January

Time flies when you’re contemplating suicide.

In Theo Fenstrom’s bathroom time was moving at a breakneck pace. Outside, his father Daniel was pounding on the door. The mirror shook with excitement.

Downstairs, Margaret, Theo’s mother, trembled in a chair, trying to block out the moment she was in. Her eyes stared hard ahead, her ears rang with muting tone, her hands clutched her skirt to the point of strangulation. In her mind, she was somewhere else. Her eyes saw the floor of her home, but they did not pass the information along. 

Where she was will always be a mystery. She never told me.

This story ends with Theo crying tears of blood in a locked bathroom, with Margaret weeping, with Daniel on the telephone.

Just thought you should know.

The organ responsible for what we call “sight” is known by the English-speaking populace of Earth as an eye. It is most common to find beings with two of such organs, though some creatures have more than six.

Their headaches must be unbearable.

The functioning of the eye is far from simple, almost miraculous. Most of life is. Light bounces off the atmosphere and heads straight for the eye. The rods and cones in the organ process the light and project an upside-down image of the light-bouncing surroundings. This image is relayed to the brain, where it is flipped right-side up. This process happens every day, at a constant pace, faster than our minds can comprehend.

The eyes are very sensitive organs. Theo knew this only too well. 

Outside, Theo’s father pleaded to the door, begged for Theo to open it.

Downstairs, Margaret made the ringing in her ears louder and closed her eyes, blinking two small tears out from within. She was attempting to travel through time, with some success.

Theo Fenstrom was born on March 18^th, though this makes no difference, in a small suburban area called Thompson in the state of Indiana, a part of the United States of America.

Theo Fenstrom was born with a rare genetic flaw, so rare, in fact, that Theo was only the second person known to have the disorder. The first was named Thanat Sunsin. He was a resident of the country named Thailand, but only for a short time. On Theo’s tenth birthday he had already outlived Thanat by several years. Thanat’s country was not fortunate enough to possess the same level of medical knowledge and care Theo’s had. Some areas of Thailand were still without electricity.

All in all, they got along alright without it. We all did. We can’t anymore.

Thanat died when a great deal of water rushed into his lungs as he attempted to swim to the surface of the lake he’d been tossed into by his father. 

Theo’s father had been raised to be a vicious, unfeeling rapist, but even he could not bear the thought of murdering his own son.

How far we’ve come.

Margaret had been trained to believe her husband didn’t rape her.

How far we’ve yet to go.

The first time Margaret was raped was when she was fifteen. The rapist had been her own brother. How else was she to learn how to please a man? How else was he to learn the act of procreation?

I digress. Margaret’s sexual history bears little relevance to this story, but without it we wouldn’t have Theo.

When Margaret and Daniel had sex for the first time, she made the ringing in her ears loud enough to block out the bedsprings and the wet fleshy noises she and her future husband were making. When they were in the act of conceiving Theo, Margaret’s mind was traveling through time, making a beeline for the future.

 

“I’m calling Dr. Leukhardt!”

Daniel’s words cut through the ringing in Margaret’s ears. She looked up at the ceiling as if it wasn’t there and in that moment could see Daniel fumbling with his cell phone in front of the bathroom door.

Dr. Brenda M Leukhardt, a renowned graduate of several renowned schools, was the first doctor to see Theo. He was still in his infancy when she laid her own eyes, which functioned perfectly with the aid of corrective lenses held in place with small metal wires, upon him. Margaret had brought Theo to her thinking he was blind. She brought Theo to Dr. Leukhardt after attempting to teach Theo to feed himself, which is the first thing a human must learn to survive. 

What happens after comes naturally, but most humans prefer to ignore that part of their lives.

Back in the bathroom, Theo held a razorblade before his eyes, moving it up and down. He looked from the blade to the mirror in front of him and let out the last of his hesitation.

The first thing Dr. Leukhardt heard when she answered her phone was a splitting scream, muffled by a solid chunk of wood. The next thing she heard was the frantic voice of Daniel Fenstrom.

