Eurydice

            The picture depicted three young people smiling into the camera in foreground, the blue waters of the Atlantic Ocean crashing against the beach behind them.  The young woman, in her early twenties, was in the center, her auburn hair and gentle green eyes illuminated by the sun that was clearly behind the camera that had taken the photo.  She smiled with her teeth exposed, white against her soft pink lipstick.  To her right, a sandy-haired young man coyly smiled, his face pressed up against hers, his bright blue eyes fixated on her behind paint-splattered glasses, squinting against the light.  Immediately to her left was another young man, his smile small and serious.  His long black hair hung down around his face, accentuating his dark complexion and eyes.  He looked stoic in comparison to the other two: eyes focused on something beyond the camera.

            The photograph sat hidden behind a computer monitor, a thin layer of dust covering the glass of the frame.  Behind the desk, however, the same photograph was committed to paint; it hung on the wall, directly above an aged version of the blonde young man, with creases and lines across his face, but the same paint-splattered glasses.  He fiddled carefully with a ruler, measuring the piece of canvas that sat in front of him, measuring its every dimension in deft moments, marking them with dark pencil marks.  There was no whitewash on it, just the fabric waiting to be mounted and eventually painted.  He let out a sort of a deep hum, and fiddled with the ruler in his hand, turning it in a circular motion while attempting to balance it on his fingertips.  It clattered to the floor and seemed to echo loudly, as if it was amplified by the near silence that was in the room.  He slid his foot to drag the ruler closer as he bent to pick it up.  He decided to stop fidgeting and continue to get the measurements correct.

            A younger version of the man had once sat in a coffee shop not too far from where his older counterpart had housed his gallery.  The coffee was just as bad as it was back then, a twisted sort of anachronism in the modern age of multi-billion dollar coffee companies and the standardization of those chain stores.  It was horrible, the man thought, grimacing through a sip; horrible, but the cheapest cup of coffee in the entire goddamn city.  He relaxed his stride upon exiting just long enough to catch his reflection in the plate glass window.  He saw that younger man staring back at him, slack-jaw underneath his unkempt sandy hair, his eyes filled with a million questions.  He moved as his older self did, across the window making wild gestures with his arms trying desperately to get his own attention.  The older man noticed: he could not help but to, for he knew for certain that if he could hear this young self, that he would be shouting questions and continuing to expect answers to what the older man thought were unanswerable questions.  He moved away from the plate glass windows, leaving his younger self standing there in complete confusion, mouthing obscenities to himself that everyone walking past the window would have been glad they could not hear if they would have noticed.

            There was a twisted expression on the older man’s face as he stood gripping the handrail on the commuter train as it would its way underneath the city of monoliths.  It was a confused look, with perhaps a bit of concern about it as well.  He stared at the floor, every disgusting, dirty bit of it.  The other passengers read, or stared off in the distance, but he just merely stared at the floor, that confused look sprawled across his face.  No one on the train would notice it, because that was always just the way that the trains in that city operated.

The idea, like the hundreds that came before it, was hatched sitting on a corner of an empty quad as the three students exhaled smoke and passed a joint between each other.  The sandy-haired young man gave a sparse cough as he let the last bit of pot out of his lungs before sliding his free hand across the thigh of the auburn-haired girl sitting next to him.  She slapped at it playfully, as they continued to barely listen to the dark-haired young man’s words as they rebounded against the back of the building that they were leaning against.

            “I’m telling you guys, we can just catch the train and ride it all the way to the coast for like nothing.  Cheap.  Dirt cheap.  My brother does it all the time.”  He furrowed his brow as he noticed his words had fallen on deaf ears. “Goddamn it, can’t you two just listen for like two seconds?” His cry of anger was cut short just as the joint appeared in front of his face.  He inhaled sharply.

            “Breath it in, man.  That’s it.  Now relax.  We’re listening.”  The sandy-haired young man carried a giant grin across his face that almost seemed as if it was running the risk of spreading outside of his head.  Beneath his paint-spattered glasses, his eyes held more crimson than blue.  He sucked his grin back in an instant, and retained a deathly serious pallor about him for just long enough to say one last thing: “I have to make rent this month.  If I don’t make rent this month, my dad is going to drive up here, throw me over his shoulder, and take me home kicking and screaming.”  Laughter spurted out mere moments afterwards, as his grin found its way back across his face.  He reached over to pluck the joint from his friend’s lips, and took another deep inhale before holding the smoke deep in his lungs as his face twisted up inside of itself, like it would do nearly two decades later as he stood holding on as the train plunged its way through the dark underbelly of the city.

            The auburn-haired girl next to him started to giggle at the sight of his face, as she crept closed to her, before affixing her mouth over his, inhaling as he exhaled.  She carried a serene look on her face as she exhaled the smoke.  She smiled, and ran her tongue against the front of her teeth before she began running her hand across the back of the sandy-haired boy’s neck.  He grabbed her wrist and pulled her close to him, her arm wrapping around his shoulder.  She looked at her dark-haired friend carefully before she spoke: “I like it.  I haven’t seen the ocean in such a long time.”

            “See?  We sit on the beach, just hang out all day, take in the ocean, the boardwalk, everything.  Then, it gets dark, we ride the train back home, catch some sleep on it, and we’re back up on campus before class on Monday.”

            “Casey, that’s all well and good, and I like the idea, but I’ve got a painting to finish before Monday.  If I don’t then I don’t have a very good chance of passing.  And if I don’t pass, then I don’t graduate.  And, if I don’t graduate, then my dad will murder me in a gruesome and sudden fashion. Closed casket funeral-style, man.  Like with a hatchet or something else.” The sandy-haired young man made a swift chopping motion with his hand towards his friend, which was accompanied by a “thunk” to drive his point home.  He gave a swift shrug, and searched through his backpack before drawing out three bottles of beer and passing them out.

