Static Underneath

He saw the static below everything. Black and white pixels flashing underneath the world. Old cathode ray tube televisions, when tuned to a channel with no signal, would show a screen of black and white "snow." A two-toned kaleidoscope. He saw this, when he closed his eyes, and when his eyes were open. 

His vision was fine; his yearly visits to the optometrist confirmed that yes, he was a little nearsighted but otherwise fine. 

He worried that everything he was seeing wasn't real; that the static was the real world and all the bright and beautiful colors and shapes he saw were being projected onto the static, an overlay. If it was a projection, what was projecting it? And if it wasn't real, what was it?

His health insurance only covered doctors, not philosophers. 

And yet, otherwise, his life was normal. Boring, even. He felt he should let it go. Stop thinking about it entirely. Pretend it wasn't there.

One night, he found himself holding a paring knife to his eye and wondering what would he would see without them. 

He had put the knife down. If he did remove his eyes, he might see what was really there, behind the world. Or the static might be the only thing left, and his world would remain only those black and white pixels, a backdrop forever. 

THE END

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Did I never publish this one? I guess not. Says I wrote it on November 24th. I must have left it in the drafts because it doesn't go anywhere. Sure, there's a lot more leeway in short stories because if you don't waste too much of a reader's time they don't get too upset, generally. Maybe it was too depressing? The danger of what I'm doing mixing fiction in with a journal of my day-to-day life is that there's the risk that people might conflate the two. 

Which is why I'm hesitant to mention that I do see static. It's not bright static, and it doesn't interfere with my vision. I think everyone sees it, right? What do you see when you close your eyes?