Lines of Sight

I can’t sleep tonight. The streetlight in front of my house shines directly into my bedroom window, right onto my closed eyelids. Even with the curtains drawn and my hand over my face, the bright light still manages to drill its way into my retinas. I sit up in bed and punch my pillow a few times. I’m so tired.

Sleep still isn’t coming, so I swing my feet off the edge of the bed. Glass of water, maybe. I pad to the window to squint at the streetlight. None of the other ones are on. Only the one directly outside my window. Unlucky, I guess.

Looking downward through the window I notice something on my front porch. A small dark shape. A package I missed? Some kind of critter spending the night on a comfy welcome mat? I stretch and leave my room, shuffling down the stairs and heading to the front door.

I open it and look down. On the mat is a stone, lopsided and sharp. One end of it is a near-perfect right angle, like the corner of a cube. I kneel down and take the rock in my hands and my porch light flickers. Who put this here? A brief moment of nighttime panic consumes me– what if whoever put this here was waiting for me to open the door?

I rise to my feet quickly, still holding the stone, and scan the street in front of me. Nothing. Why would somebody try and bait me outside? With a rock, of all things? Lack of sleep thoughts. The rock is cold and heavy in my hand. I like the way it feels. I close the door, re-latch it, and sink into my armchair. I place the rock on my coffee table and look at it for a while, until I finally fall asleep.

*

The cashier at the grocery store keeps looking at me. She looks like someone, but I can’t figure out who. The bagger looks around too. He looks at me, then at the cashier, then back at me. He stacks my purchases into two plastic bags, eggs on top. The cashier tucks my receipt into one of the bags and smiles at me. She looks at the bagger. He looks at me.

I’m suddenly very aware of the fields of vision of everybody in the store. Everybody is always looking around, I notice. They look at me, then each other, then their carts, then at the shelves. Sweeping cones of perception. Like swiveling surveillance cameras in a video game. I can feel the hairs on my arm raise as I pass through other shoppers’ visual fields on my way to the automatic door. Its tiny mechanism detects me and the doors slide apart to let me outside.

The floodlights in the parking lot are all on, even though it’s one in the afternoon. I cross the lot, squinting my eyes to shield from the reflected glare off the windshields of empty cars. The cars all face outward from their parking spaces.

I walk home slowly, swinging my grocery bags back and forth, feeling them bump against my thighs, looking up at the sky. The clouds look gray and sharp. I look one way, and then the other. I feel the muscles at the back of my eyes work to sweep the cone of my vision across the sky. I love the feeling of the sunlight on my skin, but I can’t stand the way it burns my eyes when my line of sight strays too close.

I cast my gaze through the upper-level windows of the houses that line the street. The panes of glass are permissively transparent. Each window is a finger beckoning my attention, drawing me into the interiors of stranger’s houses. With the shades pulled open to let in the sun, the windows become prisms that diffract my sight. From the low angle of a pedestrian, I can catch what the occupants are watching on TV, or maybe a painting on their wall. But the glass diffuses the rest of the room, scattering the image ineffectually, spread so thin it’s impossible to discern any real detail.

If I could look close enough, from the right vantage point, I bet I could see the entire interior of a house reflected on its window. If the light bounced right, I could see from every angle. Beyond the rudimentary cone my eyes allow.

People live in these houses. People I can’t see. They’re all looking somewhere. They probably can’t see me either. Probably. Most of them can’t see each other, but they’re all looking somewhere.

What’s a town but twenty five thousand intersecting lines of sight?

*

At home, I unload my groceries into the fridge, a couple into the freezer. I reach into the bag for a box of pasta and brush my fingers against something cold and irregular. Confused, I pull the mystery object out of the plastic bag. It’s a rock. Not just a rock, the rock. Angular, bumpy, one perfect corner. The same rock I found on my doorstep just a couple nights ago.

Did it fall off the coffee table and into the grocery bag? When could that have happened? I retrace my steps in my mind, visualizing my entry into the house. I walked up the steps, wiped my feet on the mat, put down the bags, turned the key, opened the door, picked up the bags, walked by the coffee table, into the kitchen… I guess I went near the coffee table. But… I swallow.

