BLUR: By Neil Leckman
Monday, April 25th, 2011There is a spot in my vision, more of a blur than a spot. It twists things, making it hard to see clearly. My doctor looked at it and said that there was an abnormality there, but it wasn’t clear what it was. It appeared just after my best friend killed himself, in the same manner that we had talked about, when we used to talk about life.
“If you were going to kill yourself how would you do it? I think I’d drive my car off a cliff.”
“No, what if you survived the fall? I know exactly what I’d do. I’d go down to the river, right where the rapids run under the bridge, over the jagged rocks. I’d walk out to the center of the bridge, and nosedive head first into those rocks. If the fall doesn’t kill me the water will” he looked at me with that goofy damn smile of his,
“Yep, that’s what I’d do. ”
Well, he kept his word, and I’m not sure what killed him, but he was dead, and I cried. I shared guilt, some sort of shared vision of death. He kept his end of the deal, and I had no intention of keeping mine, not now, not later. They didn’t find his body until months later, or at least what the fish and rocks left of it, tattered, bloated and dead. Yeah, I cried, I cried for me and for him, and when I was done crying I had this blur. It causes my vision to ripple in just that one little spot, not a lot, just enough to make it hard to see.
The other thing is the headaches that follow after the blurring intensifies, like someone is taking a dull knife, and driving it into the base of my skull, slowly. When it gets really bad it makes me vomit, not a little, no, I vomit until I have nothing but bile left, and dry heaves follow, until I get so tired I pass out. When that happens I get a dull buzzing, or hum in my ears, just enough to make it hard to hear what’s going on around me. I never had any of these symptoms prior to now, and they seem to be getting worse every day. I tried to cope with it, until fate took that option away from me. It was a late October evening; rain had turned into a quick frost covered in a light snow.
I was coming towards that damn bridge going over forty, when it hit me, harder than ever before, the pain and humming were excruciating. I slammed on the brakes, but that just put me into a skid that ended abruptly when I hit the railing.
The impact with the windshield, (yeah, I forgot to put on my seatbelt), stunned me for a moment. I found myself freefalling, glass sparkling around me in the moonlight like tiny diamonds in slow motion. My head hit first, snapping my neck and paralyzing me as I slid over the rocks. When my head went under the waves it was just like the blurring I kept seeing, and the roar of the water over the rocks was the buzzing. I sank, the current tumbling me over the sharp rocks which tore at me, flaying my skin open, turning the water crimson. Just before I died in the murky depths I saw a faint shimmering glow. It turned out to be my friend who wasn’t going to let me forget that a promise is a promise…
______________________
©2011 Neil Leckman
