The Blinding
In Term 1, Year 7 students began their studies of English by exploring the crafting of creative texts. This included reading a number of short stories, and examining author’s use of structure, narrative, and creative literary techniques. They focused on the powerful use of descriptive language to create immersive and imaginative settings. Students were then asked to produce their own short piece inspired by one of the texts studied. This evocative and harrowing piece, written by Freya Budgen of 7A, responds to the prompt asking for a story with ‘a surprise twist at the end’.
Obliviousness. A twelve-letter word meaning to be unaware or unconcerned of what is happening around one. What it is to be oblivious, some see it as a blessing, some a curse but regardless of views and opinions no one truly wants to be oblivious, not like I was.
21:11pm, 21st of November 2111
Dimmed lights played shadow puppets with the pile of clothes and toys I’d left askew on my desk. I rolled my eyes as I listened to the news reporter drone on and on about how beautiful the moon outside was in an everlastingly monotone voice that was well past the point of being etched into my mind like an echo in my dreams. Maybe he’s right, I thought, maybe that useless buzz of a voice had some truth behind what he was saying, and the astral moon outside could be a sight against the celestial ink smudge of sky that hung low over the streetlamps.
I let my forehead rest against the biting cold of the glass panes, chin propped up against an arm I had slung loosely over the windowsill. I hadn’t seen the moon at first, just a ball of light smudged across the shimmering tapestry through a foggy haze of breath I’d spread across the window. But then came the moment my eyes finally found the globe of pale yellow, Earth’s only natural satellite, hanging in the sky. The ghost of a smile tugged at the corner of my lips as I thought of the uncanny resemblance between this beautiful grin of light and the ugly golden bulbs that hung lowly from rods above my dad’s kitchen island.
Like I was blinking my eyes open in the morning a vignette ring appeared in my vision. Disorientated, I fell back from where I was sitting, landing on top of one of my hands. I’d cradled it to my chest and glared up at the moon accusingly as if it was the cause of my pain. That when the light was gone, taken.
From somewhere far away a scream echoed up from the street, scared and confused I scrambled around my room, pain shooting through me as I crashed into cabinets and corners in my worthless state. I crawled with a stumble in my feeble form into what I thought may have been the lounge, towards the sound of that wretched monotone voice that I blessed in my head. I cried out and let my mother’s hands struggle to find me, rubbing circles on my back to calm me while fighting her own darkness.
21:11pm, 21st of November 2116
The Blinding, a mass event where the entire world went blind, all at once but without explanation. The cause? Scientists have been trying to find for the last five years but without their sight they can’t properly observe their tests, so their very professions have become futile.
I’m blind, just like everyone else – at least I was until exactly five years after that day. The feeling of seeing again after being blind for an amount of time that makes you forget you once actually saw is surreal. Light feels as fantastical as a fairytale, walking past people on the street as the yell that our sight will return makes you shake your head in pity but that’s just what the world became.
I awoke, breath coming in short gasps exactly 11 minutes after I fell asleep. I sat up, reached towards my bedside table and with a floppy, not-overly-dexterous hand I managed to fumble with the light switch until I heard the satisfying CLICK of victory. It only occurred to me that this was an old habit, one I hadn’t practised in five years, when the ugly shade of peeling pink paint smeared across my walls was illuminated.
My saliva quickly melted away, evaporating as my mouth dropped open almost as wide as my bulging eyes. My entire being went rigid, I was purely powerless to the terror that engulfed me as I saw it.
Right there, where my hat stand should have been, a figure stood, melting into the shadows around it almost seamlessly but with the soft glow now coating the room. I could clearly see the blurry line where darkness met mangled scratches and bruises that stretched up long, pale forearms. Palms damp, I shifted my weight to the hand that rested flat on my bedside table, only for it to slip out from underneath me in an act of bitter betrayal and cause me to tumble to the wooden floorboards. I froze, but it was already too late, I let out a desperate yelp of despair, but it was swallowed up as bloodshot eyes lent down towards me, accompanied only by a sharp smile that seemed to threaten my very mortality.
Freya Budgen, 7A