            Casey twisted the cap of his bottle, and took a quick gulp, wiping his mouth with the back of his sleeve before responding: “Bring you stuff.  Paint on the beach. It’ll be better than wandering around this old place looking for something to paint. Shake things up a bit.  Paint the boardwalk or something.”  He clanked his beer against his friend’s, and foam rose out of the two bottles; “Kat’s in!  You heard her!  She wants to go, I want to go, and if you don’t, we’re going to go without you.  Then, the Ferris wheel on the boardwalk is going to stop with the two of us on top of it, and you won’t know what’ll happen after that.”  He made a shifty glance towards Katherine before settling back on the sandy-haired young man, just in time to take a deft punch to the shoulder.

            “I’m in.”

            “Good man, Mark.  Now let’s get us some tickets and get our stuff together.”  The three students tapped the beers together, before finishing them in quick successive gulps; they left them standing up against the wall they were sitting near.

            The train came to a grinding halt just inside the terminal, before chugging itself forward a few more tentative feet.  The older Mark stepped out quickly, narrowly avoiding collision with an elderly lady who was trying to get off at the same time.  He didn’t apologize before hurrying up the stairs and onto street level.  He hurried across the street and entered a small bistro motioning behind the hostess to the phonebook that sat unused underneath the phone.  The young woman handed it to him, and he began to paw through it with a look of desperation on his face.  After several minutes of scrutiny, he wrote an address down on the back of a piece of cardstock that was in his jacket pocket.  He thanked the hostess in a hurried tone and then ran back across the street and once again into the train station.

            He stood waiting at the ticket booth for what seemed like an eternity, impatiently alternating his stair between the people in front of him in line and the clock that hung above the small, conical space.  He could not help himself from fidgeting, before he advanced towards the counter.  In one swift moment he slipped a bill on the counter and mumbled his destination so that only the teller could here.  The old gentleman behind the booth printed him a ticket, and pointed to the staircase behind him.  Mark gave him a slight nod before turning quickly and hurriedly making his way down the steps.  He got onto the train mere moments before the doors were closed by the ticket takers.

            The train ride to the ocean was as unspectacular as the three could have imagined.  It was still dark when the train pulled out of the station, although the beginning of daylight had just begun to peek its way over the horizon.  They huddled into a booth, and immediately started dozing off to the sound of the wheels running across the track.  Katherine’s head was slumped against Mark’s shoulder, and on the other side of the booth, Casey had wrapped his arms across himself, buried in a jacket.  They did not stir the entire trip, waking with sleepy eyes when the train had stopped in the station.  They could not yet see the ocean, but they breathed in the salty air, which roused them to alertness faster than anything else had done.  They walked out of the station shoulder to shoulder, and heading east along the sidewalk, with Mark dragging a suitcase behind him.

            The sun was in the sky before the train had pulled into the station, and as the three students walked down the deeply cracked sidewalk, a level of heat had begun to stick about the day.  The mid-April cold snap had begun to thaw, and every tree that dotted the well-worn road had stubborn-looking buds that had sprung in defiance of the cold weather.  In the salty breeze, they seemed to reach up and over towards the sky, merely waiting for the sun to reach the right height overhead.  Katherine inhaled sharply as she intertwined her arm with Mark’s.  Casey knit his brow together in a serious expression as he looked around at the storefronts that they passed: “Nothing looks like it’s open yet.  I’m starving.”

            “It’s only April, Casey.  Lots of these places won’t be open until after Memorial Day.  Relax; I’m sure we can find someplace that’ll be selling breakfast.”  Katherine pulled away from Mark and slipped her arm around Casey’s shoulders in a brief hug as they continued walking down the road.

            “There are sandwiches in the suitcase, too.  You worry too much, Casey.  Always the little worrier.” Mark let out a brief, but loud chuckle.  He hustled in front of the other two and faced them as he walked backwards down the sidewalk: “We shouldn’t sit in some crappy, touristy café.  Let’s just grab something to go, and take it down to the beach.  I need to find something to paint.”

            Casey shook his head with a slight smile across his face: “You have all day to paint. No need to start now.  Let’s take in the town.”

            “It’s just another little crappy coastal tourist joint; from here up to Maine, they all look the same.  They’re dead from Labor Day to Memorial Day, and then everything is just too full of people.”

            Katherine looked into Mark’s eyes and scowled: “Don’t be so negative.  Sorry if it’s not ‘cool’ enough for you, Mark;” She changed the tone of her voice, mocking Mark even further: “Mr. Artist would rather be sipping espresso in the village than at some beach with his best friend and his girlfriend!” She was shaking in anger slightly, and both Mark and Casey had bewildered looks on their faces.  Neither of them had ever seen her in this sort of mood before.  Mark stopped abruptly, and sauntered up to her while wrapping his arms around her slender neck.  He bent in a few inches from her face and looked into her eyes apologetically.  Mark never apologized with his words, just with his body language.  Katherine kissed him gently, accepting his apology while Casey stood awkwardly staring up at the sky.  She looked over at him the entire time.

            They found a small cafe and crept inside.  It was near empty, and the waitress stood reading a romance novel behind the register.  She took their order quickly, and barked it back to a fat cook standing over a grill.  A few minutes later she handed over three to-go boxes, and the trio stumbled back out into the lighted world.  They found a nearby park bench, and sat on the edge of it while greedily devouring contents of their boxes: eggs, sausage, and potatoes.  They disposed of the empty boxes before wandering back to the main road, where the small coastal town was just starting to come to life.  They walked past a number of small shops, whose proprietors moved around inside behind locked doors.  There was a spring in the trio’s step after the food, and they laughed amongst themselves while they continually moved towards the East.  They began to ascend a small hill, and at the top, found themselves staring at the vastness of the Atlantic Ocean.  Mark looked at the other two, before elbowing Casey in the chest as he hoisted his suitcase up and starting running down the pavement.  The other two exchanged smiles before running after him.

