Elvin did. The pale meat gave way to pink veins, a knuckle of bone.
Behind the mesmerizing motion, Elvin sensed more than saw, the man’s face was changing. Flesh swelled in his jowls, the eyeballs receded, an unwholesome evanescence issued from his glittering irises. Elvin blinked despite himself but the soothing voice kept him focused.
“The finger, Mr. Meister.”
The finger. The face behind it bulged like a bag of living soup. But Elvin ignored it as much as he could.
“There are things we don’t talk about,” the doctor said.
“Yes.”
“Childish things. A dust monster under the bed, a creature in the closet, a reptile in the bathroom. Invisible things, such as microorganisms in our mouths and on our skin.”
“We don’t talk about them.”
“Because they are not real.”
“Even if we see them.”
“It’s all in how you look at things, Mr. Meister. You can choose to be afraid, or you can see things the way they are.”
“Afraid.” Elvin fought an urge to stand, step across the elastic cord, and pace the worn route. But that would mean tearing his gaze from the finger, which was now rebuilding itself, knitting sinew and nerves, donning a dermal layer. Costuming itself for the elegant masquerade.
Elvin watched, the simple prayer running through his mind. “God, please help me see things the way they are.”
The doctor let the finger drop. Elvin met his eyes-horrible, red-weeping eyes, bulging like soft fruit after a heavy rain, magnified by the thick lenses. Elvin drew back in the chair.
“Ah,” the doctor said. “You are still seeing things.”
Elvin couldn’t speak. His tongue lay against the back of his teeth, a dead rat. He glanced at the clock. It quivered in place, stuck in no time, marking nothing.
“Try these.” The doctor removed the eyeglasses and turned them around, guiding the two earpieces along the sides of Elvin’s skull. Elvin closed his eyes.
“Please look at my finger,” the doctor said again, still madly deadpan.
“I can’t,” Elvin said.
“You must.”
“Why must I? I’ve done nothing wrong. I’m not ill. My eyes are fine.”
“Your eyes function, but they don’t see correctly. There’s a big difference.”
“The prayer on the wall in the waiting room. Is that yours?”
The doctor patted Elvin on the arm. “No, those are God’s words. You’ll see, in time. Now, please open your eyes, Mr. Meister.”
Elvin did. The doctor’s face was bland and kind, the eyes clear, the pupils round, black dots. Behind him, the room was the same. The floor bore no path, the door handle was in the same place it had been when Elvin entered.
The clock ticked regularly, the second hand moving forward in an inexorable countdown toward forever. The glasses were heavy on the bridge of his nose and the plastic hooks dug into the backs of his ears.
“How do they fit?” the doctor asked.
Elvin adjusted them. “The lenses seem a little smeared.”
“You’ll get used to them.”
“Do I have to wear them all the time?”
“Well, you take them off to sleep, of course.”
Sleep. Did that mean the things would still creep and slither through his dreams? Half-glimpsed forms frolicking in the shadows of his subconscious mind?
Elvin stood, expecting to wobble as if he had stepped off a carnival ride. Instead, the floor was firm and his legs were steady. Strong, even. “Will I need a follow-up visit?”
“I don’t think so,” the doctor said. “You are fine. We all just need a little tune-up once in a while. We tend to stray from the path if we don’t keep focused on our day-to-day affairs.”
“The big picture,” Elvin said, nodding. “That’s not for us to worry about.”
“Ah, you’re better already.”
Elvin felt as a if a great weight had been lifted from his shoulders. He hadn’t been this energetic in years. He wanted to skip and dance. He thrust his hand out and the doctor shook it, smiling.
The doctor opened the door, which swung on its hinges just fine, the way a proper door should. He stood aside and let Elvin go down the hall and back toward the waiting room. Elvin approached the counter as the doctor took a seat, grabbing a magazine off one of the tables.
“What do I owe?” he asked the nurse.
“This is a free clinic,” she said. “Government subsidized.” She called out, “Next patient, please.”
The doctor set aside his magazine and rose, heading back down the hall and toward the room Elvin had just exited. As he went through the door, Elvin imagined, for the briefest of moments, that the man had a long, reptilian tail. Elvin smiled. Imagination and nothing more.
He glanced at the wall, at the fuzzy little cross stitch. “God, please help me see things as they are.”
He would go home, along a sidewalk where all people were happy, all dogs sniffed and barked and behaved, all alleys offered up emptiness and light. No monsters, no flesheaters, no serpents. Gretta would be waiting at home, with a beautiful and warm smile and a well-balanced dinner and maybe some romance.
Elvin pushed the glasses up the bridge of his nose, peering straight ahead, relieved. Things were as they were, and he finally saw them that way. How silly the problem, and how simple the solution.
It was all in how you looked at things. And, of course, in knowing what not to talk about.
It was as he exited the doctor’s office into the bright sunlight that he remembered the elastic cord, the one that doctor had warned him not to step over. He thought of that old children’s chant, “Step on a crack, break your momma’s back.”
If you didn’t see the cracks, then you couldn’t step on them. Because they weren’t there. The sidewalk was no challenge at all. He entered the world with new eyes, brave eyes, ones that would never again need to close in fear.
The pigeon flew out of the alley with a suddenness that defied its species. As Elvin ducked away instinctively, the glasses dropped from his face, the earpieces slick with sweat. The lenses shattered on the sparkling concrete.
And, in the blink of an eye, Overton fell into night.
Things, the kind of things one shouldn’t talk about, screamed and rustled and growled and clattered teeth and claw. They closed in, and, at last, even in the darkness, or perhaps because of it, Elvin finally saw things as they really were.
BEGGAR'S VELVET
Cynthia knew she should have left the light on.
Because now the noise came again, soft, like the purr of a rat or the settling of disturbed lint.
A layer of lint had gathered under her bed because she couldn’t clean there. She was afraid of that dark, mysterious space that had never been explained to her satisfaction. She squeezed her eyes tightly shut and pictured the sea of dust, the fine powdered layers of accumulated motes. Beggar's velvet, she'd heard it called. But that thick gray fur didn't bother her. What bothered her was the beggar, the man that wore the dust, the creature that slept in the bright of day and made those terrible sounds at night.
The noise came again, a flutter or sigh. Louder tonight. The beggar must be more formed, closer to whole.
