Jeremy woke up alone in a hospital bed. He tried to turn his head, but the pain made him wince. He gingerly touched the bandage wrapped around his head as he surveyed the room as best he could, moving only his eyes. There was no sign of any extradimensional terrors. Jeremy wanted to blame it all on a nervous breakdown, but he could still feel the blood crusted inside his nostrils and the tenderness in the back of his eyes.
Jeremy’s empty stomach growled, and he pushed the call button to summon a nurse. A minute later, a middle-aged man in scrubs shuffled into his room, driven by a human-sized earwig. The earwig clung to the nurse’s neck with its pincers while it used its antennae to move the man’s legs.
Jeremy screamed, and the earwig pumped the nurse’s legs faster.
“It’s ok, it’s ok,” said the nurse.
The earwig lifted the nurse’s arms and held his palms out, facing Jeremy.
“It’s on you! Don’t you feel it?” he asked the nurse hysterically.
The earwig contorted the nurse’s body so he could inspect himself.
“I don’t see anything.” The nurse said with a shrug.
“Of course you don’t.” Jeremy sighed. “I’m the only one who can see them, apparently.”
“What is it you think you’re seeing?” asked the nurse condescendingly.
“I don’t think I’m seeing anything,” Jeremy said defiantly. “I know I am.”
“Ok,” said the nurse more sincerely this time. “What are you seeing?”
“The movers,” he whispered.
“Pardon?”
“Creatures that are moving everything. One is moving you around like a puppet right now!”
“I see,” said the nurse. “I’m going to get a doctor to help you. I’ll be right back.”
The earwig turned the nurse around and marched him out of the room. Jeremy thought he saw the giant insect turn slightly and observe him with one of its eyes before it left.
An amorphous blob carried the doctor in to see him. Jeremy tried to get a good look at the gelatinous creature without staring at it directly, but it was useless. The ill-defined mass had a form too alien for his brain to decode. Instead, his brain gave up and generated something resembling a Jell-O mold. Sometimes, a familiar body part like an eye or a tooth would float to the creature’s surface briefly before disappearing into the translucent goo.
“Hello, I’m Doctor Kim. I hear you’ve had some disturbing visions—”
“They’re NOT visions!” said Jeremy, unable to hide the frustration in his voice. “They aren’t hallucinations, and I’m not on drugs either.”
“I apologize,” the doctor said in a soothing voice. “Can you explain what you’re seeing?”
The blob oozed Doctor Kim over to a chair in the corner and dragged them both to the foot of Jeremy’s bed.
He swallowed to lubricate his dry throat
“Look, I’m not crazy,” he told the doctor.
“No one said you were,” she responded calmly.
“It’s just…this is going to sound nuts, ok? But…” he swallowed again.
“Would you like me to get you some water?” Doctor Kim offered.
Jeremy imagined the gloppy, semi-fluid monstrosity stretching out a tendril of slime and wrapping it around a drinking glass. The thought was enough to twist his empty stomach into a pretzel.
“No, thank you.”
“Ok, but if you change your mind…” the doctor trailed off. She saw the feral desperation in his eyes, and it scared her.
“I-I woke up this morning and started seeing monsters everywhere,” Jeremy confessed.
“What kind of monsters? Can you describe them?”
“No. I mean, yes. Kind of. It hurts to look at them directly. They shimmer and seem to change as you look at them. If you glance at them from the corner of your eye, you can get a better look, but not much.”
“It hurts to look at these monsters?” The doctor frowned.
Jeremy nodded his head.
“I think they exist in a dimension higher than ours. I can only see part of the creatures, whatever spills over into our dimension. My brain has to make up the rest.”
The blob contorted Doctor Kim’s face into a puzzled expression.
“I’m not sure I understand what you mean.”
“Forget it,” he sighed. “Let’s just say these things are disgusting. Terrifying monsters with teeth that won’t fit in their mouths and claws the size of steak knives. Some of them have tentacles like an octopus, and some are insects. The one controlling you right now is like a melty Jell-O monster.”
He watched the blob use its strands of dripping goo to shape the doctor’s lips into the words. “There’s a monster controlling me right now?” It was surreal. He laughed, surprising the doctor.
“Yeah, there is. Every time you talk, it moves your lips. Whenever you think you’re moving an arm or a leg, it’s a big pile of snot posing you like a doll.”
Doctor Kim looked at Jeremy with a mixture of pity and apprehension.
“Why do you think these monsters from outer space have taken everyone over? Is it some kind of invasion or—”
“No!” he cut her off curtly. “Not outer space…at least I don’t think…and they didn’t take everyone over like Invasion of the Body Snatchers or something. They’re just there. Moving everything. I think they’ve always been there.”
“And you’ve seen these creatures before today?” asked Doctor Kim.
“No. I never even knew these things existed before today. I don’t think we’re supposed to see them. They’re like invisible puppeteers, cogs making the world run.”
“I’m not following,” said the doctor apologetically.
Jeremy sighed and tried again.
“What do you know about Greek philosophy?”
“Not much, I’m afraid,” the doctor confessed. “I know Hippocrates because of the oath, but that’s about it.”
“It doesn’t matter,” he said with a wave of his hand. “Have you ever heard of Zeno’s paradoxes?”
“Can’t say that I have.”
“The arrow paradox?”
