Day Her Field of Vision Split

The loose, malingering curtains loitered lazily in the dark. As a pale luminosity filtered through the pane, no one could see the moon wane; beneath her brow, her eyes slunk from side to side in REM. She stirred, sifting through the layers of her light-woven blanket, her feet hanging out to feel the coolness of her bed.

The geometry of her sight inverted. Gravity claimed one limp arm while the other remained suspended, entirely straight, as she watched her own body lying prone on the mattress below.

- - -

A sudden knocking splintered the hollowness downstairs. Through the transparent ceiling she saw the dark figure as if peering through a double-paned window; yet that very same shape was already standing over her sleeping twin.

The front door opened with an impact, the handle striking the plaster until the upper timber columns vibrated. Heavy boots thumped against the floorboards. The metal aglets of their lacings whipped against the wood with a sharp, dry click. Two feet walking became four feet stomping, became six feet scraping. They marched out of step; they marched without pause. As the footsteps ascended, her pulse went wild, hammering against her ribs, thumping through the ticking of the mattress, until it dropped its rhythm entirely.

Even behind closed lids her muscles were calcified by a static terror. She could witness her feet but could not command them; her fingers stayed visible, yet her hands refused to flex or tear into her own skin. A mass of heavy tissue crowded her bedside in a closed, suffocating knot. A collective pressure ripped the blanket free; a detached grip tangled in her frail hair. A cold draft battered through the curtains, leaving her frame rigid; no shivers arrived to stymie the violence of these unwelcome guests.

“You belong in the morgue,” a voice rasped out of the dark. “You cannot last after this. There is no lasting when you suppress the memory; you will never be believed.”

A hand slammed her face down into the pillow to force her awake, but her eyelids remained locked in a frantic twitch. High above, her double clung to the ceiling plaster; its neck snapping back three distinct times until a dark fluid rained down upon the floor tiles. Each drop spread like a rapid blight across the stone.

One of her double’s eyelids grew heavy, weighted down by a suspended bead of blood hanging pendulous from the lash. Below, a crimson coil widened across the floor, thick enough to swallow the mattress and her ceiling double whole.

The stain split up the plaster, clotted pockets of picked blood fracturing into spindly spiders. Tapering sticks skittered from skinny shadows, scraping past the ceiling to clutch her double. She tried to scream but could only clutch her throat; the parasitic swarm stuffed past her teeth, scraping down her pharynx until her frail frame bloated. The sheer weight of the tide tilted the bed onto its side. As the gelatinous fluid sprouted long, probing fingers, a dark hand slid a coffin flat against the floorboards, forcing her body into the box before the predatory wall swallowed the bed vertically through the drywall.

Pressed into the chest, the slick smoothness of satin slid against her bare skin. The fabric compressed her limbs as though she were packed into a custom styrofoam mold, manufactured for a warehouse of things once alive. The iron hinges squealed like a slaughtered pig. No air remained in her lungs; no light reached her eyes; no space remained to turn as the lid slammed shut. The internal blackness felt physical, pressing against her throat until the dark swallowed her completely.

- - -

The veneer of her room blew away like frost under warm breath. Her eyeballs rolled against a new floor, wet and polished. Suddenly back inside her own skin, she stood as tall as a long row of lockers. An acute urgency pressed behind her skull, like a clock mechanism grinding away the peace of sleep. Her feet bolted towards the exit as a school bell rang, a loud metallic clang signalling a frantic stampede.

It was then she felt the hard curve of a wooden backrest pressing shoulder to shoulder, her seat firm beneath her, resting on the pillow she had brought from home. A teacher stood at the front of the room, snapping a wooden ruler against the blackboard’s white text. She focused on the white words written on the board; as she blinked, the small vessels in her eye warped, her pupils contracted, her field of vision split, and her sight went blank.