January 2021: The Plantopticon - Katharine Pollock
The woman hadn’t heard of the online plant shop before, but they were unusually cheap and offered free, contactless delivery. Her purchase was left conveniently outside her door as she slept. She put it on her desk and promptly forgot about it.
What lived inside the small glass terrarium did not forget about her.
Despite being encased by soil, the eye that lived in the terrarium was sparklingly clean. It had an emerald green iris and a long root, which was buried deeply in the soil. The eye could see clearly through the layers of dirt. It observed the woman as she sat unawares in front of it. She did her work, which was writing, or pretending to write, or promising herself she would write. The woman tired easily, and when she did she would blink, and rub her eyelids. The eye watched the woman as she yawned and stretched. Her failing eyesight was not a genetic predisposition to short-sightedness. It was because of the eye. The more hours she spent looking enviously at lithe celebrities posing in bikinis on social media, the weaker her eyes got: and the stronger and bigger the eye grew. By its estimation, the woman would be fully-blind by the end of her thirtieth birthday, in five days.
The eye waited patiently. On her birthday, the eye knew, the woman would cease replying to birthday messages, which was causing her a vague existential anxiety, and decide to water the fern inside the terrarium. If for some reason she did not follow this course of action, the eye could wait. Time meant nothing to the eye, unlike the woman. But, if she did as predicted, the eye was prepared.
It would pull itself free from the nutrient-rich soil. Sliding over the lip of the terrarium, it would slither up her body, leaving behind a trail of slime. The woman would not feel or see the eye as it slipped into her right eye socket. From the moment the eye escaped from the soil, the woman’s vision would have gone black, her own right eye tumbling out of its socket. She would be mercifully unconscious as the eye swiveled into place, and as its root snaked back into the depths of her socket, connecting like electrical wires to the circuitry of her brain.
When she awoke, the woman would blink, remembering nothing of what had occurred, but feeling a slight grittiness in her right eye. She would rub her eyelid and, lifting her fingers to eye level, see a sprinkling of dirt. She would see it with perfect 20/20 vision in her right eye. Her left would be nearing complete blindness. In the terrarium, fern repotted and glass lid atop, would be what looked like a small white pebble. If you were to look closely at it you would notice (if your vision was good enough, that is) that at its centre was a tiny, emerald green circle: not unlike the iris of an eye.