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By Paul Johnson
Darkness surrounds me, envelopes me, pervades my world. It’s all I’ve ever
known … and all I ever will, probably. My pitch-black prison is an
unconventional one: a sheet-black void. I’m condemned to a dark, one
dimensional, seemingly eternal abyss, yet surrounded by a three-dimensional
world of splendour.
Solitude personified.
Come, enter the world of the blind; enter my world.
Pitch black.
It’s a surreal reality of sound, touch, taste, and smell; these four senses attuned
to superhuman perfection to compensate for my lack of sight, my lack of visual
stimulation.
I’ve been blind since I was born. Twenty-three years of darkness. My useless
eyes moving in their sockets, but no more than window dressing to the outside
world – perfect azurite-blues with faulty retinas. The iris’s expand, contract,
expand, contract, but hide their ultimate purpose: to gaze upon a perfect world
of visual beauty, of immense perfection.
People have tried to describe to me that which I cannot see: the beauty of a
world of sun and light. Colours of the rainbow: red and yellow and pink and
green, orange and purple and blue. If only I could admire this spectral
perfection, instead of just feeling the warmth of the sun’s rays dapple my pallid
cheeks. My thoughts explode with enthusiastic speculation for the unseen
world. I long to watch the sun arc across its seemingly eternal celestial path,
and its smaller cousin, the moon, which casts its bewitching glow from its proud
and profound place amongst the vastness of space. The night sky – a vision
into the past – glittering with the spectral wonders of the universe – is a mental
vision which I just cannot seem to grasp.
My four attuned senses guide me through the maze of life. I try not to let my
lack of visual awareness compel me to lead anything other than a fulfilling life. A
world of stimulation beckons me forward, inspires me.
Voices of the multitude enhance my perceptions, my speculative nature. All the
different tones of the people I converse with (friends, relatives, strangers) fuel
my knowledge for the reality hidden from my gaze. Deep tones, warm tones,
high tones, low tones – each telling the story of the owner. Every tone individual
to its owner, every verbal enunciation a prophetic telegraph to me: the
unseeing. The world of the normal, the blessed, is the Heaven just outside my
reach, just beyond my grasp.
I still live a life of fantastic stimulation, however. The winds still blows through my
hair, tickles my cheeks. Frost bites at my fingertips, an unpleasant yet savoured
experience nonetheless. Birds, each with their own morning song, bless my ears
with their resplendent charm. Flowers, each with their own unique smell, are
delicate beauties of different shapes, sizes, and fragrances. I can still feel the
scrunch of sand in-between my toes as I walk along the beach, and hear the
crashing waves of the deep blue sea.
My four remaining senses are certainly not wasted.
There is a plethora of unseen wonders to explore, but I will never be able to
read a book, never be able to participate in any sports, never be able to gaze at
my own face …
This makes me sad, so sad.
Years spent in the dark have given me plenty of time for contemplation, plenty
of time to examine my own psyche, see what makes me tick. My motor neurones
have been awash with speculation – the grey matter, cerebral tissue, in
overdrive. But for every question about the world unseen, there are so many
more to ask. It’s a never-ending maze of possibilities to explore.
There is a bottomless pit that no matter how far I descend, I can never begin to
comprehend its depth … that deep dark hole of the black – home to the myriad
of faces that haunt my dreams, my nightmares.
They make their home in the darkness.
Pitch black.
Which would be better: to have been born blind, or to behold the visual world in
all its splendour, then have it taken away from me? Having never seen the
world, I really can’t say. Maybe I’d be disappointed, but I don’t think so. No, a
reality full of such beautiful sounds, smells, and stimuli must be a breathtaking
spectacle to admire.
I envy you.
Hope … now there’s a word that spurs me on. Someday … maybe … just
maybe, someone will find a cure for my affliction, rid me of this eternal darkness,
bring me into the light. I will always have hope; no one can ever take that from
me. No one.
