January

I was starting to think I wasn’t living. Of course, I was alive, but being alive is a fundamentally different thing to “living”. It's clear in how people talk: “get a life”, “live a little”, et cetera, to live is fundamentally different to being alive. But what does that really mean? What does it mean to live? I couldn’t be certain, I was just a seventeen year old girl. I had no chance of answering one of the great questions of the universe, but still my mind wandered.

If you asked society, to live would be to grow up, get an education, get a job, get married, have children, and then peacefully pass away. In most people’s eyes, that’s what living should be. My mother would argue life is about connections, that you can live any kind of life you want so long as you make friends and find fulfillment through those bonds. She told me that right as I was entering high school. Certainly, by her standards, I was not living. In my years here I hadn’t made a single real friend. I had people I spoke to, acquaintances, those I ate with or walked home with, but I didn’t feel I had anyone I could call a friend. I had never been invited to anyone’s house, I’d never been confided in about a secret or close-kept feelings, I was just there, in the orbit of others’ lives, as they were in the orbit of mine. Always visible, always there, but never touching.

So while I couldn’t answer for certain what “living” was, I knew that I wasn’t living.

“Rosalind!”

What I also wasn’t doing, was paying attention in class.

My unfocused eyes snapped into place, regaining a full view of what I had been unconsciously staring at for the past few minutes. I was gazing out the window, looking at the Eye. It was particularly visible today, not a cloud in the sky to obscure it. It hung between the sun and the moon, watching as always. The light from the unobscured sun gave the sclera a ghostly glow, blurring its edges and blending it slightly with the sky. It also served to smooth over its unsightly red veins, allowing its main body to appear nothing but a pristine, porcelain white. The increased illumination made its iris stand out more too. Today it was a kaleidoscope of blue and green, the colours woven together in a fractal that looked as if it were blooming out from the central black pupil, which glistened today due to the abundance of light it was awash with. It was so beautiful, I found myself zoning out all over again, locked in a staring contest with the celestial body.

It always amazed me how human it was. Across countless religions there were never-ending debates over its divinity; was it made in our image or were we made in its? I always viewed it as more similar to us than it was different, but my opinion didn’t really count for much. Greater minds than me had tried and failed to find meaning in the Eye, but it seemed our society would never reach a true consensus.

Come to think of it, that’s what my class was actually about.

“Rosalind, what year was the Optologist church’s move to subjectivism regarding the Eye?” My teacher asked, repeating the question I had missed twice before already. I always appreciated her patience; she knew to save us both the trouble of asking if I had heard her the first two times. What I didn’t appreciate was her constantly using my full name. I much preferred to go by Rosa.

“Sixteen seventy-seven? It was after the Tri-Partisan War, right? They couldn’t agree, so in the end the Pope declared that all sects of Optology were equally valid, or something like that?” I responded. History wasn’t my favourite subject but I had always found stories regarding the Eye interesting, so I could at least muddle my way through when it came up in school.

“Correct. Though, please do answer a bit faster next time.” She sighed, returning to the blackboard. “As Rosalind said, in sixteen seventy-seven the Pope ended the strict doctrine of Optology and adopted a subjectivist approach, allowing individuals within the faith to interpret the Eye how they wished. This led not only to a splintering of Optology as a religion, but also resulted in much more free thinking amidst the population, which later went on to become the foundation for the enlightenment, leading to more modern, scientific methods of thinking regarding the Eye.”

I perked up at her lecture. It was nothing I didn’t know already, but Mrs Cook had a way with words. She had a smooth, calming voice that seemed detached from her body, which was wiry and sharp. It was so soothing it almost made it hard to focus. If she really wanted she could’ve had a lucrative career narrating audiobooks.

Despite her best efforts, Mrs Cook was doomed not to retain my attention, as now someone else was demanding it: Marlie, one of my only acquaintances in this particular class. I’d be hard pressed to call us friends, but we were neighbours. She mouthed something to me, though I didn’t bother to read her lips. I knew already what she was getting at; she was asking if we were going to walk home together. I simply nodded in response.

Soon enough class, and school for the day as a whole, was due to end. All that was left was for Mrs Cook to give us our homework for the weekend. “Building on our exploration of subjectivism I’d like you to all bring me a short five-hundred word essay regarding your personal views on the Eye.”

I sighed. Mrs Cook was an orthodox Optologist, so she probably didn’t appreciate how difficult of a question that was for anyone without religious beliefs to guide their views. Regardless, homework was homework, I’d figure something out or, more likely, just make something up.

With Mrs Cook’s class being the last of the day, Marlie and I quickly exited both the classroom and the school together. She would always walk slightly ahead of me because she had longer legs, something I was always a little jealous of.

If I were to be honest, it wasn’t the only thing. Beyond the fact I literally looked up to her, Marlie was an admirable young woman. She had a natural charm and beauty that was only accentuated by her acute sense of style. Fashion was something I struggled to grasp myself. She made even our lifeless school uniform look good, contrasting its dull grey by adorning her brown hair with colourful ribbons, one for each day of the week. As today was Friday, she was wearing orange, the one I thought looked best on her.

“Rosa, what would you do with a million dollars?” she asked, the first to speak as always. We rarely ever talked about life; we weren’t that close, so she often came up with hypotheticals like this.

“I don’t know, I haven’t thought about it.” I shrugged. I often gave unsatisfying answers like this, yet she continued to ask, which I appreciated.

“Oh come on! Everyone’s thought about it!” she frowned, turning to me and walking backwards, yet another skill of hers I found impressive.

“Why would I? It's not like I have a million dollars.” I gripped the strap of my schoolbag. Money was always a taboo subject in my house, it was far less so in Marlie’s.

“That’s why it's an ‘if’, silly! A million dollars! There’s gotta be something you want!” she protested.

