Floaters Read online

  Floaters

  C.I. Kemp

  Floaters

  Copyright © C. I. Kemp 2012

  Books to Go Now

  For information on the cover illustration and design, contact [email protected]

  First eBook Edition –April 2012

  Printed in the United States of America

  Warning: the unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in prison and a fine of $250,000. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages for review purposes.

  This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to any person, living or dead, any place, events or occurrences, is purely coincidental. The characters and story lines are created from the author’s imagination and are used fictitiously.

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  Floaters

  by C. I. Kemp

  Opening Excerpt from Unsolved Mysteries, 3/24/11:

  On a clear November evening in 2010, police responded to reports of a dead man outside a Greenwich Village townhouse with a shattered third story picture window. It was apparent that the man had jumped to his death. Inside the townhouse, the police found a second man, dead from what would later be characterized as a particularly aggressive form of blood poisoning.

  The suicide, Robert Brewster, was a promising young writer. The other man, Walter Chambers, was a scientist and professor of Physics at the New School in New York City. It is unclear whether the two men knew each other prior to that night or what connection they shared in the final minutes, perhaps seconds, of their lives.

  Incident In A 12th Street Walk-Up

  “What’s wrong, babe?”

  “Nothing. Why?”

  “You keep blinking and rubbing your eyes. They hurt?”

  “No. I just keep seeing these little dots. It’s nothing. So, how do you like it?”

  Even before she answered, Robert knew what Jill’s response to his new digs would be. Sumptuous, they were not. They consisted of a living room large enough to accommodate nothing more than a couch, a TV table, a TV, and a pole lamp. The kitchen was in an alcove with a stove whose burners were too close together. There was a miniscule bathroom and a bedroom, where Robert’s double bed, computer table, and desktop PC took up so much room, the door could not be closed.

  Jill, a child of affluent suburbia, could never understand the allure of the West Village. She liked New York, but to her, this was not New York. Were she to move to the city, she’d choose an apartment overlooking Central Park, with easy access to trendy shops, chichi boutiques, and theaters. If Greenwich Village held any fascination for her, it was the morbid fascination of a car wreck. She might dip her toe in the water, but she would never take the full plunge into the West Village Ocean.

  After a long pause, Jill said, “I don’t know, babe. It’s so….” Here,she fumbled for the words.

  “Artistic? Quaint?” Robert prodded.

  “Spartan. There isn’t even an elevator in this place. Won’t you get tired of walking up four flights every day?”

  Robert rubbed his eyes again, grinned and head-gestured towards the bedroom. “I’m not tired now. Are you?”

  Jill grinned back. “Not that tired.”

  Incident At Jefferson Market Garden

  It had been a productive six weeks for Robert Brewster. The West Village atmosphere had proven conducive for his Muse. Ideas emerged as he walked the short narrow lanes intersecting with main thoroughfares via oblique angles. He loved experimenting with ethnic cuisines on these out-of-the-way streets. Talking with the artsy types who inhabited the parks delighted and inspired him. Already, he’d submitted numerous stories for publication, some of which had been accepted. He was on a roll.

  The only negative were those “little dots” he’d told Jill were “nothing.” He’d done some research; they were called “floaters,” clear little specks of debris floating through the vitreous fluid in the eyeball. They were not serious, but they were annoying. Usually, he was able to get rid of them by blinking hard and rubbing his eyes. He’d seen floaters before, but somehow, since his move, he’d been seeing more and more of them.

  Robert’s visit to the Jefferson Market Garden had given rise to a premise he hoped to develop. The idea came to him upon reading the plaque on the fence surrounding the garden. Throughout its history this site had been a police court; a volunteer firehouse; a marketplace for fishmongers, poultry vendors, and hucksters; a watchtower; a House of Detention for Women; a library; now a garden. Its status as a women’s prison suggested the story idea of a woman falsely accused, unjustly convicted, wrongly imprisoned…

  With uncharacteristic abruptness, the floaters came back, halting the flow of his creative juices.

  Until now, they’d been tiny clear Cheerio-shaped circles at the periphery of his line of sight. When they first occurred, he’d thought they’d been bugs or dust motes and turned his head to get a better look. At that point they’d disappear, only to reappear when he brought his head back to its original position. If he couldn’t make them go away by rubbing his eyes, he’d just return to what he was doing (usually writing), and force himself not to be distracted.

  This time, however, they were materializing directly in front of him and they weren’t clear. They weren’t even the same color. Some were a translucent dingy grey, others were black to the point of being opaque.

  Nor were they tiny round Cheerios moving in random patterns. Rather, their action seemed somehow … purposeful. Sometimes, they veered away from each other, other times they touched to form different non-circular configurations. These would continue to move, sometimes avoiding their fellows, other times coming in contact with them and the pattern would start again.

  Robert watched, alternately enthralled and concerned: enthralled because this dance was nothing like he’d ever seen or imagined; concerned because he’d read that an increase in number might be a sign of retinal detachment.

  He was contemplating a visit to an eye doctor when he noticed the butterfly.