“Oh fuck. Oh God. Dr. Leukhardt?”

“Mr. Fenstrom? Is everything-“

“Theo’s killing himself. Oh God, he’s killing himself.”

Another scream tore through the static into Dr. Leukhardt’s ear.

“Have you called for an ambulance? I don’t see why you’d call me for this.”

“I thought…Oh God, Theo.”

Dr. Leukhardt waited for elaboration. She was given a dial tone. Daniel had hung up to dial emergency services. He believed Theo was slashing his wrists; that his son’s blood was seeping into the cracks of the linoleum floor.

Theo was not attempting to end his life. He was starting over. He was dragging the razor across his eyes, slicing them in half like hardboiled eggs.

In the latest publication of DNA Weekly, Dr. Leukhardt gives a comprehensive summary of Fenstrom’s Disorder. Dr. Leukhardt’s picture was on the cover. In the picture, the doctor held a picture of a house upside-down.

She stresses in the article that, as yet, there is no known cure for Fenstrom’s Disorder.

In the article, her explanation of Fenstrom’s Disorder is as follows:

“Fenstrom’s Disorder is essentially a breakdown between communication between the eyes and the brain. Images are still received by the brain, but they are not corrected, they are not flipped.

“A sufferer of Fenstrom’s Disorder sees the world upside-down.”

This is why Margaret brought Theo to the Dr.: Theo could hold his spoon, but he would slash at the air above the bowl, as though the bowl was suspended in space above him. No matter how many times she showed him, he could not mimic her actions, could not bring the utensil to the nutrients his body required to function.

Here is how Theo’s infant eyes saw the situation: His mother would hang from the ceiling and scoop food from a bowl held above him and lower it to his mouth, then hand Theo the spoon and have him do the same, only to find that he couldn’t make his spoon enter the bowl because it was before him, not above him.

Theo didn’t have many friends, nor did he particularly want any. If you can’t trust your own eyes, who can you trust?

A man that once met Theo tried to get to know him better.

“I wonder when you’ll open up, when you’ll stop being so guarded.”

The man just wanted a friend. He never heard from Theo after he moved away. No one did. The world kept turning and everyone found their way in it, found their place to be, and settled in. They did it so fast and so smooth it infuriated Theo, to see his peers succeeding so effortlessly. Theo had to fight just to learn spatial awareness.

One of Theo’s only friends was a man named Jam Henson. Jam was sightless from birth.

Jam and Theo played a game with one another where they would barter for the other’s sympathy. It was a game many play, the sole object to obtain the sympathy of the other.

Jam usually won. Try explaining colors to a person who is blind from birth.

Jam and Theo had lunch together once a week at a local mass-production kitchen. There they would share stories of sexual dysfunction, depression, and Stevie Wonder, Jam’s inspiration to be a jazz pianist, though not to such great economic success. 

The World doesn’t need many artists to keep it happy. So many artists spend their lives in misery because the World simply doesn’t need them.

Jam thought nothing unusual of his meeting with Theo. Only one thing stood out: Theo didn’t inform Jam that he was leaving. Theo hadn’t done that in years.

“Shit, you act like you got problems,” Jam said.

Theo didn’t have to act. He spent an hour of every week in the office of a psychiatrist he didn’t trust.

Now Theo holds his cleaved eyes in his hand. He stretches the nerve endings taut. He slices the connective tissue with a whimper. Blood makes tear-tracks down his cheeks, seeping into his slowly forming dimples.

Though his eyes are crying, Theo smiles.

Everywhere one looks these days, there’s war. There’s war against bad breath, war against nose pickers, war against pretentious, stuck-up spoiled brats, war against drugs, war against depression, war against unsafe driving, war against child-proof lighters, war against cigarettes, war against violence, war against greed. Life is war with one’s environment.

How far we’ve come. How far we’ve yet to go.