The Blurry Man

He’s called the “Blurry Man.”

No, I don’t really know where he came from. I’m not even entirely sure what he is exactly, but he’s here, and he’s small, and he’s blurry. I don’t even know if he’s a man or not—can small blurry figures have a gender? Possibly. I don’t really know anything about him.

When’s the first time I noticed him? Well, I guess I have to say a few months ago. It was such a small thing that I actually didn’t realize I saw him until I remembered later. It was past midnight, don’t ask me the exact time because there’s no way I’ll remember. I got home late that night from work—I had to work a double shift that day; I’m so grateful I quit that job—and just kind of plopped down on the couch and left the television on. Eventually, I fell asleep on the sofa with no lights on, only the television.

I’m not sure if it was a dream or not, but at some point, I woke up, and the television just showed this stretch of an empty field. There was no sound or anything, and there wasn’t any of the usual cinematic camerawork to the scene. It was just an open field, stretching for miles and miles with grass as far as the eye could see. Then I kind of noticed in the middle of the screen, far off, was a blurry man. Not exactly a small blurry man, but, you know, when somebody is out in the distance, and you can’t see them that well. Small to the eye but not to scale, you know?

Well, I thought it was weird, but I wasn’t really concerned with it. I figured it was one of those cheesy sci-fi movie scenes out of one of those low-budget movies that only ever play in the middle of the night when nobody’s awake to watch them. It wasn’t really until a week later that I actually actively noticed the Blurry Man. I was just waking up. It was a Saturday, I think, and I was supposed to have the day off and was just getting myself the last of my cereal when I saw something scuttle underneath the fridge. It startled me, and the only real reason I remember this clearly is that I saw his little legs scooting underneath my fridge real quick. I mistook his legs for cockroach antennae and thought to myself how weird it was that a cockroach would be skittering backwards.

Then I heaved a great big ol’ sigh because, of course, I had a roach in the house. That was just my luck. Skip out on a few days of cleaning because you’re exhausted, and then what do you know, bugs come flocking in by the millions. I put the roach on my brain's back burner and went to have my cereal on the couch. I was in a pretty burnt out state of my life, to be honest. I didn’t have much going for me, and I didn’t have much to look forward to. Every day, day in and day out, I was waking up tired, going to work, and feeling even more exhausted once I got home.

Then the Blurry Man crawled up the television stand. I spilled my cereal on my pajama pants because I freaked out. I thought the roach had followed me from the kitchen. Which, I guess technically it did since I had thought he was a roach, but I jumped up and slammed my bowl of cereal down on the end table before scrounging around for a shoe to throw at it. I try not to leave my shoes lying around haphazardly, so there were no sneakers except for the ones by the door. However, I wasn’t about to leave this nasty little parasite alone to its own devices. That’s just what a roach would want, right? Get you to go find something to kill it with and give it just enough time to commit atrocities, then scram right out of there.

At the time, I felt like the only obvious solution was to catch the thing with my hands. Do cockroaches bite? I have no idea. I’ve never really researched it. I know they can fly a little, but this one didn’t. Well, you know, because he wasn’t actually a cockroach. So when did I realize he wasn’t a cockroach? Well, he definitely didn’t feel like one in my hands. He didn’t really have any kind of supernatural powers or anything. At least, it didn’t seem like it. He just seemed like a tiny little, uh… I dunno, human man. Except he was like a small black stick figure, and he was blurry. I caught him in my hands for just a few seconds and got a good enough look at him to realize that he wasn’t a bug.

I guess my hesitance to do anything after catching him is what led to him escaping from my hands. Had he been a roach, he would have been squashed then and there. But he wasn’t, so, you know, he didn’t get crushed. He hopped out of my hands on his tiny little blurry stickman legs and rushed off across the carpet. I didn’t chase him this time. I just stood there in my milky pajamas and watched him run underneath the couch to the opposite side of the room. Then I watched him stick to the wall like one of those, uh… You know those little sticky slappy-hands you can get for fifty cents from those machines at the grocery store? He stuck like that, then started backflipping up the wall with the same, uh, viscosity, I guess, as one of those sticky hand things. Then he slid into one of the ceiling vents and disappeared.

When was the next time I saw him? Well, it wasn’t for a few days, actually. By that point, I’d kind of convinced myself that I was definitely going crazy. I mean, looking up “tiny blurry man in my house” didn’t turn up anything useful. Plus, you gotta realize that I was practically running on fumes at that point, what with how exhausted I was from work. That was actually when I decided to quit my job. I originally put in my two weeks, but given how crappy of a job it was, I ended up walking out on a shift. I’ve never walked out on a job before, but my manager was screaming at me again and calling me a screw-up, so the look on her face when I dropped everything and walked out was worth it.

So the day I walked out, I got home early. Anxiety was already starting to set in because, damn, how will I afford the price of being alive now? I was gonna have to start looking for a job immediately. I opened the front door and walked in like I usually do. My front door leads straight into the living room. Like, there’s no entryway hall or anything. It just opens directly into the living room. So when I get inside, the first thing I’m greeted with is this little blurry man sitting on the sofa, watching television. I know for a fact that the TV was not on when I left.

I kind of stood there for a moment and stare. The Blurry Man doesn’t have eyes, or at least not any I can see, but he turns his head, and I guess, like, stares right back at me? And we just kind of stared for a few moments before I shut the door behind me. I’ve never heard him talk, and, like I said, it’s not like he has any powers that I know about, but you can just tell by interacting with him or even watching him that he’s got the same sentience as you or I do. And I guess at that point, I really could have said anything and everything to the little guy, but instead, I just blurted out to him that I walked out on my job.

Little dude just nodded slowly, like the chill nod you give someone who asks you how it’s going, and you don’t really feel like answering verbally. Then he just turned his attention back to the television. It was weird but, I dunno. My life felt really weird at the moment anyway. I was just kind of like, well, this might as well happen today, right? It’s like that one saying, uh—when it rains, it pours. Sure, it would make sense for life-altering things to happen kind of steadily across a period of time, but, nope, you go a few months without anything happening, and then you get slammed all at once.

What did I do? Okay, well, so I just kind of stood there for another minute or so before realizing that it was lunchtime. I wasn’t necessarily hungry, but I kind of have to eat on a schedule, or else I’ll forget to eat anything during the day. So I just mentioned to Blurry Man that I was headed to the kitchen and asked if he wanted anything. I didn’t really get an answer, and I’m not entirely sure, looking back, how he could have answered. I wasn’t in the mood for making any real food, so I just grabbed a bag of chips and a can of soda, then went back to the living room and sat down next to Blurry Man.

Turns out the dude has somewhat of an okay taste in television. He managed to find some good shows amid daytime television, which, as we all know, usually isn’t all that good. I opened the bag of chips and found out that he also really digs corn chips. That’s what I mostly keep in the house now. Corn chips. Since he likes them. Sometimes I do kind of worry if there’s a particular diet he needs, but he kind of just helps himself to whatever he wants. Sometimes the strawberries get taken, sometimes there’s some leaves of lettuce missing, et cetera… So, he takes care of himself somewhat, at least.

Like I said, I don’t know where he came from. I don’t really know if he’s on the same level of, like, human intelligence as you and me, but he’s definitely smart, you know? Like, dolphin smart or horse smart. And I know it’s kind of weird to refer to a little blurry man as my pet, but he’s actually pretty sweet? Sometimes he likes to nuzzle my hand while we’re on the couch or sleep next to me on my pillow at night. I don’t know what he is. He’s just my little Blurry Man.