            They finally caught up to him outside of the ramshackle changing room.  Mark was already inside, and emerged clad in an outfit that he had deemed incredibly ironic for him to wear: large plastic sunglasses peaked out from underneath a second-hand panama hat, which blended down towards one his father’s old Hawaiian shirts and a pair of shorts, worn in protest of the unusually cold April weather.  Another massive grin cut across his face when his friends emerged from the small shed.  They laughed in unison at his clothing choice, finding it humorous and even a little enviable.  Casey wore an old college t-shirt with shorts, while Katherine covered a simple bikini in a tank top and shorts of her own.  They all stood outside in silence, smiling at each other, until Mark began to count down on his fingers from three to zero, before pivoting swiftly and tearing across the sand to the surf.  Katherine ran after him, while Casey sauntered slowly behind, giving a little half grin as he stared out at the waves crashing out on the breakwater.

            The water was cold, but it did not stop them from walking through it down the beach.  They barely spoke, just walked through the surf, Mark’s arm around Katherine’s waist, and Casey walking with his hands in his pocket.  The beach was scattered with all sorts of shells and flotsam that hand wandered in with the tide, and every so often, one of them would stoop and pull something out of the sand, rinsing it gently in the water.  They held them out to one another, and paused in their walk to confer whether what they had found was worth keeping.  Each find kept getting switched for something better at every turn, and it was eventually Katherine who had found a thumbprint sized piece of blue sea glass.  It immediately went into Mark’s cumbersome suitcase, which was partially covered in seawater.  Up ahead, they could see the boardwalk loom.

            The older version of Mark had fallen asleep on his train, and only woke from his nap when it came to a grinding halt at a new station.  He looked around bewildered, staring across the train until he finally remembered what he was doing.  He disembarked slowly, following the small amount of passengers out, which seemed comprised mostly of students who were returning home to the suburbs from school in the city.  He enviously stared after the young men and women, each who seemed to carry an air of absolutely no worry or care.  He caught eyes with his younger self as he walked away between two young women, his arms around their waists.  He gave his older self a quick head shake before he disappeared from view.  Older Mark walked towards the information desk, with his discarded cardstock in his right hand.

            He had barely been waiting five minutes when the taxi pulled up to the curb outside of the station.  He climbed in the back, and held up the piece of cardstock to the cabbie.  The grizzled man gave a slight nod, and pulled the taxi out and into the traffic that seemed to gather out of nowhere.  Mark looked out from the back seat, and could see his younger self standing knee deep in saltwater, arms spread with an enormous grin on his face.  In front of him Katherine held up an old camera, and snatched a quick picture.  Behind her, Mark’s easel was set up, ready to paint the boardwalk.

            He stood over it, staring at the Ferris wheel from behind a brush, which he held up next to it.  It was a practice he never quite understood, taking for granted that it may have merely been for show.  Off to his left, Casey and Katherine sat in the sand, quietly eating sandwiches.  They watched him paint for over an hour before the itch to move seized them both.  Katherine walked up behind Mark and rubbed her hand against the back of his neck: “We should go up to the boardwalk, instead of just staring at it.”

            Mark shook his head in quick succession, letting loose a few drops of sweat caused by the intensity of his work and the growing afternoon heat: “No, I need to finish this.  You guys go ahead, I’ll catch up with you.”  He leaned back and kissed Katherine before returning his gaze back to his canvas, swiping his brush against the very top car of the Ferris wheel.  Katherine shrugged at Casey as he stood up, wiping the sand off of his behind.  The two walked up the sand dune and towards the boardwalk.

            Look at this unfold from his taxi, Older Mark felt an inward twinge of guilt.  He longed to bang on the glass of the back window, to convince his younger self to follow them, but he knew that it was futile, and the damage was already done.  He merely stared out the window as their tracks faded as the sand turned to concrete, and the dunes in front of them became houses.  The taxi had stopped, and he handed the cabbie a bill as he opened the door and walked out.  He looked up at the street sign, and looked behind him, just barely catching sight of the sun slipping behind the numerous houses that moved around in giant, simple geometric patterns along the streets.  He began to walk slowly down the road, and thought he could see a Ferris wheel sticking up in the middle of the subdivision, its lights brightening up the entire sky.

             Mark sat underneath the blue sky, his eyes splitting focus between the Boardwalk down the beach and the canvas in front of him.  He rubbed his eyes vigorously as his rapid perspective changes began to cause a headache.  He unconsciously, yet carefully, set his implements on the suitcase as it lay in the sand.  He paused, stretching his arms up and yawning vigorously before lying in the sand and staring at the sky as the sun had just begun to cast colors across the sky.  He had been painting for hours, and something was not quite right.  He couldn’t rest his mind, and pulled off his paint spattered glasses before resting his arm over his eyes.  He thought about the picture as he imagined it, letting it swirl around like the foam coming off the sea until he got it just right.  It has to be exactly right, he thought; otherwise it’s not even worth finishing.  He began to wonder what the boardwalk looked like under the cover of darkness, and whether he would have enough light to finish by.  He paid no mind to his two missing companions, figuring that they were playing some game up on the boardwalk.  His only focus is on how he was going to finish his painting.  It was to this thought that he fell asleep to.

            The sky was a deep purple when he awoke, covered in water and sand.  He jumped up, brushing himself off before frantically grabbing his implements off of his suitcase and looking at his canvas.  It was fine, but focusing on his background, he realized that sleeping had been the right call: the entire boardwalk was lit up.  He started making frantic brush strokes, covering the sky in his canvas with a deep purple that he was frantically mixing on the spot.  He carefully textured the small amount of clouds that hung in the sky above the Ferris wheel, before moving on to the boardwalk itself.  Each brushstroke was deliberate, and careful, despite the appearance of being rushed.  He worked with a furious intensity that had the beach been occupied by others, he would have undoubtedly drawn a crowd around him, watching him out of curiosity of what caused the young man to nearly stab at his canvas with his brushes.  The sun kept slinking behind the sand dune, and even in the drab light, Mark kept painting.  He didn’t stop until he was standing in the dark, alone.  He carefully put away his implements, and carried his canvas with him towards the boardwalk.

