Peripheral

The doctor told him there would be floaters.

“Just the brain adjusting,” she said, sliding the neural interface into its sterile case. “Your mind’s relearning how to see again. The peripheral distortions will fade.”

Elliot nodded, though the word floaters felt wrong. They didn’t float. They crawled.

The first one appeared three nights after the surgery. A glimmer in the corner of his eye while he brushed his teeth. It was a small, translucent thing like a spider made of glass. When he turned his head, it vanished. When he looked back, the air shimmered, as if the space it had occupied was reluctant to release its form.

He tried to ignore it, but an unsettling feeling gnawed at him. Adjusting, he told himself, desperately seeking reassurance. Recalibration. The body has to learn new sight the way it learns a prosthetic limb—yet something about it felt wrong, as if the surgery had somehow messed up his eye.

But every day the shapes grew sharper.

They were never directly in front of him, only off to the side near the door, hovering near the ceiling, or resting on the shoulder of a stranger on the subway. Their bodies rippled like heat waves—fragile but deliberate. They noticed him noticing them.

By the end of the week, Elliot stopped sleeping. He could still see them with his eyes closed.

His girlfriend, Anna, said he looked pale. “You’re working too hard again,” she teased, pressing a kiss to his cheek. Her lips were warm. Human. But behind her, something flickered near the kitchen light, a thin, translucent limb curling around the bulb like a curious vine.

He blinked. Gone.

“Just tired,” he said.

That night, he lay awake beside her and stared at the ceiling. When he shifted, one of the things skittered from the lamp to the wall. Its movement made no sound, but he felt it—like a vibration deep inside the new eye socket.

He turned over and pressed his face into the pillow. The darkness pulsed behind his eyelids.

By morning, Anna was gone.

She was just at work, as usual, but the apartment felt empty without her warmth. Elliot wandered to the bathroom mirror, hands shaking as he inspected the implant. The iris of his eye gleamed silver when it caught the light. No redness, no swelling. There was no sign of the laser that had previously cut through to his pupil. Perfect integration.

Then something moved in the reflection behind him.

He spun around. Nothing.

He leaned close to the mirror. The reflection leaned closer. But the silver iris in the glass seemed… delayed. Half a blink behind.

“Side effects,” he muttered. His voice cracked.

He taped over every mirror in the apartment, drew the blinds, and opened his laptop to message Dr. Calloway. His fingers trembled as he typed:

Seeing movement. Not floaters. I’m worried something went wrong during surgery.

He hovered over the send button but hesitated. How do you tell someone your reflection has a mind of its own?

Instead, he hit delete and shut the laptop.

By nightfall, the house was alive. The corners hummed with invisible things. They stayed at the edges of his sight, forming and unforming like thoughts he couldn’t quite grasp.

He started whispering to them.

“I can see you,” he said once.

One of them froze. Its shape seemed to shiver—then slowly turn its head toward him, even though he hadn’t seen it have a head before. It leaned closer to the edge of vision. The air trembled.

Elliot flinched away, and when he dared to look again, the thing was gone. But the static under his skin wasn’t.

He returned to the clinic the next morning. The waiting room buzzed with fluorescent light and too-white smiles. Dr. Calloway emerged, eyes bright behind her glasses.

“How’s the vision?”

He almost laughed. “Too good.”

Her brows knit. “Still seeing distortions?”

“They’re not distortions,” he said. “They’re there. You just don’t see them.”

She gestured to the exam chair, calm as ever. “Let’s take a look.”

When she leaned close with her penlight, Elliot felt the faintest movement beside her face. One of the damned things perched delicately on her shoulder, its tendrils coiling into her hair.

“Don’t move,” he whispered.

Dr. Calloway froze. “What?”

“On your shoulder.”

She blinked. “Elliot, there’s nothing—”

The light flickered. The room dimmed for a heartbeat, and in that heartbeat, the thing moved. It slithered from her shoulder toward him, tendrils rippling like smoke underwater.