The rock feels uncomfortable in my hand. A cold bead of sweat rolls from my armpit down the side of my torso. I carry it out of the kitchen, back to the coffee table. But when I reach the coffee table I’m struck with a sudden dizzy sensation– like I’m sliding through the hardwood floor and being dragged down, down into the core of the earth, dirt and gravel whipping by me, and I’m spinning, unable to think– because the rock is still on my coffee table.

I drop the stone I’m carrying in my hand onto the table next to its twin. It’s not just similar to the one I found on the porch. It’s identical. They have the same corners, the same bumps, the same color. My head hurts.

I forget to unpack the rest of the groceries. I spend at least an hour comparing the two stones. Trying to find an imperfection on one that isn’t present on the other. I can’t.

I put them next to each other again. I turn them so they’re facing the same direction. It’s like I’m seeing double. Deeply disconcerted, I reach out to nudge one of them out of position, try and make them at least seem different. But it’s not right. I put them back in formation. I look at one, then the other. I look at them both until my eyes stop focusing.

**

It’s morning and I’m waiting for the bus. It’s cold out, and I can see my breath bloom out of my mouth in front of me like the ghost of a flower. My fingers prickle with the beginnings of numbness. The bus is taking too long.

Cars whizz by me. Their headlights are all on, sketching beams of light ahead of them through the limpid winter air. The people in the cars look forward, but as they pass the bus stop I can see their eyes flick toward me briefly, like they can’t help it. They track me in their vision as they roll by, and then snap their attention back to the road ahead, traveling along the linear path of their headlights.

The traffic light cycles from green to yellow to red. A woman driving a cobalt blue car comes to a stop at the line. She stares at me through the filthy car window. I look back. I see her shoulders, her steering wheel, her face. She looks at the traffic light, then at me. Then she glances downward, near my feet. I follow her gaze down to the curb in front of me. There, nestled in the gutter, is a rock. I can only see one side of it, but I can already tell it’s identical to the other two. I step off the curb into the street and scoop it up. A bubble builds in my chest. The air turns to ice.

A loud honk startles me. The light has turned green and I’m blocking traffic. I back up onto the sidewalk, out of the way of the woman. As she revs her engine and drives by, she rolls down her window. I think she might be about to yell. But she just looks at me, her mouth a thin straight line. Then she looks straight ahead as she zooms away.

I leave the bus stop, rock in hand, and start to walk home. I need to put this one with the others. Instead of looking in the windows of the houses, I look down at the ground. I can tell the streetlights are on, just from the sensation on the back of my neck.

I’m not looking where I’m going. I’m only looking at the ground. But I can see the streetlights anyway. I can see everywhere. I can see the windows of the houses. I can see inside the windows, into the rooms, and through the doors in those rooms into the rooms connected to them. I can see everything in every direction all the time right now. I’m the incredible three-hundred-and-sixty degree man. I have the most perfect field of vision in my town.

If I could get the right angle, I could see everything on Earth. I could curve my sightline around its topography, if I was high enough in the air. It’s just a trick of knowing the right direction to look, knowing how to bounce the line of your vision back and forth, around and around. Right now, I know the right direction. I just need to be higher up. I go up onto my tiptoes and start to run, staring at my feet.

I trip.

As I crash to the ground, the rock flies out of my hand and bounces along the sidewalk ahead of me. My knee is bleeding through raked-back skin and my pants are ripped. My head spins. I roll onto my back and hold my hands in front of my face. Their heels are raw and gravel-encrusted. I look up at the sky. The sun is behind a cloud, but it’s still bright out. The rays of light filter through the opaque cloud and blanket everything. A billion flaming arrows raining down on Earth, pinning everyone to the ground. Thumbtacks pushed into a plank of wood.

The world is a network of crosshatched lines. Vectors emanating from points, swiveling around, left, right, forward, forward. Everything sees everything. A spiderweb. A constantly shifting grid hugging the planet.

I’m back on my feet, searching for the rock I dropped. It skittered toward someone’s yard. I kneel down and lower my head to look under a bush. I see my rock, next to two others. They’re all the same, all three of them. They all have the same corner. I gather them up and shove them into the pockets of my sweatshirt. My exposed skin stings and I feel heavy.

