“The girl in the photo on the wall just blinked,” I said to my mother, pointing. I was eight at the time. We stood in front of a store, and I pointed to a missing child poster taped to the window. My mom bent down to face me and gently pressed my arm down so I would stop pointing.

“No, Sarah, pictures can’t blink, but I do love your imagination.”

“No, mom, really, she’s blinking her eyes and looking at me. Can’t you see it?”

My mom took my hand, and we began walking out of the shopping mall. But I kept looking back at the picture. It was still blinking, and now her eyes had shifted to follow me. That was the first time I remember seeing a picture blink.

That night after dinner, my family gathered in the living room to watch the evening news. A story came on concerning the young girl I had seen on the poster that day. They had found her body, and an arrest was imminent. I was sitting on the couch with my mom, and I looked over at her.

“Oh my,” my mother said. “Wasn’t she on the poster you were looking at today?”

I didn’t respond. I just stared back at the television screen and nodded. Imagination? From that day forward, I didn’t think so. 

Pictures blinking didn’t happen often, but when it did, I tried to write it down as soon as I could. I noted the time, date, and location where I observed the phenomenon. Sometimes at night, I would sit on my bed and study my notes, searching for a common thread. However, no matter how hard I tried, I still wasn’t sure what it all meant. By the time I got to high school, I had seen eleven blinking photos.

The twelfth one came when I was at a basketball game, sitting on the bleachers in the school’s gym. A picture of our principal on the wall began to look at me and blink. I gasped, and my first thought was: ‘Is he about to die?’ I mean, the first picture that blinked at me did. As for the others, I didn’t know the people, so I didn’t know if they had died or not.

 My friend looked over at me and asked, “What’s wrong?”

I blurted out that the principal’s eyes were blinking at me. She started laughing, thinking I was telling her a joke. She pushed me on the shoulder, as if waiting for the punch line. I was horrified I had let those words slip out of my mouth, so I told her I needed to go to the bathroom. She followed me.

“I gotta pee too,” she said, following behind me.

I didn’t bring up the subject again, and she didn’t ask. Thank goodness.

As we walked back toward the gym, a large group was leaving. As we tried to get back in, the outbound crowd pushed us aside.

“What’s going on?” I asked several students as they filed past us. Finally, someone stopped to tell us. “Not much, it’s just that a light fell from the ceiling. I don’t really know why we all had to evacuate, though. No one was hurt, but they cancelled the game anyway.”

After I graduated from high school, the sightings began to occur more frequently; instead of happening twice a year, they sometimes happened twice a month. Honestly, since I couldn’t figure out why they were happening, I ignored them. I no longer logged the sightings. I lost interest after the principal didn’t die, and I learned later that the light that had fallen was nowhere near where I’d been sitting. Yes, I had also wondered if these blinking eyes were trying to warn me of danger. I gave up trying to figure it out. This was something I would have to live with, nothing more.

One morning, a few years after I graduated from high school, my mother texted and asked me to come home right away. I still lived at home, but was in class at our local community college when I received the text. “What’s going on?” I texted back.

“Grandma’s in the hospital, and the doctors think she had a stroke. We need to see her as soon as possible. Come home and we’ll all go together.”

I excused myself from class and drove home. When I got there, my parents were in the living room. My mom looked pale, and I could tell she had been crying. My dad was consoling her. He loved Grandma, too, but this was my mom’s mother.

Since I was a kid, my mom had filled the hallway with family pictures. On my way to the bathroom before we left, I looked over at my favorite picture of my grandmother. I was startled and gasped because she blinked and looked back at me. “Oh no, I thought, is she going to die?” I stood in the hallway, my heart racing as I stared at her. ‘Oh, god, no,’ I thought. But then I remembered the principal hadn’t died. So…

We rushed to the hospital, but by the time we got there, an attendant instructed us to follow them to a small room. The doctor met us there. Grandma hadn’t made it. We were devastated.

So from then on, whenever I saw a photo of people nearby, I deliberately looked away, afraid I would see blinking. I still didn’t know what it all meant, but since I had lost my grandmother, I didn’t want to know anymore.

