The Haze

It all started when he noticed something off about the color of his eyes. They hadn’t even been a different color, not completely. They were just a different hue. As he looked into the mirror he saw what he could’ve sworn was a slightly lighter shade of green. Cary always thought about how deeply dark the shade of his eyes were so it was enough to make him take notice. He had snuck in the bathroom to brush his teeth after he’d finished his breakfast as he did every morning. While Cary was an early bird, his wife could sleep in until the sun turned into the moon. He did this every morning at the exact same time without fail. Cary was an orderly man who liked routine. He didn’t like surprises, not even little ones, he didn’t even like them for his birthday and made sure his wife, parents and friends all let him know ahead of time what he would be receiving. He was never rude about it; it was just that a surprise of any sort was a cause of distress. In actuality, he felt guilty asking for it every time and ensured people knew how much gratitude he had for what was given to him even if it wasn’t a surprise. He made a note of this eye pigment anomaly in his diary. Eyes: Wrong Shade of Green, why? Must Investigate further. Hope nothing is medically wrong.

Cary went back downstairs and double-checked the schedule for the day. There was nothing on the agenda except for his three-year old daughter’s taekwondo class. As a man very attached to structure and routine it had been hard when he first had her. Having children means disorder and surprise, but she was worth it. It was a balancing act, his rigid structure made him a good father to her because he was responsible and made sure she knew what to expect, but she also challenged him and made him a better person with every curve ball she threw at him. She herself had been a surprise and it was the best one he could ever ask for.

He noticed the ticking of his clock. It was a Marilyn Monroe clock his wife had bought about a month ago. It was a little difficult to make out the numbers or even the shape of the hands from his position. The clock was really more decorative than anything else, but it made him want to check the time. He unlocked the screen of his phone to see and became very confused at what he saw.

It read 4:30 p.m. How did that happen? He could’ve sworn it had just been 6:15 a.m. a few seconds ago. There was something else odd about the phone. The screen’s wall paper was all wrong. It should’ve been a picture of his wife and him standing next to large Bingo and Bluey mascots while his three-year-old daughter beamed in the middle. Instead, it was a picture of a blonde girl about nine years old dressed in taekwondo gear and doing a pose where she was punching the air.

A voice that was familiar, but not quite what he was expecting came from the upstairs. “Ok, ready Dad!” she said. As she rounded the corner, he saw the blonde nine-year-old from the phone’s wallpaper.

“Brie?” his voice was a strange mixture of emotional and incredulous.

“Of course, who else would it be? Silly Dad!”

He knew it was her, it sounded like her, it looked like her, but... she was three years old; it was barley past six a.m. and she was still sleeping upstairs to relief of her dad. This was not right. The three-year old he knew had only said, “Silly Daddy,” a few times, and she said, “Daddy,” not, “Dad”. He liked it, but the way this nine-year old stranger was saying it made it sound like she had already said it a million times.

He often laughed it off when his wife prematurely lamented their daughter going off to college, but in the last three seconds he had just missed six full years.

“Dad, you’re being really weird.”

Cary sat staring at her in complete paralysis to what he should do next. Again, the ticking of the clock. He looked over at it and again was shocked at what he saw. It wasn’t Marilyn Monroe anymore, now it was Audrey Hepburn.

“When did we get that clock?”

“… I don’t know, like… forever….”

“Your mother hates Audrey Hepburn, she’s not even a huge fan of Marilyn, it was just the only one she could find. She would’ve preferred Katherine.”

“Dad, I don’t know what you’re talking about. Whose Marilyn and Katherine?”

Cary absent-mindedly looked at his phone’s clock as he struggled to react to these strange events. He spoke without even thinking about it. “Oh, no. We missed Taekwondo. I’m so sorry cutie pie!”

“It’s at five, it’s only four-thirty. You’re being really weird Dad. Do I need to call Mom?”

“… no, no. It’s ok. Daddy’s just being a silly pickle. Time to get in the car seat.”

“Car seat? Dad, I’m nine.”

Cary looked at her and couldn’t help but tear up. Her image kept switching between the nine-year old in front of him and the three-old he knew and loved. With all of the bizarre occurrences he couldn’t tell if this was actually happening or was an emotional response. He couldn’t help but tear up a little bit. Also, deep inside he was terrified about whatever was happening, but kept it inside. That’s what you did for your kids no matter how scared you were. You had to protect them.

As Cary looked at her, he also noticed the large mirror set up on the other side of the room and saw himself inside of it. His reflection was just a blur, but still the shape seemed different to what he was used to. He walked up and went over to it. Now, his hair was brunette and his eyes were an enigmatically light shade of blue. This was all wrong. He was supposed to be blonde with green eyes, just like his daughter.

He looked over at her and she kept changing instantaneously, from blonde to brunette to red head. To green-eyed to blue-eyed. From three-years old to nine-years old, to an infant to a teenager, to an old woman and back again.

In the mirror he him-self kept changing; hair color, eye color, height, stature, age. He went from looking like a 70s punk to a sleek, slimy looking Wallstreet broker to a nerdy kid, to a homeless man. His house changed. The weather changed. The clock changed from Marilyn Monroe to Audrey to Katherine to Jane Austen to Disney to Stephen King to people he didn’t even recognize. Everything became an incomprehensible blur of cycling transformation. A headache like he’d never known took hold of him. In the disorientation he let out a blood-curdling scream. Then, there was silence and there was nothing. He stood in a void, only him.

But he remembered his wife and he remembered his daughter. He did not know what was happening, but he did not want to lose that. Cary took a deep breath and pictured them in his mind. He thought about all they meant to him in the world. He thought about how he had made banana read the day his wife’s water broke, he thought about the old couple in the road that were moving so slow through the crosswalk as he was trying to get her to the hospital, about holding her in his arms for the first time, about painting the nursery with whales, about Brie saying Daddy for the first time on the beach, about how much she liked Scooby Doo and would want to “find a mystery” when they turned it off, about how into space she was becoming, about how good it felt for her to be in his arms.

Then, he heard a voice:

“Daddy”

It was the voice of the three-year-old he loved more than anything.