*****

I’m at home. There are twelve identical rocks on my coffee table. I’m pacing back and forth. My door is ajar and questing tendrils of night air filter in. I’m waving my hands around the room, arms extended like dowsing rods. Waiting for the feeling. When it strikes me, I dash out the door. I use my hands like antennae, casting their own fields of unseeing vision, and follow the signal. It leads me to a spot across the street. A neighbor’s yard.

I close in on the exact spot and kneel down. I start to scrabble with my fingers, pins and needles rippling up my forearms. I scratch the cold dirt out of the way, tearing up dead grass at the root. A couple inches down, my hands find their quarry. Another rock. Its pointed end sticks out of the soil. I wobble it back and forth until I free enough room in the dirt to pull it out with my loamy fingers.

I take the stone in my hand, the sharp vertex digging into my bruised palm. I run back inside my house and place it with its brothers. Now there are thirteen rocks on my table.

I repeat this process again and again. Each time I venture a little further from my house. Sometimes when I come back there are twice as many rocks as when I left. They can’t fit on the surface of the table anymore. They’re spilling over onto the floor. I can’t stop exploring their crevices and protrusions with my eyes. I slide them around and position them just right. My vision bends around them, like a rolling coin spiraling down the gullet of a funnel. From where I’m standing, I can see the whole surface of each stone.

They’re all the same. They all have corners.

*******************************************************

It’s two in the morning. I’m still flailing my arms around my living room. My eyes are closed. Whenever I open them, I just see rocks, strewn across the table and floor, stacked up on the chair. My brain can’t process seeing so much of the same thing. It makes me feel like I’m in a hundred places at once. Up on the ceiling, down on the floor. Outside the window. Under the door. I keep my eyes closed.

The feeling seizes my body again, more intense than before. It’s not painful, but it’s not pleasant either. My arms go straight as ramrods and my jaw clenches. I’m off.

This signal takes me far away. I’m in a neighborhood I don’t recognize. I knew it was here– something had to be over in this direction– but I’ve never walked through it before. The moon beats down on me from above, reflecting the hot eye of the sun onto the Earth. The houses are dead quiet but every door stands ajar. I follow the feeling further, my arms outstretched in front of me. Everywhere I look I see empty windows, angular shadows, mirrors sparkling with the moon’s silver light. I’m not looking with my eyes. My hands can see the way ahead tonight.

There’s a new light in the sky tonight. Not the moon. Something big and bright and penetrating, so powerful my eyes can see it through their lids. It seethes with color, way out there in the sky, somewhere beyond the horizon, occluded by the curvature of the Earth. I hold my hands up in its direction, lifting my arms to the sky, honing in on its signal, picking up the frequency like a human radio.

The message of the light hits me like a freight train. It’s the promise of knowledge, a solution, an endpoint. The final entry in a series once thought infinite. The exclamation point at the end of a sentence. A magician explaining his best trick. Unraveling a spider’s web into a single unbroken gossamer thread. It’s a sense of comfort and relief, “one day I’ll look back at all this and laugh,” you’ve noticed something wrong with the world and you’re right. You’re right.

There is an answer, says the light. I will complete the pattern.

It terrifies me. It knocks me off my feet. I can’t handle it. I don’t want to know. I don’t want the answer, because I don’t understand the question. And I’m not ready for it to end.

I turn and I run, arms at my side, eyes open wide like dinner plates. I don’t see anything except what’s in front of me.

I stumble into my house and the floor is covered in rocks. The hardwood is no longer visible. Everywhere I step my ankles are jostling against identical stones, already bruising, a dull ache slithering up my legs. I clamber upstairs, creating tiny cascades of shifting rocks. Loud clattering noises. Hard to find purchase.

I make it into my bedroom. Knees-deep. I look out the window. The moon is gray. The streetlight is off. The night is black.

I climb into my bed and fall asleep. When I wake up there are thousands of rocks piled on top of me. I’m slowly being crushed and I can’t move at all and I can’t breathe and I look straight up at my bedroom ceiling for the rest of my life.