The Hiccups

Bats

I had never met Tobin before we decided to move in together. I was 24 years old, a waitress with a live-in boyfriend, and Tobin was a 50-something security guard with two kids. What brought us together was the fact that we have lazy eyes: my left, Tobin's right.

A neuroscientist had found a way to treat lazy eyes in rodents by exposing them to an extended period of darkness, after which their brains readjusted to the light, like infants learning to see for the first time. A team led by the neuroscientist and our local College of Optometry had secured funding for a human trial. After a search that lasted months, Tobin and I were the only qualified volunteers, aside from a third subject who dropped out after thinking twice about the treatment: living with total strangers, in complete darkness, for ten days.

As Tobin and I settled in our new home, a small apartment, I confessed I was worried about waking up and feeling like I had been buried alive. The research team had unscrewed all the lightbulbs, disconnected the gas stove and blacked-out the windows. The faintest hint of light could invalidate the results. I stepped outside to smoke one last cigarette as the neuroscientist whose name I could never remember explained that his team had installed a series of three doors leading into the apartment so that meals could be delivered without admitting light.

There was no scientific precedent for leaving people together in the dark for so long. The neuroscientist had conducted a dry run in the master bedroom of his house and said we would not be allowed to drink any alcohol because he had downed a glass of wine and ended up in the closet while trying to find the bathroom.

Tobin and I initially faced the same issues as any new roommates—I liked the apartment hot, Tobin like the cold—plus those that come with not being able to see. During one dinner I, being a pescatarian, accidentally forked a piece of chicken off Tobin's plate.

The apartment had an exercise bike and games for learning braille, but I worried about growing restless. I needed something to do besides getting dressed in the morning. There was a guitar in the apartment and I figured I should finally learn how to play. Tobin had a bottle of Nyquil.

The hallucinations began on day two when I saw a blue triangle above my bed. Tobin saw two cubes rotating in a starry void. Our other senses seemed to improve: fruit was sweeter, whispers audible and sounds, like a creaky door, triggered more a humming in our ears. When the subway rumbled underneath, I saw black and grey circles, spinning like wheels in my mind. On day four I felt as if I were looking up through a sewer grate as cars passed in front of a street lamp. On the night of our fifth day in the apartment I swore I saw bats—bats flying, bats climbing, bat's gathering, bats hiding somewhere, bats gnawing on and bats gnawing through. Somewhere there was a bat breathing out little black clouds of carbon monoxide—bats transmitting diseases, rabid, making tiny foams in tiny mouths. Bats making a home in my hair, making nests and planning to stay. Bats surrounding me in the dark making plans in their own language: all peeps and squeaks and chirps and chatters. Bats watching me suffer.

The darkness could be overwhelming. An optometrist who visited on day six had to quickly leave but Tobin and I adjusted to it and to each other. We went to bed early and woke up late, feeling less buried alive than back in the womb. I didn't do much guitar playing. The sounds were too much for my ears.

On day seven I firmly believed what I was seeing: a cloud of bats carrying off everything—my eyebrows and eyelashes, the lobes of my ears—eventually loosening my teeth, one nibble of gum at a time. They carried off my fingertips and the fat in my cheeks.

You can't stay human in that much dark. By day ten we were ready to leave. The apartment smelled of mildew. I needed a cigarette. Darkness filled our dreams. Tobin had had one in which thick black oil flooded his home, while I dreamt that when the lights came on my lazy eye was cured, but now I was cross-eyed. As the neuroscientist and his team prepared to turn on the lights we were warned not to expect immediate improvement but when the researchers switched on a one-watt bulb to help us adjust, and Tobin and I found ourselves able to see for the first time in ten days, both of us told the neuroscientist and his team that the world looked sharper than ever. It wasn't true of course, I just said that so that I could leave.

Someone opened the blinds and outside it was nearly dark. Lights had come on in the buildings around us and glowed like eyes in the gathering dusk. I felt the urge to bolt. I wanted to be somewhere else. I wanted to be anywhere—anywhere that wasn't here. Somewhere that wasn't a cave, to see streets I didn't recognize, to see people I'd never seen before. I turned to gather my things and saw Tobin standing in the centre of the room. He had been crying. We didn't speak. My ears were buzzing. I knelt on the floor and started packing my belongings, tears streamed down my face and I thought about what it would be like to fall, disappearing into a vast anonymous and oncoming darkness.

It was in the middle of the night, my first night back at home from the experiment. It was quiet and I couldn't hear any traffic on the street, only a steady chattering sound that erupted every time I opened my eyes. I wanted it to end, if only briefly, if only between blinks.

I couldn't see them but when it was the darkest I could hear them. Bats wanting some little bit of me inside of them. Bats carrying off more than a mouthful. Bats getting closer like a black flood of fur, a tide coming in threatening to tear me away. Bats just waiting for me to die. Bats not willing to wait much longer.

I sank against the mattress. I felt a bat's mouth begin gnawing at me—bats willing to eat the same thing for a whole month—its rabid saliva soaked my nightgown which evaporated by the heat of the infection. Instead of turning away, instead of lowering my eyes, I opened them and saw a large bat looking back at me with a pair of coal-clouded eyes, flanked by a narrow nose that jutted out like the barrel of a gun.

The colours of the room faded as I grew listless. I closed my eyes and my mouth stretched wide like an open grave. A sound escaped that was so full and strangled, it hung in the air long after darkness consumed me.

And now the bats are laughing because they think that they have me, but they don't.