I hummed, looking up at the Eye once again. “I guess I’d like to travel?”

“Me too! Where would you go? I’ve always wanted to visit the Eastern States-” She began, listing all the classic tourist destinations you’d expect. By the time she finished fantasizing we had arrived at my house. We said our goodbyes and she continued onward up the road.

After releasing myself from the confines of my school uniform I collapsed onto the living room sofa, snatching a spare controller before prodding my older brother Mark in the side. “Lemme in.”

He sneered, prodding me back with his elbow. “No way. I’d have to restart.”

“So? You’re just gonna die anyway.” I elected not to escalate with an elbow back. He was still much bigger than me and would use that to his advantage if we started scrapping.

With a sigh he acquiesced, restarting the game and allowing me to join him. We went almost an hour without a word, buttons clicking and triggers tapping the only sounds between us. Despite being siblings we didn’t talk much, there wasn’t much to say when you saw each other every day. It didn’t help that we both lived quite stagnant lives. He had been unemployed for some time now, so he spent his days almost entirely at home. He kept things neat and tidy for our parents, applied for a few jobs now and then, and that was about all he did. I went to school, came home from school, did my homework and… that was it. I wondered if he felt the same as me, like he wasn’t living.

Of course that was far too deep a question, so I elected to ask something else instead. “What do you think about the Eye?”

“Huh?” he asked, taking no attention off of the game.

“My homework is to write about my interpretation of what the Eye is, what it means. I’m asking what you think.” I too barely took my mind off the game, just lifting my focus enough to hold a conversation.

“Eh. I don’t really think about it.” he shrugged, his loose well-worn shirt drooping over his raised shoulders. “The Eye’s the Eye. It's just a thing.”

“What do you mean by “thing”?” My attention shifted more to him now.

“Like, it's just a thing, you know? No use thinking too hard about it. It's like thinking about the Sun, or the Moon, or the sky. They just are, you know?” His head bobbed back and forth as he split his attention between my question and the game, causing his overgrown hair to flop to and fro.

“Tritinitians think a lot about the Sun and the Moon.” I responded, interest in the conversation ebbing.

“Yeah, but that's like, religious stuff. That’s different.” His head movements ceased, attention now locked in on the game once more.

I supposed he was right. The Eye was just a fact of life. Dwelling on it wasn’t much use. It was there, it was watching us, and that would never change.

Both of our parents worked, so family dinners were an understated affair. My mother would return home around five, put her ruddy-red hair up in a loose, messy ponytail, and would make something fast and simple. Rarely more than three ingredients. A meat, some rice, and a vegetable or two. We couldn’t afford to be frivolous with ingredients, so we got by with the bare minimum. Mom was never a great cook anyway; she couldn’t handle anything that took more work than a quick chop. Even if she could, there was little time for anything else, as at five-thirty my father arrived. He was a serial lunch-skipper, and he looked like it, so he needed to eat as soon as he got in.

His arrival signalled our gathering at the dinner table. We always ate together, though it wasn’t a particularly social affair; everyone was tired after work, and there was little new to discuss other than the minor occurrences at work and school. Mark was generally the engine of our conversations, all of his free time giving him plenty of opportunities to find new anecdotes and interesting little factoids he could fill the air with.

Today, apart from a brief discussion on what he had learned from a TV show about corn farming of all things, he had little to offer. The silence left our minds to wander, leading my father to ask Mark’s most dreaded question.

“Have you just sat around all day?” He spoke casually over the scraping of his knife, his words just as cutting as the utensil he was using.

Mark froze up, tongue flicking over his teeth as he struggled for an answer. He had done nothing but play video games and watch TV, though he’d never want to admit that to his father. He needed a lie or, more effectively, a twisting of the truth, to convince him that his day wasn’t entirely wasted. Our father was a very patient man, but he had been patient with Mark for a very long time. He could no longer be satisfied with his son spending his days doing nothing. He needed to offer at least something each day as tribute.

“Mark helped me with my homework.” I chimed in for him. “It was really tough, but he made it easy.”

Mark nodded along. “Yeah, have you seen the stuff they’re giving high schoolers these days? It’s ridiculous!”

Our dad nodded along, and the conversation fell away into the same nodding rhythm before eventually fading to nothing.

I couldn’t tell you what I did for the remainder of the day. I milled around, watched some TV, played some games, nothing of note. Before I knew it the hours had melted away and flowed straight down the drain. Eventually I went to bed, not really because I was tired, simply because there was nothing else left to do.

I don’t know what possessed me to lay on my back. I typically slept on my side, but tonight I lay on my back. It was strange, I often took for granted the glass roof of our house, and how it allowed such a clear view of the sky. Or rather, how it provided the sky such a clear view of us.

The Eye hovered above me, almost perfectly aligned directly above my face. Even in the darkness of the night sky it was still perfectly visible, it just became easy to overlook as the moon and the stars shone so much brighter.

I stared up at it, directly into its pupil. I wondered for a moment if it ever did the same to me. There were millions of people in the world, and I was no one special, but with its countless hours spent unblinking, watching, surely it must have at least once turned its gaze to me?

It was a nice thought, but I doubted it. I closed my eyes, allowing them a rest, a luxury they were afforded over their celestial counterpart. As sleep crept its way toward me I found my body feeling wrong in its current position, so I transitioned to my side.

And as I did I allowed my eyes to flutter open, one last time that day. As ever my gaze was drawn to the Eye. I didn’t quite grasp it then, but something looked off about it. I would later find out something was wrong. Something was immensely, horribly wrong, but at the time it was so subtle and so regular in any other context that it seemed to be nothing.

It seemed, in that brief glimpse I caught of it before I fell asleep, that the Eye was closing.