            Mark watched his younger self walk towards the boardwalk, as he turned and walked directly up to the door that stood in front of him.  He breathed in, trying to gather the last little bit of courage he had, hesitantly holding his finger over the doorbell.  It seemed like time itself had stopped, as he made the final judgment call as to whether it would end up being worth it.  He tried to stir up emotions that he had long suppressed, mannerisms and personalities that he once clutched to that died when he entered the real world in fanatic pursuit of his dream.  He pushed the bell and waited.  Even after two decades, he recognized that same face when she opened the door.

            The house she lived in was modest, but Katherine’s eye for decorating remained intact.  The various objects made the entire house seem like a museum, but more interactive.  Mark carefully picked up the bric-a-brac of sea shells and antique picture frames, studying the small children who were routinely and prominently featured.  He was visibly shaken, as if he had seen a specter or phantom materialize through every photograph he inspected.  He mind raced with a million questions, each attempting to batter down the door of silence he erected as Katherine bustled about in kitchen, preparing coffee.  As he paced about the living room, he eventually found a photograph he recognized: the same one which had not only sat upon his desk, but that he had committed to paint after their trip to the shoreline twenty years ago.  He traced his fingers around the edge of the frame, a simple wooden affair with sea shells and small pieces of beach glass affixed to it with strong glue.  In his left hand he had picked up that same piece of blue glass Katherine had found when they first wandered down the beach, sound of the Atlantic crashing over the breakwater, hand in hand.  He heard he call him from the kitchen, asking how he took his coffee.  He mumbled a reply about cream and sugar before returning to inspecting the numerous photographs.  When he noticed another, set in a similar frame affixed with more seashells.  He noticed the background of the photograph first, and recognized the Ferris wheel which dominated the sky.  He smiled, looking at Katherine hugging her two small children on that same beach, years later, but the smile faded when he saw the other occupant of the photograph.   He stood a little behind Katherine and the children, in a relaxed pose with his hands tucked into a pair of frayed shorts.  That familiar, uniform dark hair, coupled with that sly half-smile gave him away immediately.  Mark dropped the frame, reeling in a sudden understanding before he fled from the house and back out into the world.

            They found Mark sitting on a bench on the boardwalk, studying his painting under the bright, colorful lights.  No one said a word as they sat down next to him and together, all three of them stared off at the night sky for a long time before they got up almost in unison and began one last walk down the beach.  Even though it had been nearly deserted all day, in the dark the beach seemed like a vast wasteland completely devoid of life.  They walked in silence as the tide began to come in around their ankles.  They paused at the ramshackle shed to change quickly, before increasing their pace.  The shops were all closed along the neglected road, and ahead they could see the train station.  There was no train yet, and they had timed their arrival a touch early, but were still relieved that they were not going to be stuck on the shore overnight.  They sat on a bench in silence, Mark’s head resting on Katherine’s shoulder, and Katherine’s resting on Casey’s.  That was the last time that all three of them would be together.  The final weeks of their carefree college life would come crashing in, like the wave over the breakwater that protected the small Atlantic coast town from the ravages of the power of the Ocean.  Older Mark watched the three of them sitting on the bench, waiting for they train to take them back inland.  He wanted desperately to shout to them, to get their attention and try to insert himself back in that happy moment before he had to live through what came next, but his voice caught in his throat.  He pulled out the bit of cardstock revealing Katherine’s address before flipping it over to take another look at the photograph on the other side.  All three of the young faces stared up at him as first stared back at them, and then up at the sky, the darkness quickening and the first stars beginning to reveal themselves.  He replaced the photograph in his pocket before he stopped walking and turned around.  He saw no one there.

Tiresias (Finished Full Story)

Long time coming, but I changed finally finished it.  Figured I'd throw the whole thing up on one post for simplicities sake.

            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.

            Panic immediately set in after Steven figured out that he could not see.  The downtime was fairly considerable, as his mind raced along.  When he had gone to sleep, the sun was barely coming up above the buildings outside of his window, but when he woke up, there was nothing but darkness.  He flailed around in his bed as he could feel his blankets thrown away.  He yelled and thrashed for what seemed like an eternity, before falling off of his bed and crawling to his knees: it didn’t provide any orientation, and as he attempted to crawl to a phone or to the door, he slammed his face into the wall, feeling the throb of his cheek before he collapsed on the ground crying in dismay.  He did not get up for nearly an hour, curled up on himself sobbing quietly, the entire time his mind racing as he pleaded for an answer to what happened.  He never received a response.

            Without being able to see the light of the sun outside, or the lack thereof, only being aware of a relative time when he felt his stomach grumble with hunger.  He remained against the wall until that point, trying to regain his composure but failing miserably.  His hunger stirred him to action and Steven decided to try once again to figure a way to somewhere.  He could barely picture his apartment in his mind, the image already distorted from the panic and fear of losing his sight.  He did not know exactly where in his apartment he was as the thrashing and disjointed crawling was clouded by that fear that he was still trying to overcome.  His stomach turned; what if this is permanent, he thought, and inadvertently wailed slamming his head back into the wall, feeling the drywall give way.  His head throbbed in a rhythmic pattern, breaking his concentration on his condition due to the pain.  He reached his hands up, running the palms along the wall until he felt the hole he had just created.  The rough edges of the drywall greeted his fingers as his attempted to pull himself up, tearing the edges of the hole and making it larger.  He immediately wished that he had stayed on his hands and knees crawling.   From the new angle, he was even more disoriented than before.