  It was a magnificent creature with a three-inch wingspan. The wings were a burnished orange, ebony-tipped and flecked with white, with black stripes running laterally. The butterfly lit on one of the tulips alongside the brick-lined path, its wings fluttering with delicate precision as it braced on the flower.

  For the moment, Robert forgot about the floater-shapes until a series of clustered circles, a parody of the Olympics five-ring symbol, drifted towards the butterfly and made contact with it. For a fraction of a second, the semi-transparent greyness superimposed itself over the insect, then moved on. The balletic motion of the butterfly’s wings gave way to a frenzied, haphazard beat and it suddenly hit Robert - the butterfly was not simply struggling to stay aloft; it was struggling to stay alive.

  Finally, it lost its grip on the tulip, and fell to the path. Its wings continued to beat with a jagged uneven cadence before they became still.

  Robert blinked in shock. When he opened his eyes, the shapes were gone. The dead butterfly was not.

  Incident In Washington Square

  The inscription read:

  LET US RAISE A STANDARD TO WHICH THE WISE

  AND THE HONEST CAN REPAIR. THE EVENT

  IS IN THE HAND OF GOD. WASHINGTON

  Usually, it was clear and readable. Today, the HAND OF GOD verbiage was obliterated by a foul darkness.

  It was a brisk October morning and Jill had come in to spend the weekend. Robert intended to s
how her that the Village was more than whackos, winos, and weirdoes, so he’d suggested this walking tour. Their starting point was Washington Square Park. Robert had just launched into an explanation of how the Arch was a built to commemorate the one hundredth anniversary of George Washington’s inauguration as President, when he noticed the shape.

  It was composed of several smaller shapes grouped together to materialize into a formless blot, hiding the words Robert found so inspirational. His eyes were riveted to it, even as they walked. Jill was asking him something about the inscription – what it meant or some such question – as she read it off in its entirety, not pausing when she came to the HAND OF GOD wording.

  He couldn’t see the letters carved into the arch, only that pulsing shape.

  She couldn’t see that pulsing shape, but she could read the carved inscription with perfect clarity.

  As they continued walking, his eyes stayed riveted on the arch, on the words he couldn’t read, on the…

  “Hey! Watch it, will you!”

  Before he could arrest his motion, he collided full-tilt into another couple, walking hand-in-hand.

  They were two men. The one who shouted was built like a lumberjack; six feet of girth and muscle. The other man was taller, with delicate features and long blond hair tied in a ponytail.

  Lumberjack pushed Robert away, none too gently. “What’s the matter with you, man? You got a problem or something?”

  Robert sized up the situation. What this guy was really asking was “You got a problem with people like us?” He didn’t, of course not. But how do you tell someone that you were woolgathering because you were sidetracked by a mutant floater?

  “I’m sorry,” Robert blurted. “My bad. I- I wasn’t paying attention. Really. I’m sorry.”

  Jill was apologizing to the other man and Robert was sure Lumberjack was going to haul off and belt him. Instead, he just said, “Yeah, right,” put his arm around his companion and the two men walked on.

  “Babe?”

  Robert looked back at the Arch. The floater thing was no longer hovering there. It was…

  “Rob?”

  … moving away, disappearing behind the tower of a high-rise apartment, then reappearing, morphing into some…

  “ROB!”

  …obscene-looking bird of prey, giant bat, or maybe one of those hideous prehistoric flying reptiles….

  “EARTH TO ROBERT! EARTH TO ROBERT! COME IN, ROBERT!”

  He turned. Jill’s gaze was fixed upon him, her face a study in annoyance and concern. Her shouted outburst had drawn the attention of people who came to enjoy the park. Instead, they found this drama between an agitated woman and her clueless boyfriend more interesting than their dog walking, Frisbee tossing, or guitar strumming.

  Oblivious to the onlookers, Jill put her hand on Robert’s cheek. “Are you okay, Rob? What’s with you?”

  What could he say? That he wasn’t watching where he was going because he was too fixated on things he could see, but no one else could?

  “I was just thinking through this story idea. Guess I was a little preoccupied.” He complemented his words with the “Aw shucks” grin she’d always found so endearing.

  She’d buy it. How often had she chided him about being in his own world while he was working through some story line or plot snag?

  Jill shook her head and Robert knew that she wasn’t buying it.

  “I don’t know Rob,” she said. “I know you love living in this place, but ever since you moved here, you seem…” she paused. “Different, more stressed. Like… I can’t describe it... like you’re somewhere else. I don’t mean lost in your own thoughts, but...” she paused again, longer this time… “really out of it.”

  “That’s crazy. It…”

  “No, it’s not. You’ve changed and it worries me.”

  For a third time, she paused, choosing her words in familiar Jill fashion, when she wanted to say something she knew he didn’t want to hear, but didn’t quite know how to word it.

  “I really think you need to leave this place.”

  Incident At Jackson Square Park

  Robert Brewster was shaking. His eyes were shut tight and he was rubbing them so hard, they hurt. He did not heed the pain; it was his only defense against an attack as sudden as it was unexpected, as unexpected as it was terrifying.

