Life At A List

When Filmore Cooring began seeing the world at a twenty degree angle he assumed his seat was broken. When it wasn’t that he put it down to tiredness and martinis. He decided to get a good night’s sleep, and went to bed early.

The next morning he stumbled through to the bathroom and sat down, eyes mostly closed. As his vision cleared he tilted his head, trying to straighten things up.

“Honey,” he called.

“What?” Sally Cooring was still sleepy, and unimpressed by her husband’s early alarm - even less at being required to engage at this hour.

“I’ve got a problem with my vision.”

“What?”

“Everything is at an angle.”

No response.

“Honey?”

“Filmore, go to the optician.”

---

His optician allowed him to book online, and had an appointment available after his work. He’d just have to get through the day without banging into to many things. This could be a problem. That and putting things down properly. When he made Sally a cup of tea, an apology for waking her, he dropped the first cup, smashing it. Milk and hot water got poured on the counter, missing the second cup entirely.

Living life at a list was difficult. The last time Filmore had needed this much concentration to walk, he’d been thirteen months old and learning how to use his legs. At least, that’s what he figured it was like.

Sally was working hard at getting the extra two hours sleep her schedule allowed. She muttered thanks for her tea but remained buried under the duvet. Not trusting himself to lean over, Filmore kissed his finger tips, and stroked her jaw.

---

The ten minute walk to the train station was an hallucinatory experience. The light of early dawn splashed shades of red and orange across the edge of the sky. The street lights glowed eerily in the remaining dimness. The drone of constant traffic could be heard from the nearby overpass. Nothing had changed but his perspective yet, with everything presented off-kilter, it was like seeing things afresh. The same cars went past with the same people driving, off to their own early start. The same lights were on in the same windows. At the train station he was the only person waiting, as normal. Still, it was all different. The nausea made it unpleasantly so.

Sitting on the train was a little better. No longer walking allowed his equilibrium to return. As it did he saw another difference. At first it was like catching something strange from the corner of your eye. But instead of turning and finding nothing, Filmore saw more and more.

Everyone had a hologram. A transparent version of the person that stayed on the vertical. The impression was of everyone having a ghostly second head, and extra-wide shoulders and torso.

The first one that stood out was the ticket inspector. Filmore held his season ticket and watched up the carriage to see who was on duty. It was Julia, the middle-aged white woman with the nice brown eyes, back from holiday. When she stepped through into the first class carriage she was off centre, like everything else. The canvas strap holding her ticket machine and cash purse crossed the pale blue cotton of her work issue polo shirt, hair tucked up under the company logo baseball cap. Less substantially, and on the vertical axis, was a vision of her with long ringleted hair. The hologram Julia wore a bright smile on rouged lips, and a vividly colored kimono.

Apart from Filmore the carriage was empty, not many willing to pay the high premium for first class.

“How’s my favorite I.T. Manager,” she asked.

“Okay, Julia. How was your holiday?”

“Hot, sunny, relaxing. What a holiday should be.” She scanned his travel card. “You sure you’re okay, you’re squinting like you’ve got a bad head.”

“There’s something wrong with my vision. I’m at the opticians later.”

She nodded and turned to go back down the carriages.

“Have you ever had red hair?” asked Filmore.

She stopped, turning back. “Not in a long time. But yes, why do you ask?”

Filmore was unsure what to say. How to admit that he could see her with red hair right there. He shook his head, “Don’t know, it just seems something you might have done.”

“Well, Mr. Smarty, I was red, when I was young. Long hair down to here,” she pointed halfway down her back, her fingers at an angle with the splay of hair in her transparent self, but at the exact length. Her voice became wistful, faraway, “Best years of my life.” She carried on walking, her ghostly image passing through the wall of the carriage as she went through the door.

The train stopped and started. The carriages filled up, though few came into the first class area. Filmore watched new passengers through the window each time they pulled up to a station. The off-kilter world didn’t make any more sense. But the ghostly images of waiting commuters were captivating. After talking to Julia he wondered if all the insubstantial alter ego’s he saw were reflections, manifestations, of a persons best time in life, the time they felt happiest, strongest, most vibrant. With no way to confirm his conjecture he laid it aside and concentrated on watching.

