They’re short, quick little things, and I see them sometimes when I’m falling asleep or rubbing my eyes. They come unbidden, and they resist interaction.

They abhor repetition. They’re encapsulated, fully-formed little visual islands unto themselves, based upon nothing that has preceded them, and gone before scarcely registering. They’re flashes. They’re a sudden blast of scenery, then nothing. They’re non-sequiturs packed into the end of a firehose, then aimed at the open-mouthed face on my brain.

Picture yourself, holding the remote and scanning quickly through a number of empty black TV channels. You know that there’s a single active one somewhere, sandwiched pregnantly into the middle of the blindness. Before you pass it, you have no idea what it will show you; by the time you see it, it’s already gone.

They’re like that, but behind your eyes… On the inside, where the karate-man bleeds.

They’re a bored-looking young girl who chews gum with her mouth open. She twirls a leopard-printed rabbit’s foot idly around her finger. With a pop of her gum, she disappears. 

They’re a man dressed as the Underwood Devil, who gleefully stomps his red-booted feet on a dusty wooden floor, then with a slight smile, throws himself through a plate-glass window.

They’re a prairie dog, standing upright and fleshed from wet, yellowed cornmeal. It looks haltingly from left to right, then straight ahead. It shakes its head like a dog in a bathtub, and part of its face drops off with a plop.

They live at the edge of peripheral memory, and can be seen only in hindsight.

They’re short, quick little things, and I see them sometimes when I’m falling asleep or rubbing my eyes.