            The phone rang, and in the darkness, or perceived darkness, Steven flailed around, attempting to find the phone.  He wept, crying in frustration as he slammed his head into the end table, feeling an oblong, plastic shape fall onto him as he groped about.  He heard the phone near him, but the ringtone died and he knew it had gone to voicemail.  He wailed in emotional agony, curling back up into a ball against the end table, and cried.  As he lies on the ground, Steven heard the phone vibrate slightly as the voicemail alert went.  He groped slowly in that direction, his hand moving deliberately in a wide fan-like motion across the carpet, trying to find the small cell phone.  He felt out, moving towards the wall and swinging both of his arms out before his fingers brushed across the phone.  He let a gasp out, jerking his hand back and sliding the phone open.  He carefully felt across the face of the keypad, straining his mind to try and remember the order of the keypad.  Why did I have to get a phone with a full keyboard, he thought, as his finger gently traced the keys.  After what seemed like an eternity, he believed he had figured out which of the small keys were the number keys.  He held his breath, and pressed three in a slow, methodical manner.  The voice on the other end told him he had guessed correctly.

            “I’m going to hold your eyes open and shine a light directly into them, alright?”  The voice came on suddenly, after Steven had been sitting by himself for what seemed like an eternity.  He jumped, and the doctor put her hands on Steven’s shoulder reassuringly: “Sorry, I didn’t mean to frighten you.”  Steven felt her pull gently at his eyelids, and he tried to hold his eyes steady.  He didn’t feel anything, and heard no sound other than the doctor sounding like she was experiencing something peculiar.  “Your pupils are dilating appropriately.  And you can’t see anything?”

            “No.  I can’t.”  Saying those words drove the reality of the past few days home to Steven, and he swallowed hard, deep into his throat, the words almost getting caught in the process.  He felt tears roll down his cheeks, and ne did not care that the doctor could see it.  He was still terrified.  He felt her hand rub his shoulder again, but he found no real comfort in it.

            “We’re going to have to run some more tests.  MRIs definitely.  I’m sure we’ll be able to find the problem.  You’re going to be alright.”

            “Ok.  Thank You.”  The doctor told him she would go schedule the tests immediately, and Steven heard he leave the room.  He was once again alone with his thoughts.  The near silent hum of the fluorescent lighting mingled with the smell of a hospital: the sanitary, scrubbed clean smell that reminded Steven of the proclivity of disease and reinforced the fragility of his entire existence.  His loss of sight had taken something from him that he didn’t even know he could lose; it ripped away any semblance of normalcy that he still maintained, replacing it with the cold, lonely darkness.  Steven sat, feeling a complete sense of terror, that same feeling that had not stopped in the time since he woke up to discover his affliction.  It welled up in the depths of his stomach, causing a feeling of nausea.  He attempted to endure to the best of his ability, but the quiet sobs still echoed through the room when a nurse entered.  She gently rubbed his back, and helped him into a wheelchair.  Her voice carried a sort of sing-song quality to it, and Steven found it incredibly comforting as he was wheeled slowly through the halls of the hospital towards radiology.  The nurse pushed him into the room, where another doctor explained the procedure in the quiet inflection of his soft voice.  He directed the nurse to help Steven into the MRI machine, which muffled their voices and Steven was left alone inside the metal cylinder. Without seeing his surroundings, Steven could envision the machine holding him close inside its metal exterior.  His mind flashed backwards to his childhood, and the last time he was trapped inside the magnetic embrace of an MRI machine.

His father gripped his small hand firmly but with a sense of tenderness.  He smiled down at Steven in an attempt to be reassuring, but the young boy was still terrified beyond all belief.  He was disoriented and dizzy, his mind racing at a hundred miles per hour but also sluggish and his thoughts hard to concentrate on in a wicked dichotomy caused by the fastball sent straight into his eye.  The bruise over it was substantial, the eye swollen shut behind the purple sheen the skin had adopted; tear streaks were still visible across Steven’s cheeks, especially the left one, which was clearly too tender to be touched.  Steven’s baseball cap was slid far over his face, and his father kept shaking him at intermittent intervals to ensure that he was responsive: he was, but barely.  The nurse ushered them into radiology.  The minute that Steven found himself inside, panic began to grip his young mind, forcing its way through the muddled thoughts.  He tried to thrash viciously against the restraints, wailing in a pitiful cry for his father to help him.  The man stood on the other side of the window, listening to his son crying inside the metal tube and feeling a growing sense of impotence within him, unable to do anything due to the machine running and the potential intervention of the hospital staff.  He chewed his lip viciously, blood beginning to form in the corners of his mouth as he heard his little boy cry in terror.  The tests were finished, and proved that nothing was wrong with Steven past the concussion; the problem warranted intervention of more in-depth testing, but no additional problems were discovered in the young boy.  His father feared that he would not be the same after that day, and he was correct in that assumption.  In his concussion-addled state, Steven had experienced a level of isolation and fear he was not prepared to deal with at the age of ten.  Inside the darkened sarcophagus, Steven felt every doubt his young mind could conjure up, even in the few brief minutes that he was encased inside.  As he sat once again inside one of the machines, his mind drifted back to that day thirteen years ago; and although blind, his mind’s eye re-conjured the horrific images that he had invented all those years ago.

It was loneliness that struck him first, deep within the MRI machine.  Despite being spoken to only a few moments earlier, Steven knew full well that the doctors and his father were behind the glass in the other room, leaving him alone inside something he did not understand: in the rush and explanations, no one had explained to the boy exactly what was going to go on inside radiology.  That uncertainty left a level of anxiety in an already disoriented mind, which did nothing to calm his nerves.  He remembered the baseball, and his father getting him into the car, as well as vaguely waiting in the hospital.  All those were blurred, and coupled with the blank spots in his memory, caused the young Steven to be forced into the machine in an already damaged state of mind.  Inside the machine, time slowed to a crawl as the isolation began to creep inside, sending a spike of anxiety deep into the center of his mind.  Every sound the machine made around him was a symbol of imprisonment and an impending doom that crept across his skin, forming goose bumps so intense that nearly every muscle in his body shuddered along with his skin.  Formless phantoms crept into the darkness of his peripheral vision, concepts of fear that only a ten-year-old boy could adequately understand.  That sense of abandonment was the chief anxiety, as Steven remembered every time he turned around in the grocery store to find his parents missing, was left at soccer practice late due to a miscommunication; the only real difference is that this time, he felt like that abandonment was intentional, especially knowing that his father was right behind the glass with the hospital staff.

