Part One: Sight Bestowed in a Universe of Changes
The Great Blinding was one of the worst things that could have happened to the modern world.
It was a horrible, terrible travesty and I’m sure the rest of the seven billion people on this shitty, dying planet will never be able to truly adjust to the changes we were all forced to adapt to, and that was almost two years ago.
The Great Blinding blindsided everyone- no pun intended- one fateful summer solstice morning back in 2028. Everyone in the world was getting ready to do their daily routines, going to work, getting the kids ready for school, kissing the handsome hubby goodbye before they headed out for the day to bring home the bread and butter after their nine to five.
Stupid mundane shit like that.
And then, that’s when everyone saw it. This terrifyingly beautiful vast white glare of light overtakes all of our senses and sight. The air grew hotter with each passing second as we watched the great blaze of fervor and illumination wrap around each corner of the sky and sink down to the edges of the ground, trapping us in a brilliant globe of an obscure prison. We all could do nothing but watch and take in a big intake of breath as this light passed over our view for exactly ten seconds before everyone in the entire world was trapped in darkness.
Literally, no one saw it coming. How could we? What could we as tiny specks in such a vase unexplored universe do when such a phenomenon fucks us all in the ass without even asking if we wanted to go to dinner first? What was anyone supposed to do in a situation like that?
The answer is nothing. We couldn’t do a goddamn thing.
I’m sure you could imagine the chaos and mayhem that was ensured as soon as everyone was rendered blind. I wish I could describe exactly all that went down, but I couldn’t fucking see so there’s that.
But the sounds I heard. . . the horrible, agonizing, dehumanizing sounds of society struggling to accept the fact that the little thing most people take for granted, the little thing known as sight, would never again be something that was a part of our human visage.
At least that’s what I thought, until just now.
It was as if I were a newborn opening my eyes for the very first time. But instead of seeing my mother cradling me in her arms and feeling the smiles of doctors welcoming me into the world, I was instead surrounded by concrete walls that had the same message plastered on them over and over and over again.
“DON’T TELL THEM YOU CAN SEE.”
I blinked around in astonishment at the warning I was seeing before me. It was almost as surprising as the magical notion of my vision returning once again. There was also the fact that I had no idea where the hell I was. How did I get here? One moment I was sleeping in my bed in the big room I shared with fifteen other blind teenage boys and girls and now here I was smack dab in the center of the abandoned place once known to the world as “New Orleans.”
“What the hell is going on. . .” I mumbled to myself.
Behind me, that’s when I heard footsteps approaching. Well, actually, there probably weren’t directly behind me, but after two years of being blind and forced to use every other sense other than sight, my ears became accustomed to picking up noises from a good distance away. It wasn’t like I was superhuman or anything though, it’s just I didn’t have much of a choice.
I quickly sought out a place to hide, but there was none. My body trembled at the thought of who “they” were and what they would do to me if they found out I could see again.
After spanning my head around the area a few more times and finding nothing, I did the best next thing.
Which was acting just as confused as I really felt on the inside by pretending that I had no idea what was going on because, in a way, I wasn’t.
"Hey, you!” a booming voice called out behind me.
Half my body went rigid, but I breathed in deeply and pulled my former thespian self right out of my ass when I finally faced them.
I was expecting to see aren't regular humans policing the streets and controlling the masses as everyone else that was forced to live inside the grounds thought. No, these things were something entirely different and not even close to being human.
In front of me stood two giant beings with cyan blue skin that sagged halfway towards the ground. Their eyes were pickle green, huge, and bulging out of their heads- the head that housed pricks of sharp pointy hair that stretched high towards the milky-gray sky.
On their bodies, they wore something that resembled armor- metal plates embroidered with cryptic words and designs that covered their entire chest, and a long tight skirt that stuck to their saggy skin like gum on dried fingertips.
And to make matters even scarier, they both wielded strange, obtuse weapons that were stained red-dry that had my mind ransacking all the explanations of who, or what, that blood belonged to.
