InsaneJournal

[reveal]
[Backdated reveal. If you read it.]

It was not as it had been when he was a boy. Then, it had been natural, fundamental. Breathing, it was, only quicker and easier.

This time, as an adult, he had immersed himself in a visual richness so full and glaring that it now hurt his eyes and mind to think on it, as if he was a newborn on the surface of a bright mirror. That man he had been last night, so vulnerable to black moods he associated with old tales of the Devil’s visits to virtuous saints, had yet been capable of such incredible visualizations of nature. Even now, there were stabs of shades too much to conform to cheap names -- geel, jaune, buí -- concepts, yes, but more experience. That kind of seeing was not natural, or easy. The incredible depth of it, the layers of color, had been absolutely without peer, incredible in the true sense of the word. In his mind’s eye, tiny threads of fabric and strands of curling hair stretched out in a profound clarity so perfect, he felt actual pain thinking of it.

Waking up in darkness was a different kind of pain. His eyes hurt. They didn’t often; usually, there was no lingering malaise from his childhood to inflict additional suffering into their sensitive depths. He spread his lashes open wide as they would go, staring up into the blackness and willing himself to see again the soft blush of pink on skin, the gentle curve of a shadow on cotton weave--even some, obscure tint that might alleviate the darkness.

Nothing came.

His eyes throbbed, and stung, but this time from tears. He put his hand out in the darkness in front of him, and saw nothing. At times the blindness through the years showed him shapes in a color without name, but it wasn’t seeing, just some cruel figment of the mind, splashes of sensation shown to him, poor substitutions. He felt the press of the mattress underneath his body now, felt the tangle of the sheet twisting and trapping his feet. He didn’t remember finding his way into it, or out of it, but he thought he must have done. He had not dreamed of color since he was very young, and he had not cried over it for half again that time.

He put his hands out again, and the motion produced no effect. Sobbing now, very quietly, in long, cold heaves that scraped his chest, he ineffectually grasped at nothing, forcing his eyelids to stay open, knowing it was pointless, but trying anyway. His feet slid down on the hardwood. The floors here were incredibly smooth, and growing familiar to him now. For once, he was not soothed by their touch.

Now the sounds came. They were nothing to fill the blackness. The sound of his new wet breaths and agonized gulping was concealing much of their effectiveness, but the screams of the horrible vehicle horns and the groan of their rubber tires came through the walls as if they were made up of no more than wind and threads of tar, as the ones with which he had grown up.

He covered his face, and felt his eyes burn as he finally let the lids close, scratchy and relentless, down over the sightless gaze. More darkness, bits of the usual pointless, impactful shapes. He wept for a while longer, because he couldn’t stop. There were no heartbeats nearby to hear him, and he let the hate for the useless little optic organs pour out through salty tears, lingering in that familiar, petty anger in hope the tears might somehow burn them out, acid on flesh, as punishment for their God damned uselessness.

Afterward, he wiped his face with the edge of his sheet and dressed. He thought he was probably going to Hell for that passing thought, even if it was the old pouk’s cloven hooves making him curse God and his eyes. He should find a church. Not for the first time, he imagined the burn of hellfire as if it was something real on his skin, just a little distance away.

He put on shoes, finding them near the end of the bed in the order he always left them, using a sailor’s knot on the laces because he had not learned the fancy (useless) loops. He thought of the church again, and shook his head. Even if he found one, he couldn’t go in. He was still angry for the glimpse of heaven, and resentful for its abrupt and total destruction only moments later. And then there was the touch of a woman…

His sins were piling up, and he couldn’t make himself regret them. Not yet. He put a mask on to prevent them from spilling out.

He found his way outside in the usual manner, ledge and window. Dawn was verging on full blossom; he could smell the sea mist burning off, and knew in his bones there would be rain later. He moved around after that, a very wide circuit, as if in a liquor haze, and he stopped only when an explosion in the direction of the park interrupted his meditative movements. Listening as radio instructions, clear as if they were shouted in his ear, directed the majority of sirens toward Midtown, he stayed in a relatively low perch of abandoned construction and flapping steel fence--until a very different set of sounds led him away, toward a crinkle of plastic, a shuffle of bitter powder, a solitary young voice, and many more old ones.