All these people, scurrying off to work in the city’s myriad offices. Dressed in a uniform of little variation. Blacks, greys, and blues. The splash of colour from a scarf, or tie, or pair of socks, did less to assert the individuality of the wearer, than to emphasise the sameness of the collective. Drones swarming to the hive.

Filmore drank in the alternative view of people he normally never looked at, whom he ignored for the drabness they represented in his own life. Now there was a carnival of color and variety shimmering and sparkling in the morning light. A flowering, reaching to the sun, in a world off balance and falling away from tedium.

Finally they arrived at the terminus, no more onward journey. The carriages disgorged into the station. Filmore stumbled, off-balance after being sat down for the last ninety minutes, the disconnect between what eye sees and body experiences not easy to adjust for.

“You okay pal?”

A steadying arm and strong Scot’s accent. Filmore looked up at a twenty something man with coiffed hair, blue pinstripe suit, canting over in unison with his environment. The upright, the transparent alter-ego, had short tousled hair, wore a rugby top, and a kilt.

He grinned at Filmore, “Mair water with that, eh.”

Filmore smiled back, and nodded. “Thanks.”

The man smiled, and carried on his way.

Walking out of the concourse proved a nearly insurmountable challenge. The myriad people moving about, cutting across his path, stopping, turning, strolling, sprinting - all of this in a world where nothing was where it should be. He sat on a bench and clenched his eyes shut.
The noise level dropped from overwhelming to a background roar. The visual disconnect had acted as an amplifier, closing his eyes turned it down. He focused on where to go, plotting the route like a racing driver sitting in a dark room and visualising the layout of the racetrack. He took a deep breath, opened his eyes, and walked out, hands clenched in determination. The other side of the station doors he dived into a waiting cab, and gave his office address.

The driver tried to engage him with chat, Filmore kept his eyes shut. Outside the office he thrust a ten pound at the driver and rushed through the doors. The lift was on the ground floor. When the doors slid open he pressed the button and stood in the corner with closed eyes. Normally the hour from seven to eight was a productive one, where he dealt with issues others never got to know about. It was the time when he did the job he used to enjoy, instead of just managing it. Today he managed to log in, and that was all. Concentrating on code proved impossible. Operating at an angle was made worse when the lines began to swim about. The strain was too much.

He sat back rubbing his brow.

---

“There really isn’t anything I can find wrong with your vision Mr. Cooring. But I'm very concerned about the effect you are describing.”
The optician finished typing and her printer whirred into action.
“I’m recommending you see a neurologist. I have the name and contact details for two different ones here, though your doctor will also be able to provide referrals. You should see someone as soon as possible, by which I mean over the next few days.”

Filmore nodded his head. It was difficult to focus on the angled head of the optician, and not stare at her punk alter ego, with the green mohican and extravagant black eye shadow.

The whole day was the same. Claiming a migraine, he re-scheduled or delegated everything he could, dealing only with absolute essentials. The regular Thursday management meeting was the worst.

An unavoidable event, he made his department briefing the shortest ever. The sight of Nigel, their staid division head, dressed as Gloria Gaynor was more than off-putting. When Nigel asked if there was something distracting on the back wall, Filmore shook his head, and blamed a migraine.

---

The first consultant he called had an appointment available in the morning. He took it and then called the second number, just in case they had one available that evening. They didn’t.

Sally was worried when he called home. “But if you have to see a consultant, are you sure you don’t want me to drive up and get you, or come and stay over with you?”

“No, it’s fine. Look, I’m already at the hotel, and I’m going to bed. I’ve been pretending I have a migraine all day, now it feels as if one’s actually starting. If you come up, you’ll just be sitting in a dark hotel room while I sleep. Look, don’t worry I’m sure nothing is seriously wrong.”

