Day 7

"I was once like you," he said. "An outcast, laughed at by everyone around me for my absurd ideas. I wasn't just like you, of course--no one locked me away or anything--but people did think I was a little strange. Strange because I believed something nobody else did, just like you."
"What's that?" I asked him.
"That you could see me."
"Why would they think I couldn't see you?" I didn't bother asking who they were--I assumed he meant the uniform "they" by which we all mean other people, people we don't like or don't know, people we can say mean things about without feeling the pangs of a guilty conscience.
"Well, because you shouldn't be able to. Because we don't exist--leastwise not in the sense that you us the word."
"And how do we use it?"
"You use it to mean things you can see."
"Wait...what?"
"Have you ever tried describing me to anyone?"
I opened my mouth and shut it, because I didn't really know what to say. Instead I just started pacing around the room, eyes locked on him. I could definitely see him. I closed my eyes and tried to imagine what he looked like, but I found I couldn't. I opened my eyes and looked at him again. There he was, plain as day, sitting in the middle of the floor. But for the life of me, even now, as I'm writing this, I can't recall what he looked like. I wonder if I could have even written down what I'd seen while I was looking at him.
"That's weird," I said.
"Indeed. That's also why so many of my brothers laughed when I told them you could see me. They said there was no way a human could see something that wasn't there."
"But you are here. I mean, you are here, right?" I sat down on the floor in front of him and reached out my hand to touch his...face? I don't know.
He stood up and walked away before I could touch him. "By here do you mean occupying this space? And by space do you mean a series of connected three dimensional points in height, width, and depth? If so, then no, I'm not here."
"What do you mean?" I asked, standing up and hugging my sides. It was starting to feel a bit colder in my room.
"My brothers have wondered for many years why it was your kind never interacted with us, why it was that you always passed through us as if we didn't exist. It wasn't until recently--well, a long time ago, I guess, by the way you count--that we discovered the reason you don't interact with us is that none of you can see us. And by see I mean see, taste, touch and smell and the like. Sense I suppose would be a better word, but I like see. Anyway, you only see in four dimensions--height, width, depth, as I mentioned before, and time. Of course you only see time as we do, as one single point. I don't know of anyone who can see time as more than such, or even see a different part of time than the one everyone sees. But if he did, then I suppose he would interact with that point in time, rather than the one we see, and by the time we saw it it would appear as if he saw the same point we see. So who's to say we don't all see different points?"
"What?"
"Sorry, I can see I'm beginning to ramble. My brothers have always called me a bit of a philosopher--though I think that's just something someone can call a thinker if they don't want to have to worry about what the thinker thinks. Anyway, my point was...what was my point? What were we talking about?"
"Humans seeing in only four dimensions."
"Ah, yes, that's right. Anyway, as I was saying it's been recently discovered that you humans only see in four dimensions--not eight like we do--and since my brothers and I only live in one of those dimensions, you can't see us."
"I'm assuming the one dimension you live in is time, right?"
"Of course. Everyone lives in that dimension. You humans and all of your 'universe,' the Sssyruuk and their pets, the Bhakti, the...well, you get the idea. The point is that you humans are incredibly special because as far as we know, you're the only creatures that live in all eight dimensions but can only see in four."
"So you live in other dimensions as well?" It was at this point that I walked over to my bedroom door and peered out the window they put on it so they can watch me like a lab rat. I stopped believing what he was telling me as soon as he started talking about dimensions.
"Just one other dimension," he said, looking out the window. I think. I mean, I didn't see his eyes, of course, but I think he was looking--sensing--out the window. "We share with you the dimension that you call 'spirit'."
I rolled my eyes. "Oh, and now I guess you're going to tell me that all the crazy people here can see into different dimensions, and that's why they're acting so weird."
He laughed. "Of course not. They're acting weird because they're crazy."
Well, at least we agreed on one thing.