Why am I here?

That is the question I ask myself every morning, when I wake up to the gleaming sun in my sensitive eyes. I sit up on my cot in my white hospital gown, and look around the room, seeing all my roommates, who are around my age: thirteen to fourteen years old. Yet, I still do not fit in with these people.

I do not belong here.

The bright white walls surrounding me cause my one blue and one brown eye to ache, along with the white bed sheets and the white slippers we are provided with. Our rooms are windowless, and we are not to have any sharp or hard objects with us. The doctors fear that our 'mental conflicts' may cause us to abuse these objects.

I do not have a mental conflict. The only thing that separates me from the rest of the world is my one eye which can actually see.

It was about a month ago when I was rushed in to this dreadful place. If I were to ever tell anybody why I was brought here, they most probably would not believe my side of the story. Instead, they would shake their heads in sympathy, and decide that I did, indeed, belong here, when I do not.

It all began on one Saturday night, when I was at the mall with a few of my friends. We were having an enjoyable time and it was going by rather smoothly, until we decided to stop for beverages and a snack. We were waiting in the extensive line when two young males, who were around the age of twenty, began to yell at one another. How the argument was instigated I am not quite sure, but it soon evolved into a fist fight. Blood began to spill onto the floor, and tables were knocked over. As me and my friends were fleeing from the cafe as rapidly as we could, one of the men thrust a fork across the room, in an attempt to harm the other man. Yet, his aim was inaccurate, and the fork hit me directly in the eye. The blood on the floor became my own, and my friends were panicking. They called 911 and I was rushed to the hospital immediately.

My parents were in tears when they walked in to the emergency room to find me on a stretcher. My mother held my hand, and softly tried to convince me that it would be alright, yet it seemed as though she was having difficulty convincing herself. She explained to me that I was about to undergo an eye transplant. She told me that they were going to take the eye of a man named Abner, who had been killed earlier that day. I nodded, and I was soon unconscious with anesthesia.

Once the transplant was done with and the anesthesia had worn off, it had been around three hours. I could, indeed, see with both of my eyes. Yet, something didn't seem quite right. No one was in the room when I came back to consciousness, so I wandered over to the window and stared out into the pitch black night. It was then that I realized something peculiar.

With my old brown eye, the world seemed normal – or, at least, what we consider to be normal. With Abner's blue eye, I saw strange things. I looked at my reflection in the window; with my brown eye, it looked perfectly normal, yet with my new eye, I saw a red glow coming from within me that seemed to shine through my chest. I was tempted to scream and show my parents, but I chose that I didn't want to frighten them. Instead, when they walked in, I greeted them with a hug that suggested that my eyesight was back to normal and everything would be alright. Yet, nothing was alright. Looking through my new eye, both my parents were glowing red, as well.

As I walked around and returned back home, I noticed the red glow in everyone I saw when I looked at them with Abner's eye. Not a single person I encountered lacked it. Whenever I saw the bright red glow, I somehow felt as though it was taking over me; as though I was surrendering to it. I thought that maybe I was simply tired and my new blue eye was still adjusting, and that the glows would be gone by tomorrow morning.

I was wrong.

I continued to see the glows the next day, the day after that, and even the day after that. I failed to locate anybody who did not have it.

I began to see numerous things which I would never have seen without my new blue eye. Perhaps one of the most notable of these was when I had decided to spend the night with my friend, Jane. She had picked me up from my house. As we were driving to her home, we turned on the radio, and she began to bop her head to a song that had been overplayed on the radio long before my transplant. That was the first time I had listened to music after my transplant, I realized. As the song played, the lyrics popped into the sight of, of course, my new blue eye. The song was about something silly, like partying and having a great time, as most pop songs are nowadays. I cannot remember the exact lyrics of the song; all I recall was that every word was visible to me in my blue eye. As though this was not queer enough, the letters of the words rearranged so that the words were backwards. I heard the entire song playing on rewind. One specific line of the rewinded song still rings in my mind to this day.

“Destroying lives is a great pass time; man's best form is broken or dead.”

My jaw dropped as I listened to the song, and when I looked over to my friend, she was bopping her head cluelessly. She obviously did not see or hear the song playing backwards. No one did. I wasn't sure how to react.

It was after that very line played when the car stopped, my friend turned off the radio, and we walked to her front door. I followed her into the living room, still in shock from the song which I had just listened to.

Jane pulled out her cell phone, and said, “Hey, so Jamie gave me Ralph's phone number yesterday. Want to send him a text or two that will have that loser crying himself to sleep?”

Once my friend said this, the red glow from her chest got the slightest bit brighter.

She followed her statement with a laugh. It was as if she found pleasure in the thought of tearing apart an innocent boy.

It was as if she was following directions of the line of the rewinded song which she had not heard.

I ransacked my handbag in search of my mobile. I needed to leave; I could not stand seeing my best friend being swallowed into the stomach of cruelty, and I most definitely did not want to be devoured along with her.

“Oh gosh! I just remembered how much work I have! I should go. . .” I dialed my mothers phone number and was eager to press the call button.

“It's summer vacation . . . What kind of work could you have?” Jane seemed irritated. She knew I was lying.

“Family things. I'm so sorry, maybe we should do this another time.” Yet, after all I had heard and seen that day, I think I had been through enough.

Jane did not answer me; she turned away and looked out the window as I asked my mom to pick me up. I could tell she was thinking terrible thoughts about me in her mind. She hated me, and she probably wanted to ruin my life now, along with Ralph's.