He jerked back, knocking over the tray. The instruments clattered to the floor.

“Elliot!”

He stumbled away, clutching his face. “You can’t see them!”

Security escorted him out within minutes. Dr. Calloway’s polite composure had cracked; her eyes became wary, her voice clipped.

That night, Elliot set up his camera. If no one believed him, he’d make them see.

He angled it toward his bed, hit record, and lay down.

The room was silent except for the slow hum of the refrigerator down the hall. Shadows rippled at the edge of the curtains. Sleep claimed him like a current.

When he woke, sunlight poured through the blinds. He grabbed the camera, heart hammering, and hit playback.

The footage was grainy, dim—but there. Shapes moving in the dark, crawling across the walls, across him. One slipped into his open mouth and vanished. Another pressed against his eyelid until it disappeared beneath.

Elliot gagged. He stumbled to the sink, retching, splashing cold water on his face. When he looked up, the mirror tape had peeled away overnight.

His reflection smiled a split second late.

Dr. Calloway called later that day, her voice measured. “I reviewed your last scan. The implant’s neural interface may be overstimulating visual pathways. We can schedule a recalibration.”

He hesitated. “Will I stop seeing them?”

A pause. Then softly: “Do you want to?”

The question lingered long after the call ended.

He sat on the edge of his bed as dusk settled, the silver iris reflecting the dying light. The shadows thickened. Movement stirred in his peripheral vision again—familiar, expectant.

This time, he didn’t turn away.

“Alright,” he whispered. “I’m looking.”

The air shifted, and the shapes solidified. A dozen translucent forms stared back, patient and still, as if waiting for him to acknowledge them finally.

One reached out—a delicate limb brushing his cheek. The sensation was cool, almost tender.

He smiled faintly. For the first time, the world felt clear.

The phone rang again. Dr. Calloway’s voice drifted from the speaker on his desk, tinny and far away:

“Elliot? We reviewed your footage. There’s… there’s nothing on it.”

He stared at the shapes moving in the darkened window, faint outlines rippling like water. “That’s impossible,” he whispered. “I saw them. I recorded it.”

“I believe you think you did,” she said gently. “You’re under strain. Why don’t you come in tomorrow? We’ll recalibrate the implant.”

He hesitated, glancing toward the glass. The shapes seemed to lean closer, their translucent forms pulsing in rhythm with his heartbeat. “Will that make them go away?”

A pause. Then her voice softened.

“It’ll help you see things as they really are.”

The line clicked dead.

The next morning, he opened the door before she could knock. Dr. Calloway stood outside his door, hair perfectly smooth, lab coat pristine.

“Morning, Elliot,” she said with that same composed smile. “I thought it best to come check in personally.”

Her eyes caught the light. Silver. Not gray, not blue, but the same metallic gleam as his.

He froze. “You—”

She entered without waiting for an invitation, scanning the taped-over mirrors and shuttered windows. “It’s better this way,” she murmured. “Adjustment takes time.”

The air stirred behind her like a sigh. Elliot’s stomach dropped. The translucent shapes had followed her in, spilling from the hallway like mist. Dozens of them, drifting with purpose.

Dr. Calloway turned toward him, her voice low, tender.

“You can see us now.”

He backed away until his shoulders hit the wall. “What are you—”

She tilted her head, the silver in her eyes flickering like static. “Vision is evolution, Elliot. You thought the surgery gave you sight…”

She smiled.

“…but it was really access.”

The shapes moved closer, encircling him, brushing against his skin. The air tasted metallic.

Dr. Calloway reached up and gently touched the side of his face. Her fingertips were ice cold. “Don’t be afraid,” she whispered. “You’re one of us now.”

Elliot’s vision blurred, silver flooding the edges. When he blinked, the room was full of them, and they all blinked with him.

The video footage from his apartment later showed nothing.

Just Elliot, sitting calmly in a chair, staring at a blank wall. There was no evidence that Dr. Calloway had ever shown up. No floaters. Nothing.

Until he looked directly into the camera.

And smiled.