A strange short story I just wrote quickly, not sure whether I like it or not.
Let me tell you of the story of the man with no eyes. He was a man of simple needs. A man perpetually waiting for nothing.
Everyday he would take walks. He would leave his home, the screen door swinging shut behind him, left for the wind to play with as it was blown open again and again, he walked down his front step and straight down his walkway bordered by a small sea of neatly kept grass. He would always turn left no matter the day. He would walk for hours his head bent down walking to nowhere talking to no one. He would walk to the park and sit on his bench. Alone and silent. Listening to the children play and the wind dance past him. He would walk to the market but never walk inside. Just stand there looking at the doors that opened at his presence and then closed once again. He would walk to the ocean and stand by the sea. His arms folded behind him, his chin held to the breeze. He would stand there in silence all alone again. He was a man of simple needs.
What he needed and what he received where very different things. He wished for solitude and instead received ridicule. The man with no eyes was mocked as he wandered. He could go nowhere in peace as he was always followed. Mostly by children and the occasional cruel parent. But he was followed mainly by whispers of fear and disgust. Haunted by his pursues he was never alone.
“Look at him, the man who cannot see. What a horrible life he must lead, oh I do pity the poor man who cannot even see his own hands.”
“ What did you do old man to loose your eyes? Did you kill someone, or just loose to the Devil one to many times?”
“He can’t see anything, we are better than him. Poor soul, poor blind man. We are better than you.”
He would shake his head but never answer, just continue on his way in silent torture. As he walked out his door, letting the screen door bang. He wondered down his walkway and was knocked to the ground. He couldn’t see the men who did it, or make them stop. They beat him yelling
“We can get away free with all that we want, the blind man can’t tell. He doesn’t know who we are because he can’t see. Poor blind man with no eyes to see!”
They laughed at him as he bled on the ground. The neighbors watched but didn’t utter a sound.
His torturers left him bleeding on the ground the old man picked up his head and uttered a sound. The boys stopped surprised by his voice. It was not weak or feeble but loud and sure. Not the voice of an old man but that of a wizened soul.
“You will see one day, that I am the lucky one. I don’t need my eyes to see my punishers. I don’t need to see to know whom you are, to know what you’ve done. When judgement comes, everyone will know. I don’t need my eyes to see you, to see through you into your small pitiful world. One day you will see just how lucky I am. Then you will know who the poor soul is.”
The boys stopped, looking back in silent horror. Their voices ripped out as they stared at their would be prey who laughed and laughed at their ignorance. They ran like cowards to hide in their world of light. To seek out justification for what the man without eyes had said against their crimes.
The neighbors left leaving the man to his own accord. He stood up slowly wiping the blood from his face. He shook his head and uttered a word of disgrace. They would see, he knew. They would pay one day but when he didn’t know.
That one day came in the old man’s final years. Decades after the boys on his lawn had punished him for a fault he knew was to be his greatest asset. The day the earth fell from the sun, and the lights went out the old man had won.
He sat in the darkness as everyone screamed. Panic and discord ran through the streets. They yelled for help because they couldn’t see. The sons of light left alone in darkness. No matter how loud they screamed no one would hear them. The old man laughed and laughed as he took his daily walk. He walked out his front door leaving the screen banging but it wasn’t heard in the loud clamor of panic. He walked down his walkway surrounded by grass. He turned left into the world that had so drastically changed.
He laughed and laughed because he knew it was going to come, and here it was at last, and no one had listened to the man with no eyes who saw all but never told.
There was no change for him, all was as it had ever been to the man with no eyes.