“Maybe you could just say what you want to say directly instead of quizzing me on ancient history?” asked Doctor Kim curtly.
“Yeah, sorry,” said Jeremy. “Zeno was a Greek philosopher who set out to prove that movement is an illusion using various thought experiments. One of them involves an arrow.”
“Ok, I’m with you so far.”
“Let’s say an arrow is flying toward a target,” he continued. “If you took a picture of the arrow at any time along its flight, it would be a static image, correct?”
“Sure.”
“Now you could theoretically take an infinite number of pictures before the arrow reached the target,” he said, slipping into teacher mode. “And each one of those pictures would show a still arrow, not moving. Still following?”
“I think so,” said Doctor Kim, unsure of her answer.
“So if you can break the flight of an arrow into an infinite amount of moments where the arrow is motionless, that must mean that the arrow never moves, right? Meaning movement is an illusion.”
The blob positioned Doctor Kim’s body in a stance reminiscent of The Thinker. Every time the gelatinous mass touched the doctor, it left a trail of slime. It broke his brain to think she couldn’t feel it oozing down her cheeks.
“That’s an interesting thought experiment, but you and I both know things and people do move.”
“Of course, I told you I’m not crazy,” Jeremy said defensively. “But what if what you and I know isn’t the whole story?”
“How so?” asked Doctor Kim, humoring him.
“Based on what I’ve seen today, I think motion is an illusion. An illusion doesn’t necessarily mean something doesn’t occur. When a magician pulls a rabbit out of a hat, he’s still pulling a rabbit out of a hat. Whether he conjured the rabbit out of thin air, or it was hiding in a secret compartment under the magician’s table is irrelevant. Yes, we get from point A to point B, but what if it’s not of our own volition? What if cosmic entities beyond our comprehension move us to and fro like chess pieces?”
“It’s a little hard to swallow, Mr. Collins.” Doctor Kim said with a smirk. “I like sci-fi as much as the next person, but I’m not sure I buy Cthulhu rolling my car home for me every night.”
“Of course it’s hard to swallow,” Jeremy agreed. He wasn’t sure he would believe it if he hadn’t been tortured all day with this unasked-for peek behind the celestial curtain.
“So these monsters are pushing and pulling anything that moves, right?”
He nodded. Doctor Kim reached into her coat pocket and took out a pen. She turned it over a few times in her hand.
“What happens if I throw this pen?”
“The pile of goo behind you will reach forward and grab it. Then it will guide it to the floor.”
The “pile of goo” grabbed the doctor’s hand and returned the pen to her jacket.
“Let’s change subjects,” said Doctor Kim, the blob correcting her posture as she spoke. “Do you know why you’re here?”
“I assume it had something to do with me bashing my head into the sidewalk.” Jeremy reached up again without thinking and touched the bandage around his head.
“You assume correctly,” said Doctor Kim. “Why were you doing that to yourself?”
“I was trying to get them to stop,” he whispered wearily.
“If the creatures aren’t hallucinations, how would bashing yourself in the head make them stop?”
“It wouldn’t,” Jeremy said with a morbid grin. “But if I hit my head hard enough, it would stop me from hearing them—permanently.”
“That’s pretty dark, Mr. Collins.”
Jeremy said nothing. He just lay there flashing a grin at the doctor that chilled her to the bone.
“Ok, Mr. Collins, here’s what I think—”
“Call me Jeremy, please.”
“Right, Jeremy. I think you’ve had a psychotic episode. I’m not sure of the cause yet, but I’d like to transfer you to the psychiatric ward for an evaluation. Seeing how you admitted to having suicidal ideations, I think they’ll want to keep you overnight. Do you understand everything I’ve just told you?”
“It’s not a psychotic episode!” he barked, ignoring the doctor’s question. “It’s the movers. They’re real, I swear—”
“Are they moving you?” asked the doctor.
“Huh?”
“These movers. You never mentioned if they were moving you or not.”
“Well, I—”
A horrible feeling of dread started to build in Jeremy. It mixed with the adrenaline coursing through his veins, becoming a cocktail of physical and mental discomfort. He thought he saw a smile briefly materialize on the blob holding Doctor Kim. Jeremy hadn’t questioned how he was getting around. He just took it for granted, like breathing.
But once you think about breathing, you suddenly become aware you’re doing it.
Jeremy lifted his arm in front of his face. A hand wrapped itself around his wrist. What he could see of it was puke-green and covered in pustules. He waved his hand back and forth—or rather, the creature grasping his wrist waved his hand back and forth.
“No!” the creature’s other hand reached up and pried Jeremy’s mouth open, shaping his lips to form the word. He turned to look at Doctor Kim and screamed when the creature stuck a finger in each of his eyes to roll them manually in the right direction.
“NOOOOOOO!” A green claw pinched his tongue, pulling it this way and that.
Doctor Kim watched in horror as Jeremy screamed and clawed at his eyes like someone possessed. The doctor ran to his side and pressed the call button on his bed. She tried to restrain him, but his arms were too strong. She couldn’t even pry his fingers from his face. Blood rolled down Jeremy’s cheeks as he screamed himself hoarse. Two nurses ran into the room, and Doctor Kim barked at them to hold Jeremy still while she grabbed a sedative.
On her way out of the room, she glanced back and, for the briefest of moments, thought she saw someone other than the nurses holding Jeremy. Someone green.
She blinked, and it was gone.
