The light dimmed momentarily as the refrigerator clicked
on, casting a brief, exasperated shadow across the sleeping form of the young
man who was sleeping on the small bed beneath it. He stifled a yawn, stirring in the bed before
reaching up to the wall and switching the light off. Outside, traffic crept across under the
noonday sun.
He stayed in bed for another several hours. He shuffled slowly into the bathroom,
relieving himself and then staring into the mirror. A frown crept across his face as his vision
blurred. He rubbed the sleep out of his
eyes and picked through the clutter on the counter until he found eye
drops. A few drops fell into his red
eyes, and he blinked rapidly. He
shambled back towards the bed and sat down, looking at the alarm clock. He lay back down and closed his eyes. When he got up twenty minutes later, his
vision was clear again.
His cell phone rang while he was in the kitchen, cooking
over the stove. He walked across the
studio apartment and answered with a slow, quiet hello.
“Steven, it’s your father.”
Steven rubbed his eyes slowly in quiet frustration,
before betraying a sigh into the phone: “Hey, Dad.” He walked back into the kitchen.
“Did you get the money your mother and I sent you? You didn’t call. Your mother wanted you to call after you got
it.”
“Yeah, I got it.
Yesterday. I haven’t cashed the
check yet.”
“Ok. Anything new?” His father’s voice rang in his ear, as Steven
thought back through his memory, searching for an answer he knew that he didn’t
have. He could see his father’s face,
sitting in the living room of the family home, the look of hopefulness spread
across his face as his mother stood looking on from the kitchen, her face as
expectant as his father’s. She was
probably holding a magazine or book in her delicate hands, her usual afternoon
ritual. He knew what her reaction would
be.
“No. Nothing new,”
he stammered, as he heard the audible sigh coming from the other end. He could see his mother’s face in the kitchen
doorway, her head hung low as she returned outside to the patio. He hurriedly told his father he was about to
eat, to general silence. He hung up the
phone, returning to the simple meal overcooking itself on the stovetop. As he sat down in the overstuffed chair to
eat, his vision blurred over again.
The shadows expanded across the street as cars sped past
in the evening, the distant sound of engines coming steadily from the
freeway. Steven sat in the chair
adjacent to his bed, staring at the television across the small, single room of
his apartment. He stared at it, in near
disinterest, but slouched down the in chair in near immobility, his eyes
blinking slowly, near a dead stare. The
early summer sun bore down through the apartment’s one window, sending heat
radiating through the small space. It
was not yet hot enough to demand fans or air conditioning, but hot enough to
draw the small beads of sweat across Steven’s forehead. He turned absentmindedly from the television
set and stared out the window. He
squinted against the harsh, orange light of the sun as it began to descend
across the buildings. His sight went
black, a bright afterimage burning through his retinas as he rubbed his eyes before
readjusting to the television in front of him.
The sound of dull laughter echoed from it, the studio audience reacting
to the sudden jape flung from the portly protagonist. Steven sighed, checking the time on his
clock. It was only a bit after five.
It was a life completely devoid of purpose. The sullen looks out the window to a larger
world that he only dreamed of while laying alone in his bed at night in the
tiny apartment only served to further push his mind further down the spiral of
despair that seemed to grip him at every passing. He barely ate, slept too long, and routinely
did absolutely nothing, leaving his apartment for a small amount of time each
week, to cash his check from the government and pay his rent. All through this, he occasionally found that
his sight was deteriorating, but he paid it no real mind at all. His father wore glasses, and his father had
as well, so Steven expected that someday soon, he would also be forced to wear
something to correct his vision. He did
not expect that when he woke up one Saturday afternoon that he would be blind.
