Perfect Vision

Perfect Vision is a scary story about a man who sees too much. It is inspired by an old story in a horror comic called Tales of Terror.

I can’t sleep anymore. I’m so very tired, but I can’t fall asleep. I’ve got too many things on my mind. I’ve seen too much.

I think I’m going crazy. Or maybe it’s the world that’s crazy and I’m the only one who’s sane. Maybe I’m the only one who can see the world as it really is. Maybe I’m the only one who knows the truth.

It all started 6 months ago. It was late at night and the rain was coming down hard. I was driving down the highway and I was in a hurry to get home.

All of a sudden, I got a splitting headache. It felt like someone was hammering two red-hot nails into my eyes. Then, in the blink of an eye, the world disappeared. It simply wasn’t there anymore.

All I could see was a barren and desolate landscape with huge volcanoes, deep fissures and seething pools of bubbling lava. Encroaching on me from all sides, were hideous, misshapen beasts with long slimy tentacles that clawed and scraped at the windows of my car.

I slammed on the brakes and pulled over before I crashed. I sat there with my hands covering my eyes for over an hour before I got the courage to look again.

The world was back to normal. I tried to calm myself down and started driving again. I tried to tell myself it was just a hallucination or a trick of the mind.

It happened again when I got home that night.

I was talking to my wife and then, suddenly, she wasn’t my wife anymore. She was some kind of vile and disgusting creature with green, scaly skin, long scraggly hair and a mouth full of razor-sharp teeth. She glared at me with her gargantuan, yellow eyes and drool dripped slowly down her chin.

I ran into the bathroom and threw up in the sink. My wife knocked on the door and asked what was wrong. I couldn’t bring myself to tell her.

The next day, I was afraid to take the car, so I walked to work. As I stumbled through the streets, I saw the buildings on either side of the road shimmer and shake. The sky turned a livid shade of red and the world was gone again.

The sidewalks were crowded by grotesque, monstrous beings, shambling back and forth. Their bodies were covered in green, scaly skin and their eyes were dangling on stalks like insects. Their gaping mouths were filled with jagged teeth and they leered at me as I passed by.

I couldn’t go to work, so I stopped at a cafe and tried to calm myself down. I couldn’t eat the slimy, crawling things on my plate or the dark, fetid liquid in my cup.

I went into the bathroom and splashed some water on my face. Then, I happened to glance in the mirror and saw something that horrified me. My eyes!

The most hideous things of all were my own two eyes!

I thought I was going insane, but I didn’t know what to do. I ran all the way home and when I got there, I just lay down on my bed and cried. What was happeneing to me? What was I going to do?

When my wife got home from work, I ran into the bathroom and locked the door. I couldn’t bear to look at her. I didn’t want her to see what had happened to my eyes.

My wife said she was going to leave me. Then she got worried and said she was going to call the police.

She doesn’t understand. She can’t understand. If only she could see what I see. Then, she wouldn’t want to see anymore.

An hour later, they found me lying on the bathroom floor, among the shards of a broken mirror. The police called an ambulance and they took me to hospital.

I had gouged out my own eyes.

I spent hours in surgery. They couldn’t save my eyes, but they did manage to save my life. I suppose I should thank them.

Now, I’m lying in bed at home. My wife is taking care of me. She says she is going to find me a good psychiatrist. She says everything is going to be alright.

What she doesn’t know is…

I can still see!