I did my best to look sightlessly past them. I dug my fingernails in the palms of my skin to keep myself composed, ignoring the blood that trickled down my wrists and dripped slowly off my knuckles.
My mouth felt dry when I spoke, “Is. . .somebody there?”
“What do you think you’re doing out here?” one of the creatures spoke in perfect English. They sounded just like the stereotypical old middle-aged man who hated his job, his wife, and his kids, “Who allowed you to leave the grounds?”
I fished around for any prevarication in my head and said the first thing that came up, “I… I was searching for my younger brother. I heard him leave during the night and I wanted to find him.”
The creatures eyed each other for a few moments before their eyes hovered behind me and noticed the same message I just read only a few seconds ago. They didn’t seem too surprised by what it said, only slightly annoyed.
One of the creatures slowly pointed its weapon at me. My blood ran cold.
“Is that so?”
I nodded slightly, “Yes, it’s definitely so.”
“Hmm,” the creature hummed, “I understand. We’ll help you find him, young man. Please, follow us.”
And followed them I did. With the assistance of one of the creatures roughly dragging me alongside them as they lead me to God knows where I had the pleasure of seeing the city for the first time in almost three years. I always expected that if I ever got my sight back due to taking some magical cure that healed the sick and blind, sure the city would be in ruins, but the type of ruins you were used to seeing in all the regular dystopian films and shows.
You know, the ones with cars lying around everywhere, buildings broken down and practically falling apart, overgrown moss and trees covering any inch of brick and concrete. I had no choice but to use my imagination when my sight was useless to me.
But now that my sight had miraculously returned, I can see now that whatever imaginative idea I had in my head before couldn’t have been further from the truth.
What I saw before me wasn’t some city in ruins, no, what I saw before me was a city that had been completely colonized from head to toe. These creatures, whatever they really were, had forced their developmental nature on our city. The buildings I remember being as plain and normal as can be were now broken down and made entirely of a material I could only assume was glass with tubes coming out from the top and bottom. Creatures, the same ones that were leading me to wherever, littered the streets and wore clothes similar to human ones, only they were translucent and tight around their saggy bodies almost as if they were trying to hold all their skin inside.
As I continued to force myself to scan the new world around me in insouciant wonder, one of the creatures that held me close whirled around and covered my head around with a strange, wet cloth. The moment I tensed, the creature that had me by the arm threw me down to the hard cement ground and pinned me.
I struggled desperately against its strength, “Hey! What the hell do you think you’re doing-”
A heavy fist barreled down on the side of my cheek. I gasped in shock. When I opened my mouth to say more, the hand punched me over and over again until I was barely conscious.
Even though my world was already dark, I knew I was about to pass out.
Before I did though, one of the creatures bent down to my level and whispered something chilling in my ear.
“Nice try, but subject A1500 doesn’t have any family members on file.”
“. . .What?” I managed to gurgle out, some blood spilling from the sides of my mouth.
Ignoring me, I heard him step away and shout something to the other creature, “Take him to where the others are. We must not let them take our home away from us..”
Home? What was this thing talking about?
I didn’t know. I couldn’t think. All I could do was allow them to drag my limp body up by the shins of my legs and drag me away helplessly.
As they tugged me along, my eyes burnt at the contact of the wet cloth. Combined gasps of pain found their way out of my blood-rooted throat. During the midst of this situation, my mind drifted back to the two rules the old man told me right before he lead me towards the entryway to my escape.
Don’t get caught.
Survive the night.
As the mysterious substance burned its way into my sockets and the pain became increasingly unbearable by the second, all I could do was mentally punch myself in the face for not being able to avoid either, and due to my own stupidity, I'd be lucky to survive the rest of the day.
My moans of agony only agitated my captors, the one with the weapon that resembled a club brought it down hard on the top of my head, silencing me right away as I was knocked into a world that I had grown more than accustomed to.
Darkness.