If I ever do regain my sight then I will have an advantage (with my other four
senses so highly tuned) over other people, I think, because some people do
regain their sight, don’t they … don’t they? I hope so, then maybe I can be rid
of these horrid faces, banish them from my reality.
The main thing that keeps me going is love; now that’s something powerful
enough to bridge even the darkest chasm in the deepest pit of Hell.
I can still love, and be loved. Still feel the warmth of another pressed against
me, the throb of her heart, and the smell of her perfume. Sweet kisses tickling
my lips, testosterone pumping. The female form is a true beauty to caress.
Love is much deeper than physical, though; love is the only thing that can truly
fill the black void, bridge the darkness. It’s the promise of finding that special
person that spurs me on, gets me through the worst depression. One day I’ll
meet my ideal girl. Looks won’t matter, of course; I will only be concerned with
inner beauty, the true beauty of a person, the content of their soul.
Maybe I’m special? Yeah, that’s how I like to see it. Maybe God wanted me to
endure this existence to serve as inspiration to others, to show others that
adversity can be conquered no matter what the odds. Yeah, I like to think that.
It kind of makes me proud, makes me break out in gooseflesh.
My family are very supportive, and my guide dog, Mr. Chips – a golden retriever
– is the best companion I could ever ask for. He is my eyes, my guide through
the maze of obstacles around me. I love the feel of his soft white fur and his big
wet nose as he cosies up to me for some big-time fuss. What a big softy. I wish
he could protect me in my dreams like he does at all other times, but he can’t.
No one can. It’s just me, alone, in the dark, with the faces.
When I lay down at night, when all is silent around me, I lay awake and wait for
them. I stare out into the abyss. All I can hear is my own laboured breathing,
and feel the slight up and down movement of my chest. My body feels radiator
warm under the bed sheets, but taut with morbid expectation. Any moment now
a hand may reach out from the dark and …
They will come, they always do. They whisper to me; incoherent ramblings that
resonate, echo inside my mind. I feel their accusations in the tone of their
voices. They want revenge, I’m sure. Why do they haunt my dreams? Why do
they want to make me suffer?
I try to stay awake at night, but it’s no good. I eventually succumb to the
inevitable. My eyelids, feeling lead-weight heavy, slowly close, and I see them.
The faces. Sometimes there are many, sometimes only a few … but they always
come. Different faces, floating in the abyss: hazy and blurred sometimes; other
times, their features are gin-clear with a surreal clarity of frightening definition;
hatred furrowing a multitude of brows into a Grand Canyon of contempt.
Other than their hatred, they have one thing in common: none of them have any
eyes; just deep black voids where their eyes used to be, blood streaming from
those empty sockets.
At first I thought – hoped – that this was just a hideous nightmare, something
that would pass, something that I could battle through. But they aren’t
nightmares; they are very much a part of the reality that I live in – they are an
eternal plague upon my dark prison.
They want me to suffer for a long time, then … they’ll torture me in ways I can’t
comprehend. What will they do exactly? I really don’t know, but I do know they’ll
make my pain immense and never ending.
And so I wait in the dark.
Maybe I did something wrong in a previous life?
I wait …
#####
Definition of reincarnation as per The Oxford Popular Dictionary: the rebirth of
the soul in another body after death of the first.
Another definition: retribution – deserved punishment.
#####
Extract from The World Herald, dated 28th September 1958:
LIMOND FINALLY CONVICTED!
The residents of Wadsworth County will be able to sleep better tonight after it
was announced that Sean Limond has been sentenced to life in prison.
There were mixed emotions outside the Wadsworth County Courthouse
yesterday: people were happy with the verdict, but angry that it had taken so
long to catch and convict Limond.
Vicky Dawson, long-time resident, said: ‘Finally. Finally I can sleep at night and
not worry about him. That monster. God, what he did to those people, those
poor, poor people …’
Limond said that he thought the eyes were the windows to the soul, and that
was why he cut them out of his victims … while they were still alive. Detectives
that raided his house found the victims’ eyeballs pickled in jars with …
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