The Third Eye

by Nicole Howard
illustration by RAchelle

He walks along the deserted beach thinking. “I’m just mere condensation and nothing exists outside of me.” Platonic me-ness in the gait of his stagger, he has seen so much of nothing. And distracting his eyes a small cyclone in the stillness of the air whirls and to his eyes forms a clear translucent figure staring out from the air, that looks almost like a girl. A girl lost in the wind? She screams. Haphazardly, words begin to appear in the sand and he thinks distractedly of ghosts and angels, then fixes his eyes slow on the words spewing from distinct bubbles. He is seeing pieces of air draw words in the sand, so many words. He starts to read the strange garbled message…

Violent. There was a catalyst. I was trying to break through the giant masquerade called life. I had finally decided with every ounce of my being that I truly was the only person who really existed. But I didn’t expect all of the people to disappear at once, leaving me staring at my hands, which were no longer before me. All I knew was that I was now a mass of molecules that had kept consciousness. I knew what I had been and I knew what I was now.

I was part of the air, floating around on an earth where there were no people and no trace of human nature. Only Mother Nature remained, and she was distant. Mad at me for my game, I guess. Floating around, I tried to communicate with the other molecules, but they seemed unaware of me. I no longer had any concept of time, although I remembered a time when I had.

Before, it had always been at the back of my mind that I could be the only person who really existed. It was just a matter of cracking through the clearness to realize it. But I never took it all that seriously, I would only half think it, so that I wasn’t risking anything.

There were people I came across who seemed like mere extensions of myself. The people who were closest to me were the most intense emotions I had experienced encapsulated into the appropriate figure of a person. Each person represented an entire emotion, like, “fierceness,” “understanding,” “tranquility,” and “sadness.” They would say their words to me, and I made myself see something more. I knew for a fact that I had invented the majority of the people I came across, but I wasn’t sure about all of them. Some of them, at least, had to be other people’s projections that they were meeting. It all got mixed up, so that some of the people I was coming across were other people’s projections and then some of them were people who existed. It was just a matter of picking out the real ones from the fakes.

And so many times life seemed like a painted picture that I moved in, with the scenery and people immovable. I thought maybe I had painted them, but I was never sure. And sometimes, I would spend an entire day trying to re-affirm things, running around touching nice concrete things, making sure they were there. Then, making myself laugh at my stupidity, I’d joke with other people about it, but then their eyes were always glazed. And the more I tried to think that any of them were really there, the worse it got. And I thought, I wonder if this is what it is like to go crazy.

Pretty soon, looking at any one person for too long would cause the figure to blur until it had the ghost-like consistency of air. A tiny person that looked liked a frightful version of me would peer out of the body, as though looking out a window. She was malicious looking, with her hair and nose running and her mouth hanging open with clinging saliva dripping down her face. She would eat her way out of the skin ferociously, not caring that she trampled her victim. The more she ate the stronger she would get and her figure would get more and more distinct, as the outer figure faded. Then I would scream, and all at once the body and the tiny girl would evaporate into thin air. I knew that she represented that I was projecting myself onto these people and I tried not to be disturbed about it. But it got to the point where this happened with every person I looked at, almost immediately.

I would lock myself in my room, scared of the people, but even more scared of myself and what I was becoming. It seemed as though I had set off some chain reaction and each time I took a step in that direction I could not go back. Pretty soon I was jogging away from real life. I couldn’t separate what was real, from what was in my mind. The only person I was certain of was myself. Days I spent closed in my room until I came to one final proclamation that I believed more fully than anything I had ever previously believed. I was the only person who really existed.

And I have been floating through the air ever since. Still not sure if this is a long strange dream, or my permanent existence from now on. Did I merely convince myself that this is what I am? I try to communicate with the trees, the flowers, even the dirt. Until. Staring at the rocks, they stare back, bolder somehow. Knowing something I don’t.

The words end and he sits shattered, wondering if he made them appear, (an infected mind), or if they had an alternate source, and already the water washes over them, gone. Looking at the water until only the water and sand are real, he feels himself flying through the air, his molecules, someone else who wasn’t a projection.