He assumed he was sitting in another examination room following the MRI, bathed in that familiar fluorescent light despite not actually being able to see it.  It was easier without seeing anything this time, Steven thought, fidgeting in his seat while he waited for someone to come back into the room.  The nurse had left him here, saying that the doctor was going to be with him soon in her sweet, reassuring voice.  I wish they would have left me a magazine or something, thought Steven, before he chuckled for the first time in the two days since his mysterious affliction began.  He felt actually content, sans his inability to see.  Following the MRI, the nurse had brought him something to eat; he hadn’t been able to, and his hunger pangs were a great discomfort to him.  With a full stomach and feeling adequately hydrated, the fear gnawed at him less.  The isolation remained, but not nearly as terrifying as he remembered earlier.  He held his quiet contemplation until a knock at the door made him jump up in his chair; he had fallen asleep.

“I’m sorry to wake you, Steven,” the doctor said, Steven recognizing the soothing voice almost immediately.  He heard her walk across the room, rubbing his shoulder again as she sat down next to him.  He nodded slowly, wanting to say something but his voice caught in his throat when he realized that she had the results of the scan.  He felt himself trembling, and the doctor noticed it too, rubbing her hand gently across his back.  “The test results came in, and I have good news, but it’s coupled with some perplexing news.  Luckily, the scans were all inconclusive; we didn’t find any tumors, nerve damage, or anything at all.  Unfortunately, that means we don’t know why you’ve lost your sight.  I’m going to assess the situation with some specialists, and we’ll figure out a course of action to take, ok?” She kept her hand on Steven, noticing the tears forming in his functionless eyes. “Now, until all the details and a few more examinations performed, there’s no guarantee of what exactly we’re going to do next.  You gave the emergency personnel your father’s phone number, and he’s been alerted.  In fact, he’s downstairs right now filling out your discharge papers because you’re going home with him.  We’re going to try to get you all the assistance you need until we figure out what’s going on, ok?”

Steven nodded, thanking the doctor for the help.  He heard the nurse again in the hallway, right before feeling her hands helping him back into the wheelchair.  On the walk toward the elevator, she stopped talking just long enough for Steven to ask her name and how old she was.  Her name was Joan, and she was twenty-six.  Steven swallowed hard, and continued to make small talk, trying to quell the uncertainty in a different way.  When he heard his father’s voice, he knew what was about to happen.

“Are you faking it?” His father first spoke in the car, long after the hospital.  They rode in silence for what felt like an eternity, but Steven still could not adequately tell the passage of time; every minute felt like hours and every hour, only a few minutes.

“No. I can’t see anything,” replied Steven, in a cold, almost distant voice.  He swallowed hard, and felt himself blinking back tears as rapidly as he could.  The admittance of his blindness caused more despair to well up inside him, but he desperately wanted to keep it at bay.  He did not want to let his father see him cry.  As he tried to compose himself, his father reached out and slapped him across the face.  Steven let out a shriek, and began to sob: “Why did you hit me?”

“I had to be certain.  Sorry.” His response was gruff and unapologetic, and Steven knew he still didn’t believe him; he also suspected that at some point, his father would try to disprove his condition again.  There was no helping it, despite anything Steven would say: his father believed in empirical evidence in nearly everything Steven did, and would not be content until the tests performed by the hospital proved the blindness was real or that he had successfully gotten a confession out of his son.  Steven knew that if he could see, he would notice that telltale sign of his father’s mind at work, with his jaw set forward in a rictus smirk and his nostrils flaring with each rhythmic breath.  He said nothing the rest of the drive home.

Adjusting to his new sightless world proved to be easier than Steven expected after a few initial hurdles.  He found himself enjoying the senses that remained more, requesting silk sheets from his mother and sitting in the dark of his room with noise-canceling headphones connected to an outdated mp3 player.  He would do this for hours when not in therapy: the player on shuffle, running through his large catalogue of music.  His father had agreed to a monthly music budget despite his no-nonsense attitude toward music in general; despite being a hard man, he knew his son needed something until the braille lessons progressed.  Music was his sanctuary from the world of darkness, as his memory preserved the image of the world around him: the soft colors of spring became even more vibrant as he remembered them when he first could smell his mother’s lilacs blossoming in the warm breeze as he sit out on the deck.  The scans had long since stop, and other than learning to read with his fingers instead of his eyes and learning to walk with a cane and a seeing-eye dog, Steven had little to do with the medical mystery that had unfolded.  There were no signs of a tumor, he learned, and his optic nerves continued to function, even to continue to allow his eyes to dilate when exposed to light.  Enough tests had been ran that the doctors attending him recognized that his lack of vision was legitimate, but, fearing as doctors often do, they perceived that it may be a symptom of a deeper psychological issue instead of physiological.  This did nothing to help his issue with his father, a man who refused to believe in therapy and other “bullshit” as he eloquently put it one evening during dinner.  Either Steven had a tumor or he was faking it for attention.

Steven, however, had come into his own in his sightless world.  He was no longer the introverted homebody that he once was, even despite his blindness.  The opposite had occurred, where he relished the time he spent walking outside with his seeing-eye dog, Chase, at the lead.  The park seemed more vibrant and alive when he perceived it through his other senses.  He had reconnected with old acquaintances, with whom he had no real contact with since his days at college.  During one particular outing, he had run into the nurse who he had met during his initial hospital visit, right after he had lost his sight.

