My father stands in the bathroom, feet planted on the smooth blue tile. He stands firm like an old, gnarled tree, not moving at all. Even his eyes are pried wide open as he stares at his reflection in the mirror. His eyes peer at themselves in an eerie staring match. He continues to ponder his existence there as I watch him from across the hallway. The seconds and minutes continue to tick by as he stands still. The cobwebbed back corners of my brain usually reserved for thinking about the deepest, darkest parts of the ocean and the vastness of space start to wonder if he’d keep standing there forever, if I let him. Maybe all of humanity could die, the wood he was standing on could rot, the sun could grow cold, and he would just continue to stare. He had been acting completely normal until the day he returned from a short business trip a few days earlier. At first, I didn’t notice anything. He still seemed like the gentle, intelligent man he’d always been. He still had his signature lopsided smile, his stiff gait and the many hand motions he’d make while telling stories. Then, I started to notice small inconsistencies. His eyelids would twitch slightly, then stutter, then spasm, and then he would either start to blink too fast or stop blinking entirely. Sometimes, he would say something and a word or two would just be . . . off. The pronunciation would be stilted, or the word wouldn’t make sense in the situation at hand.
The day before, I had asked him for help with my chemistry homework and he simply said, “Atoms. Atoms. Atoms everywhere. Unfathomable numbers of atoms,” and walked off. His strange behavior even included him not remembering recent events, important things, or even basic knowledge. He was 99 percent the same man, and yet he was, for some unknown reason, altered. I decided to approach my mother about what was going on, but when I did she pointedly made it clear that she saw no such issue and that I was “being too harsh”.
“His brain being a little foggy is one thing, but come on . . . have you seen him lately? He’s just been so weird. Not in a mean way, but he’s just off,” I responded, attempting to make my mother understand the uneasiness I felt — the feeling that my father would never be the same. She did not yield. As the days have passed, things have only gotten more unnerving. It feels as if someone, or something, is wearing his face like an uncanny mask — peering through his eyes into the human domain.
My memories of the past few days fade, and my eyes refocus on my father, standing in the bathroom. He remains still for another minute or two until I see a finger curl, then see his hands start to move. He’s shaky, but he nevertheless begins to reach for the mirror agonizingly slowly, like a tree reaching its branches towards the sunlight it yearns for. Despite the snail’s pace at which he’s moving, my father reaches for his reflection in the mirror like he’ll die without it. Even across the hallway, an overwhelming feeling of unexplainable desperation rushes through me. This sensation truly feels like my father, not the Thing inside of him. Some primal fragment of my being cries out in pain and my whole body shudders. The floorboards creak. I can hear the old house laughing cruelly as my father freezes and his head twists to look directly at the door slit I’m looking through.
His eyes meet mine and his gaze penetrates into the depths of my psyche. I am consumed by existential dread so overwhelming that paralysis creeps from my brain to the tips of every extremity. I muster all of my strength and attempt to move at all, even just the flutter of an eyelid, but I am trapped. This is the most fear I have ever felt, because now what was simply the fear of change has become the fear of something so much greater. The Thing is approaching my hiding place, step by step — the Thing that used to be my father, but now is not. I’m stuck there for an eternity until the door is opened gently and the Thing stares down at me. Metaphors float across the surface of its eyes.
The Thing tilts its head, analyzing me. After a moment of careful thought, it shoves me to the ground. My body has gone completely numb at this point. The Thing convulses violently. Then, as it resumes a hunched-over posture, I see my father’s eyes have fogged over. The Thing reaches out its hand in exactly the same way it reached out to the mirror — with the emotion of a starving person reaching for the first food they’ve seen in weeks, but the speed of a sickly old man. Its finger makes contact with my forehead and I feel a shift; it’s like the world has transitioned from black and white to fully in color. Energy courses through me, and I float gently off the floor. Then, I understand. I understand everything. I understand everything that has ever happened, and everything that will ever happen. I am the Thing and the Thing is me. The Thing is everywhere and everything, and I understand.
The day before, I had asked him for help with my chemistry homework and he simply said, “Atoms. Atoms. Atoms everywhere. Unfathomable numbers of atoms,” and walked off. His strange behavior even included him not remembering recent events, important things, or even basic knowledge. He was 99 percent the same man, and yet he was, for some unknown reason, altered. I decided to approach my mother about what was going on, but when I did she pointedly made it clear that she saw no such issue and that I was “being too harsh”.
“His brain being a little foggy is one thing, but come on . . . have you seen him lately? He’s just been so weird. Not in a mean way, but he’s just off,” I responded, attempting to make my mother understand the uneasiness I felt — the feeling that my father would never be the same. She did not yield. As the days have passed, things have only gotten more unnerving. It feels as if someone, or something, is wearing his face like an uncanny mask — peering through his eyes into the human domain.
My memories of the past few days fade, and my eyes refocus on my father, standing in the bathroom. He remains still for another minute or two until I see a finger curl, then see his hands start to move. He’s shaky, but he nevertheless begins to reach for the mirror agonizingly slowly, like a tree reaching its branches towards the sunlight it yearns for. Despite the snail’s pace at which he’s moving, my father reaches for his reflection in the mirror like he’ll die without it. Even across the hallway, an overwhelming feeling of unexplainable desperation rushes through me. This sensation truly feels like my father, not the Thing inside of him. Some primal fragment of my being cries out in pain and my whole body shudders. The floorboards creak. I can hear the old house laughing cruelly as my father freezes and his head twists to look directly at the door slit I’m looking through.
His eyes meet mine and his gaze penetrates into the depths of my psyche. I am consumed by existential dread so overwhelming that paralysis creeps from my brain to the tips of every extremity. I muster all of my strength and attempt to move at all, even just the flutter of an eyelid, but I am trapped. This is the most fear I have ever felt, because now what was simply the fear of change has become the fear of something so much greater. The Thing is approaching my hiding place, step by step — the Thing that used to be my father, but now is not. I’m stuck there for an eternity until the door is opened gently and the Thing stares down at me. Metaphors float across the surface of its eyes.
The Thing tilts its head, analyzing me. After a moment of careful thought, it shoves me to the ground. My body has gone completely numb at this point. The Thing convulses violently. Then, as it resumes a hunched-over posture, I see my father’s eyes have fogged over. The Thing reaches out its hand in exactly the same way it reached out to the mirror — with the emotion of a starving person reaching for the first food they’ve seen in weeks, but the speed of a sickly old man. Its finger makes contact with my forehead and I feel a shift; it’s like the world has transitioned from black and white to fully in color. Energy courses through me, and I float gently off the floor. Then, I understand. I understand everything. I understand everything that has ever happened, and everything that will ever happen. I am the Thing and the Thing is me. The Thing is everywhere and everything, and I understand.