Have you ever noticed that until you’re trying to avoid something, suddenly, that’s all you see? Pictures, paintings, and photos of human faces were everywhere I went. And sometimes, I couldn’t avoid seeing the blinking eyes. Over the years, “blinkings,” as I called them, were not just appearing on photos of people anymore; now they were happening on drawings, statues, and figurines as well—anything with eyes—animals, fish, bugs. What was once occasional had now become a daily occurrence. I was losing my mind. I thought maybe I had some type of psychosis or something. I needed to see a psychiatrist, so I made an appointment with Dr. Saeed.

We worked through a lot of things in her office. She was excellent at getting to the point, and on many fronts, I was feeling a lot better. We discussed the blinking eyes, but they weren’t the primary focus of our conversations most of the time. But after a particularly bad weekend, it became the focus. I noticed it on a Friday evening. Every single thing with eyes was blinking at me.

I was hesitant to go to my next appointment with Dr. Saeed on Monday morning. Would the blinking eyes continue in her office? Her entire office was full of ocean paintings, and all the fish had eyes. I hesitated before going in. Yep, as soon as I entered and looked around, I saw them. Eyes. All blinking at me. I couldn’t focus during our session. I tried to ignore all the eyes, but finally, I grabbed my head and begged for it to stop. I confessed to the doctor what I was seeing. She responded calmly and asked me some questions. I answered her in as calm a voice as I could muster. Then, she asked me a question that changed my world.

“Have you ever faced the pictures and asked them what they want?”

“What? They only blink; they don’t talk.”

“Have you ever tried, or do you avoid the blinking?”

“I avoid as much as possible, but today I can’t because this entire room is blinking at me. I’m going crazy, aren’t I?” I stood up and looked down at her.

“Try something, won’t you?”

“What?”

“Pick a picture in this room and ask it what it wants. Just try it. Or if you prefer, do it when you’re alone at home. It’s up to you.”

What did I have to lose? I’m sure Dr. Saeed already had it in her notes that I was crazy, so why not? I walked over to the least threatening picture. It was a painting of tropical fish. I walked over to the picture and stood in front of it. I looked back at my doctor first, and she nodded in agreement. Before speaking, I bit the inside of my cheek.

“What do you want?” I asked calmly. The eyes of all the fish looked in my direction and blinked; nothing else. I turned and looked back at my doctor, shrugging my shoulders. “I don’t hear anything. I told you they don’t talk.”

“Perhaps you need to stop and just listen for a moment.” She smiled and wrote something in her notebook.

I turned back to the painting and asked, “Okay…what do you want?” I stepped back and waited. God, it felt like an eternity since I was just standing there like an idiot. But just before I was about to give up, I knew. I knew what the picture, the fish, wanted. “Oh my god,” I said out loud. “I know.” I turned to face the doctor and thanked her. I needed to hurry. I needed to go home. Before I exited the office, I turned once more to the fish picture and said, “Thank you.”

There had been no audible voice. It was all in my head, but have you ever had an instance where something suddenly becomes clear to you? Like you had just come out of a fog, and now the skies were clear? That’s how it felt to me that day. I knew. I just knew.

I got an appointment with my general family doctor as soon as I could get in. “I have a brain tumor,” I announced. The doctor was not impressed. “Did Dr. Google tell you that?” she asked, smirking.

“No, but even if insurance doesn’t cover it, I want an MRI, stat.” She didn’t seem impressed with my request, so I added. “I’m having vision issues.” After all, that was true, sort of. I didn’t elaborate, however. It took some more convincing before she relented. I was scheduled within the week.

After the MRI results came back, I was referred to a neurosurgeon; it was explained to me that I had a low-grade astrocytoma at the base of my brain. This brain tumor was slow-growing and had probably been there since I was a kid. The treatment took a year out of my life, first with surgery, then radiation, and chemo. However, it’s been five years now, and I’ve just gone in for another scan. The tumor, which they were unable to remove entirely, is still the same size, which means I’m still in remission. I’m relieved until the next checkup.

Oh, and by the way. No blinkings. Ever since the surgery, not one picture has looked at me. However, I can’t say nothing unusual has happened. Sometimes, now in the middle of the night, I wake up to my dead grandmother standing beside my bed. She doesn’t say anything; she just smiles.

Crap.

Now what?