Blur

Prologue

Daniel held up a blanket so that it hung vertically above his bed. Stacy stood beside his desk, her back to the wall. He noticed that she was tapping her fingers nervously against her leg. "Alright," he said. "Imagine that everything on your side of the blanket is reality. Those are the things you can see, taste, feel, whatever. The things that are really there. Everything on my side of the blanket is . . ."
"Just imaginary." She finished his thought for him. "All in your head."
"Right. Now, from what I've found out in the last week, most people have a pretty thick blanket—barrier—that's in their minds that helps them know which side they're on."
She was watching him carefully; if he didn't know any better, he'd say warily.
"So we can tell what's real and what's not," she said. "Exactly. But now imagine that the blanket is a shower curtain or something and you can see through it, but everything on the other side is blurry. So you'd know the other side is there—" "But you'd be able to tell which side was which." Stacy sounded slightly relieved. "You'd see the difference."
"Yes."
"And that's you?"
A pause. "No. Not quite." He dropped the blanket. "It's gone."
"The blanket is?"
"Yes."
"Completely?"
She'd moved almost imperceptibly farther from Daniel.
He nodded. A moment passed.
Stretched thin.
"Does that scare you?" he asked her.
She didn't answer but said instead, "But can you tell this is real? That I'm really here, in front of you, right now?"
"Yes," he said.
But he wasn't sure. He wasn't sure about anything.
Not since realizing he was going insane.