  Since his experience in Washington Square Park a month ago, he’d been to an eye doctor. Robert had told the doctor that he’d been seeing the floaters, but he hadn’t been completely honest. He described the frequency with which they occurred, but he didn’t mention the way they changed shape. He described how sometimes they were different shades of grey, sometimes pure black, but he did not mention the butterfly. He voiced his fear that he might have a detached retina, but not the irrational fear that these things were not mere specks of vitreous flotsam, but possessors of a conscious and concerted malevolence.

  How could he communicate such thoughts? When he pondered them in his own mind, they sounded crazy enough. If he said them to a third party, they’d sound absolutely insane. No, better to just stick to the most basic facts.

  The doctor had given him a prescription for eye drops and ordered tests. The upshot: everything came back normal. There was nothing wrong with his eyes. There was no detached retina. This made Robert feel a little better. He did not feel completely reassured until another week had passed without any further floater sightings.

  Once again, he threw himself into his work. He brought his laptop to various sites and let the ideas flow. Within a week’s time he had completed three drafts, submitted two others, and received acceptance for one he’d submitted prior to the Washington Square episode. Things were looking up.

  Today, he selected Jackson Square Park as his work area. He enjoyed the three-tiered, cast-iron water fountain and the ornate iron fencing which gave the park a 19th century look. Seating himself on a bench facing the gushing fountain, Robert viewed the other inhabitants. An NYC Parks and Recreation official in her tan and green uniform was talking to a woman walking an animated dust mop of a dog. A tall black man in dreadlocks was bopping through the park, listening to something on his iPod. Another black man, looking like a mid-twenties version of the Urkel character, was drawing on a sketch pad. A young couple wearing NYU sweatshirts were sitting on a bench, holding an open book between them, discussing its contents.

  Robert had opened his laptop and was about to continue his saga of the woman in the Jefferson Market Garden jail when it happened.

  It was the floaters again, but this time, it wasn’t just a few little dots. This time, it was innumerable black dots in a frantic swarm before his field of vision. It was like looking at a blizzard of rapidly moving hailstones, but not white hailstones. Black ones, some impenetrable, others like dark colored panes of glass. Nor was their movement the leisurely, sluggish movement of organic debris floating in his eyeballs. They were caroming off each other with the boundless energy of a thousand high-bouncing super balls, rebounding off the walls of a room too small to contain them. When they collided with each other, they didn’t bounce, they merged into a different, non-circular shape, still moving at a breakneck pace, then that shape would strike another, and merge into yet another shape…

  Robert cried out and scrambled to his feet in one fast, unthinking motion, rubbing his eyes with a feverish energy.

  His laptop crashed to the ground.

  He shut his eyes.

  Robert was aware of a woman’s voice speaking in a West Indies accent, asking if he was all right. Someone else was shouting, “Get an ambulance!” and someone else was saying, “That laptop’s toast, man!”

  Someone was shaking him by the arm and repeating, over and over, “Are you all right?” in that West Indies accent. Finally, he opened his eyes. The floaters were gone and the Parks and Recreation lady was standing over him, asking if he was all right. Off to the side, the man with the dreadlocks was on a cell phone, saying something about a guy freaking ou
t in Jackson Square Park. The Urkel guy was nowhere to be seen and the dog-lady was standing by the fountain, her eyes wide in shock. The NYU girl was gaping from the bench, and her male companion was holding Robert’s laptop, which was indeed toast.

  “I’m okay,” Robert managed to stammer out. “It’s just...it’s nothing, really.” He stood to show he really was okay. He walked a few steps, when the Parks lady took his arm and seated him on the bench.

  “Sir, I think you’d better sit there.”

  “No really, it’s okay,” Robert protested. “I… I fell asleep, just nodded off. Bad dream. That’s all it was.”

  “Sir, you’d better sit there. Help is on the way.”

  That was when he heard the sirens.

  Incident On Second Avenue

  Robert had made up his mind. He was going to take Jill’s advice and leave his 12th Avenue apartment. He was going back to suburbia where he wasn’t haunted by mutant specks of flotsam which used his line of sight (and no one else’s) as a stage for their bizarre terpsichorean antics. Of course, he couldn’t be sure that they wouldn’t reappear once he left the area, but he’d cross that bridge when he came to it. All he knew was that they had been a part of his life on and off (more on than off lately) since the first day he’d moved here.

  Also, his Muse had left him, fled in terror, as it were. After the demise of his laptop, he’d resorted to the archaic method of putting his ideas down on paper. The result: shards of paper, crumbled in disgust, strewn about his apartment. Tombstones to ideas that wouldn’t gel, grave markers for premises that died a’borning, never to become plot threads or finished works.

  The West Village had lost its charm. There was no reason to remain.

  It was mid-afternoon and he was leaving a movie theatre known for showing the avant-garde type of films he usually enjoyed. Today, however, if you asked what he’d been viewing for the last two hours, he couldn’t have told you. He’d sat in the darkness, consumed by his own disturbed thoughts, oblivious to the images on the screen. The only reason he’d even left his apartment was because he was going stir-crazy.