The relationship between the two blossomed from coffee meetings and walks through the park into an actual romance.  Steven found that his blindness had eased his anxiety in dealing with others, calmed the words of fear that echoed through his head during conversations.  His thoughts became much easier, and he was able to accept Joan easier without seeing her with his eyes: his hands conferred that she was beautiful and soft, and her voice calmed him in ways he never had experienced.  He felt an innate connection to her, like he truly understood her.

These feelings of ease and comfort still spread a darkness through his thoughts, deep into the recesses of his mind that psychoanalysis were attempting to tap into.  He knew it when he woke from fitful sleep in the middle of the night; he knew his new fear the bred through his thoughts at night and had begun to poison his waking mind.  He feared that if he had regained his sight, that connection to Joan, and ultimately to the world, would fade.  The words of doctors, meant to be encouraging, cut through his mind like a knife.  It began to burden him, burden his recollections of the world around him; colors drained from flowers, kind voices became condescending, and even Joan seemed distant and away.  He could not escape it, which meant that the day his eyesight inexplicably returned was thought to be the worst day of life, even far worse that the day his eyesight disappeared.

He woke in the morning with an eye flutter, where he expected nothing but darkness.  Instead, he saw the familiar paint scheme of his childhood bedroom, the light blue intensifying in the bright morning light.  He gasped and closed his eyes before he quickly opened them again.  The room was visible.  He could plainly see the off-white of the paint on the walls, bathed in a cool glow of light from the morning light cascading in through the uncovered window.  It was fuzzy at first, as he focused in and out on the meticulously organized albums lying in their milk crates.  He blinked, rubbing his eyes furiously, as the room around him came in clearer and clearer focus.  He felt nauseas and dizzy as his eyes adjusted; he stood up, and felt a rushing sensation in his head as his brain adjusted to the flood of new information.  Silent tears fell down his cheeks.  When his head cleared, Steven carefully picked his way downstairs without his cane, but with his seeing-eye dog carefully following him with a sense of concerned loyalty.  The abundance of light caused his head to throb slightly with the beginning formation of a headache. 

It was his mother who first noticed what was happening.  Steven was not being led by either a cane or Chase: instead, the dog followed closely behind carrying a look of concern on his face, or as much as a dog’s face can betray a sense of concern.  Steven moved effortlessly to the table, sat down, and stared into his mother’s eyes.  She stifled a gasp, as he nodded slowly.  He did not even want to utter the words that were flowing through his mind.  He wanted to eat his breakfast in peace and quiet, to try and finish the abstract thoughts of the new evolution of his predicament that had been forming in his mind all morning.

The silence lasted a mere 30 seconds, before his mother began crying in happiness, rushing across the side of the table and embracing his head in an awkward hug.  She began calling for Steven’s father, who soon entered from the garage: “What is it?”

“Steven got his sight back!”  The words, finally articulated and out in the open for Steven to hear ripped through his chest like a gunshot.  Was I happier with my sight gone, he thought, his mind racing as to what his father would say.  His father stood in the door leading to the garage, rubbing his glasses with his shirt.

“Good.  Should probably call up that doctor.  They’ll probably want to run a few tests or something like that.”  He turned in the doorway, and, as per usual, Steven could not read the emotion his father exhumed.  “I have to get to work,” was all he said before closing the door.  Steven and his mother could hear the car pulling slowly out of the driveway, honking good morning to one of the neighbors.

Steven excused himself back up to his room when his mother began to make a number of phone calls to friends and family.  He could here snippets of her conversations carrying through the vents up to his old room.  He rubbed the back of his hand against Chase’s back as the dog lay on the floor next to the bed.  The thoughts that had been plaguing him all morning continued, drawing his mind in dizzying circles.  Chase will probably be gone, he thought, still stroking the dog’s fur.  He’s a Seeing Eye dog, and I don’t need him anymore.  There’s probably some sort of waiting list, and someone on it needs him.  He stifled back a sigh, as he heard his mother hang up the phone.  She called up to him, and told him that he had an appointment scheduled for tomorrow.  He did not respond, but his mother did not press the issue.

The rest of the morning was surprisingly difficult.  Steven, while seeing at full function by his reckoning, was so used to being without sight that menial tasks took a tremendous amount of concentration to perform.  He found himself tripping over his own feet as he walked, staring down at them so he could ensure that he moved the way he remembered seeing in the past.  However, it was his depth perception that caused him the most confusion.  He still walked with his hands outstretched, as his mind attempted to process the distance between himself and the objects around him.  By lunchtime he had managed to get a somewhat competent grasp on his movement, and at that time, he knew he was supposed to meet Joan for lunch.  He took Chase with him as a knot of fear crept into the pit of his stomach.

The daylight was brighter than he remembered it, the tyrant sun beating down upon the ground which caused Steven to remove the sunglasses from his pocket and put them on.  He knew that he looked blind still, but the light was overwhelming.  He was not prepared for it.  As much as he was relieved to see the colors of the world around him again, he kept everything behind the shade of gray from the sunglasses.  He grimaced, wishing his eyes would adjust faster back to normalcy so that he could attempt to enjoy the view on his walk, and try to take focus away from his anxiety.  After walking for roughly ten minutes, eyes up and watching everything around him, he arrived at the small restaurant.  He had never eaten there before losing his sight, but he remembered passing by it: the sight of the squat brick building on the corner of two busy streets, it’s outside area ringed in an iron fence.  He felt Chase pulling him towards it excitedly.  The dog pulled him towards a table occupied by a single young woman, who, predictably as Steven would have expected, had her back turned to him.  He knew at once that this was Joan, but that feeling of fear intensified, as he realized he was now going to see her for the very first time.

She reacted immediately when Chase came and put his muzzle across her lap, wagging his tail at a frantic pace.  She petted his head carefully, and looked around to see Steven walking towards the table, moving slowly but deliberately.  Her eyes widened and her mouth dropped open as she noticed why he had let Chase run ahead of him.  Steven sat down at the table across from her, and looked at her face for the first time.  She reached her hands out to cradle his, rubbing the base of his thumb in comfort, while tears held in the corner of her eyes.

