Author's website: http://www.geocities.com/unhingedds/

Disclaimer: Not mine, never will be, but they have a lot more fun when they play at my house.

Author's Notes: Apologies to H.P. Lovecraft and Fitz-Jams O'Brien, who used this idea before me, though they probably borrowed it from someone else too.

Story Notes: A mildly disturbing little tale.

Ray's Glasses
By MR

I'm sitting at Ray's desk going over 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 dies 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 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 whisps 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?"

"Because most people can't see them, even with the glasses on. Mom and Dad never could. My brother 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, or at least who'll admit to it."

I try to imagine Ray as a skinny 10 year old, being told he has to wear these glasses because he needed 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 me 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. "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

End Ray's Glasses by MR: psykaos42@yahoo.com

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