I could tell because her glow became even brighter than before.

After what seemed like forever, my mom's car finally pulled up outside of Jane's house. I said a quick “goodbye” to Jane, to which she did not respond, her glow still increasing in radiation.

While we were in the car, my mother turned on the radio, and before I could hear a full word on rewind, I turned it off. She stopped at a traffic light and looked at me curiously.

“Are you alright, honey? You've been acting a little strange lately.”

I shifted in my seat, avoiding her concerned eyes. “Yeah. I'm fine. Just adapting to my new eye and all.”

“Okay, then, sweetie. Just let me know if you need anything.” She parked in our garage and made our way into our house.

I decided to find out a little bit more about the man whose eye was causing me all of this confusion and allowing me to see all of these disturbing things. After asking my mom for his full name, I typed in “Abner Jones” on Google. I found a link to his blog, which was apparently the reason he was executed.

Abner had published about fifty posts. All of them were about a secret society called the Avaharians. As I scrolled through his posts, I discovered that these people were surreptitiously plotting to control the world and fill it with evil. Based on everything that I had seen after my transplant, I was not very surprised. Yet, the facts staring me right in the face were difficult to bear. The truth that all my friends, family, and the entire world were being injected with heinousness and cruelty is not an easy one to face.

I read more, and learned more about the ways of the Avaharians; how they had taken over the music industry, television programs, and many governments across the world, including that of my own country, the United States. They were slipping subliminal messages anywhere and everywhere, those of which Abner was able to recognize and decode.

Therefore I was able to recognize and decode these messages.

It all began to make sense – the music I heard, the reaction Jane had to it, and the red glow.

When I looked in the mirror, the once-bright glow in me had dimmed to the point where it was scarcely visible anymore.

It was because I was able to see my evil that I was able to get rid of it. Yet, terminating evil does not necessarily mean terminating sadness. In fact, for me, it was the complete opposite.

Now I had all of the alarming information of the Avaharians in the back of my mind, and all the evil they had caused was present everywhere I looked; it was practically impossible to move along with life normally, and I was not able to for much longer.

The next day, when I had awoken from a nightmare-filled sleep, I sat down next to my glowing mother on the couch in front of the television. She was flipping through the channels, and stopped at one with a commercial persuading people to vote for Duane Cari, who was a candidate in the presidential election. I should have never been watching television, knowing of the subliminal messages that would appear, yet I did, and I faced the consequences.

On the screen, an image of Duane appeared, and on the right side of it appeared the slogan:

“A vote for Duane is a vote for success, happiness, and harmony.”

At least, that is what my brown eye saw.

With my blue eye, I saw the words that broke me down. These words were hidden in the background of the picture. They read:

“A vote for Duane is a vote for death, disease, and obscenity.”

My mother turned to my father and said, “Duane seems like such a wonderful man! He surely would be a fabulous president, don't you think?”

My father nodded in agreement with no hesitation.

Both of their red glows got a little bit brighter.

I simply could not take it any longer.

“Mom, dad, do you see that? Written right there, in the background, do you see it?” I pointed to the words that only my blue eye could detect in the background, yet I knew my parents' subconscious minds would absorb the message and cause them to act upon it.

“Honey, what are you talking about?” My dad scrunched up his eyebrows in confusion.

“The words. Right there. That say 'death, disease, obscenity?' Do you see it?” My voice began to rise and I was anxious. I needed my parents to see this. I needed them to understand.

“Sweetheart, are you alright?” My mom walked towards me and placed her hand on my forehead, checking to see if I had a fever.

“No, mom, I'm not alright. Do you see those words? Do you see them?” Both of my eyes began to swell up with tears. I needed them to believe me, and see with their conscious minds what was occurring within their subconscious ones.

“Cecilia, why are you crying? What's wrong?” Both my mother and father huddled around me. They were beginning to become seriously concerned. I could not believe this was happening.

“The Avaharians. . . they're invading your minds. . . they're destroying this world. . . they're destroying my life!” By this point, I was practically shrieking, and the tears were pouring down my face. Through my tears, I could see my parents exchanging worried glances, unsure of what to do with me.

My own parents could not believe their only child.

I began to throw a tantrum. I fell to the floor and started wailing. My life was falling apart. With every punch I threw at the hard marble floor, I could feel the evil all around me, devouring everything I knew into its growling stomach. The Avaharians had stolen the goodness from everyone and everything I knew, and at the same time blinded the world from seeing the terrible truth.

My parents called 911 and had me rushed to a mental hospital at once. This was bringing back memories of the first time I was hurried into the hospital. The difference this time, though, was that I was no longer the blind one, but in fact the only one who could see.

And so I am here, at this moment, in this suffocating place. I despise this place. It reminds me everyday of how cruel the world is to everyone who lives here with me. They call us insane simply because they are unable to comprehend our perspective of things. They call us crazy because we can see what they can't. Waking up here everyday is a constant reminder of the brutality of reality.

Yet, there are a few aspects of this place that give me a reason to open my eyes when the sun rises. Firstly, there is not a trace of the Avaharians or their subliminal messages in this place to be found. The main reason I am satisfied with my new home, though, is that I have located something which I would never have found anywhere else in the world. Something that made the plain white buildings and the revolting cots and food bearable. Something that makes me consider that perhaps I do belong here.

Not a single person who lives here has a red glow within them.