor stares at you.

Behind her is a door.

The red door.

It was not red.

Now it is.