Neither sad anything for a long time, just looking at each other.  Steven knew that Joan wanted him to say something first, but he could not bring himself to say anything as he studied her face, drawing in each detail to paint the whole picture of her as he knew it.  There was a blank space on the canvas that he was busy filling in.  He had already had a rough idea of what she looked like, based on what his fingers had told him shortly after their second date.  After what felt like hours staring at each other, Steven finally uttered three simple words: “I can see.”

Joan’s reaction was sudden and expected from anyone who knew the emotional young woman.  Her mouth, which at that point was already turned upwards in the corners, broke into a huge, joyful smile as the tears she was holding back cascaded down her cheeks as she reached her hand up to Steven’s face and traced her thumb on the top of his cheek.  Steven instinctively reached his hand up to hers, and smiled as he looked into her eyes.  At that point, he felt, deep down in his core, that things may actually work out.  For the first time in his life, he felt positive going forward, and barely registered placing an order as he could not help himself from staring into Joan’s eyes.

The hollow MRI chamber was just as he remembered it as a child, sterile and confusing, but without the fear caused by the concussion.  He stared up at the sterile white above him, as the machine hummed around him.  He closed his eyes and let the humming grow in intensity until it felt like it was vibrating his brain, the magnets of the imaging machine sensing every thought, what few there were at that moment.  This is what being Zen must feel like, he thought, before he realized that by acknowledging the moment, it had passed and filled his mind with a thousand thoughts that branched off of the trunk of Zen that his mind had created.  He stifled a short laugh, feeling an immense grin cover his face as his initial thought of the machine reading his mind as well as scanning his brain crept back.  He thought of the technicians standing behind the glass laughing at the absurdity of his thoughts about Zen.  His optimism was startling, and could not help but continue smiling after his doctor continued to tell him that it was still a mystery as to why he had lost and then regained his eyesight.

His parents agreed that the transformation after the blindness was profound and unseen.  Joan could not comment on the issue, because she only knew him as the blind patient in the throes of despair immediately after the affliction began, or the sweet, gentle man who she had begun seeing following his affliction.  Steven returned to the workforce, his years of depression melting away.  He did not particularly enjoy his job, but he viewed it as necessary, working in a distribution warehouse.  He had a grip back on reality, but his new optimism was no longer lingering.  It had faltered and begun to fade with each passing day, as he slipped back into reality with everyone else.  He once again began to withdraw from the world around him, and almost as quickly as his newfound happiness arrived, it seemed to fade.

The grey, late winter sky reflected the light of the ice and snow that covered every inch of the ground, but without the sun, it just added a faint, somber glow to the world outside of Steven’s bedroom.  He had the shades drown, letting barely any of the ambient, natural light of the outside world in.  He was lying across the width of his bed, his legs standing up against the wall as his head hung upside down.  His eyes were shut tightly, listening to the sound of his telephone ring.  He had refused to answer it in several days, and knew that it was his parents, Joan, or his supervisor.  He did not care, and that listless energy carried itself through the entire apartment.  A few weeks ago, the trash was cleaned up, and the kitchen was full of food; he had given up on both shopping and cleaning, and the empty takeout boxes were a timeline of his despair.  It had been months in the making, shortly after his sight had returned, he had lost his way again, brooding for a time like he had before his temporary blindness.  He perceived that as the future, the cyclical nature of his existence had become very clear to him.  But his vision remained unchanged through his descent back into his depressive state.

He did not change his position on his bed until he felt that all the blood had successfully rushed to his head and he felt dizzy.  He turned his body and sat up, and his vision blurred as if a fine grey mist had crept into it.  He heart leaped into his throat as he stood up and walked deftly to the kitchen, reaching his hand out towards his phone and pressing the speed dial.  It rang only once before he heard Joan’s voice call out his name frantically, just as the blurriness faded and he saw everything clearly around him again.  She kept repeating his name, but he did not reply, just simply hung up his cell phone and placed back in the same spot.  He drummed his fingers impatiently before walking out of the apartment and down to the mailbox.

He held the brown cardboard box in his hands as he stood in front of the mirror in his bathroom, studying his eyes carefully.  He switched the light on with the back of his hand, never breaking eye contact with himself as he inched his face closer to the mirror. He looked into the black of his pupil, past the hazel of his iris and into the nothingness at the center of his eye.  He knew that was the answer to the puzzle he had been turning through his head recently.  He had the answer.  It had finally arrived in the brown cardboard box, carrying the stamp of a medical supply company.  He began to open it, just barely breaking eye contact with himself, before setting the sterile sleeve off to the side.  He opened the nearest drawer, removing a vial of liquid and a small syringe.  He carefully filled the syringe with the liquid, tapping the needle carefully and squirting out a bit of liquid to remove the air bubbles, just like he had seen Joan multiple times before.  He drew a deep breath, staring back into his eyes after he filled the syringe.  He slowly brought his hand towards his eye, grasping the syringe with a sense of grim determination.  He paused, before sliding the tip of the needle into his tear duct and sent the liquid into his eye.  It was almost immediate.  His eyelid dropped slightly as all feeling left his right eye.  He quickly moved the syringe to the left and ejected the rest of the liquid within, experiencing the same feeling.  His eyes felt strange, mainly numb, like he had taken for granted that he had felt his eyes his entire life until now.  He ripped open the sterile packaging and felt the handle of the scalpel, the cold metal causing his reluctance to send Goosebumps up his arms.  He paused, staring at the instrument through numb eyes.  He knew this was the only way.  He had seen it as the only return to normalcy after he had regained his sight the few months before.  He knew it was the only.  He carefully placed the scalpel on his eye.  He felt nothing but pressure before the darkness returned.