He hung up and stared out the window, watching a plane making its descent towards City airport. In truth, he didn’t want Sally to come because he didn’t know how to deal with it. Over the day he had steeled himself against the gradual realisation that this was more than just some strange occurrence. The only thing which really made sense to him was a tumor. That it affected his vision, but did not impact on the eyes in a way the optician could see, suggested it was deep. Connected to the portion of the brain handling sight, but not the visual cortex itself.
Normally he’d look it up, familiarize himself with the likely types of tumor and treatments. The thought of doing so tonight was too much.
Out of the window the plane flew on an angle which seemed more equivalent to a death dive than gradual approach to the runway. It fed into the visual stress he had fought all day. The noise of the city outside was cacophonous, even through the double glazing. He drank it in, not knowing how long the noise may last.

---

The clinic was almost a parody of private practice. An Edwardian town house on Harley Street with a polished brass plate. Behind the shiny black door, the interior had been maintained sympathetically for the period of the house, but remodeled for modern practicality, including a lift concealed behind a wooden door painted with a high gloss finish. The M.R.I. machine was in a large, sterile, basement. Filmore lay with his arms by his side as the machine did its work. For the first time in over twenty-four hours, he wasn’t looking at the world sideways. The smooth curved interior of the scanner was a uniform surface, even with a tilt it looked the same. He avoided flicking his gaze forward, where he could see the rest of the room. He waited for the machine to finish.

“The good news, Mr. Cooring, is that you don’t have a tumor.”
Filmore nodded, trying hard to pay attention to the middle-aged consultant in shirt and tie, and not the young boy in the cloth cap and school uniform.

“The bad news is, there doesn’t appear to be any physical abnormalities to explain your condition.”

As with the optician, Filmore had admitted only to the problem of seeing everything tilted. The visions of otherness he kept to himself.

“I’m referring you to a psychologist. If it’s not a physical issue, hopefully she’ll be able to help you work through it. Are we sending an invoice, or is the front desk dealing with payment now?”

---

The psychologist didn’t work. Nor did psychotherapy, hypnotherapy, cranio-sacral therapy, meditation, a sweat lodge, soul-cleansing, or any of the other myriad things he tried.

He carried on with life. Eventually he got used to dealing with the tilt. The effort tired him out and weakened his capacity to accomplish things. His immune system was depleted by the continual stress and effort. In the first three months he caught every cold and virus that passed round the office. But he persisted.

The worst part was the image of peoples alter-ego. He tried to ignore them, but how do you ignore something that is always there, and gives the lie to the person it belongs to? The woman in accounts with her demure grey trousers and cardigan, while her other self wore only a long string of pearls; the bright faced twenty-year old who did reconciliations and wore a swastika armband on German army uniform.

When ignoring them failed Filmore took to recording them. He didn’t use names, but a code of his own devising that detailed where and when he had seen the person. Notebooks filled with chicken-scratch script. On occasion he would ask a person about their happiest memories, always their memory was reflected by the hologram.

Finally, Filmore got lucky. A new advertising campaign for perfume used a transparent purple background. Looking through took the hologram away. The twenty-degree tilt was still there, but taking the holograms away made things easier. Filmore experimented with different-colored acetates. Only the purple worked. He had glasses made and, while he still had to deal with everything being at an angle, finally he was seeing people as he used to.

Work was unsympathetic. Colored glasses on a senior manager, and time off for an unfindable mystery illness, led to a succession of meetings with human resources. Eventually they led to a golden handshake.

From the glasses Filmore progressed to wearing contact lenses. He did some freelance work, but concentrating on off-kilter screens all day never became comfortable. Sometimes he toyed with the idea of writing a novel of how the emptiness of life creates a rupture between reality, hope, and memory. Then he would look at Sally.

The Sally he loved never looked as happy, content, or vibrant as Sally in the floral print dress. He remembered that dress. She wore it the summer they first met. When she was still with Colin, before Colin dumped her and moved in with another girl.

Filmore made it a habit to change his contact lenses over only when Sally was asleep.

text by stuartcturnbull, image by B_Me via Pixabay