© A Mixed Bag 2012
He sat on the sandy shore and stared up at the cliff. It would be the last thing he’d ever see. His peripheral vision was closing in on him. He could see the trees, the buildings, the tower, all through a continually narrowing tunnel.
“I wish I could have seen your face one more time.” He deliberately left her, left everyone who loved him, because his going blind wasn’t something he wanted to share. He didn’t want their pity, their concern, their last second attempts at trying to cure him.
He’d been studying the alien spores brought back from the dwarf planet Ceres by the Demeter probe. They were different enough from what he expected that there was a breach, just big enough to allow the spores to travel up through the electron microscope and into his eyes. His optic nerves deteriorated in just a few weeks.
Fade to black. “I’m blind.”
Then something rippled in his visual cortex.
“I can still see.”
The spores didn’t just destroy his human sight. They gave him back something better.
I wrote this piece of flash fiction in response to the Sunday Photo Fiction – April 2nd 2017 writing challenge. The idea is to use the photo prompt above to craft a small tale of no more than 200 words. Mine weighs in at 180.
I woke up this morning with some sort of swelling in my right eyelid accompanied by discharge. It looks pretty yucky, but is most likely nothing serious. Nevertheless, it did put the idea of vision in my thoughts, so I decided to write about it.
To read other stories based on the prompt, go to InLinkz.com
poweredbyrobots.com 
Looking forward to the next installment!
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Actually, Strange Sight isn’t about my ongoing storyline involving Brian Vail and his visions. This tale is a one-off, leaving a bit of mystery as to what comes next, just as I did yesterday in Time’s Window. Sometimes the point to writing a story isn’t to resolve everything, but to leave the reader wondering what happens next, a cliffhanger where you don’t know if the hero falls or is saved.
That said, I am writing the next installment of my Brian Vail series, so please stand by.
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No worries. I only hoped to say how I enjoyed it sufficiently to want more. Well done.
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Thank you, Kecia. Oh, I just published my next Brian Vail mystery: https://poweredbyrobots.com/2017/04/02/what-i-see-when-i-look-at-you/
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I do wish you would follow up on this, though…it has an excellent back story, and good potential! And you are getting very good at conveying a lot in just a few words.
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I might circle around and had a part two to this missive when I get the chance, Q.
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Interesting story. Well done.
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Thanks. I’m toying with an expanded version if I get the time to work on it.
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I like that. I wonder what it was he was given that was better.
Hope your eye has healed
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Thanks. With this particular kind of infection, it might take awhile.
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That’s not good.
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I’ve had this before, though not as bad. I’ve actually got a skin bacteria that made its way from my face to the inside of my eyelids. Difficult but not insurmountable. I appreciate your concern. Thanks.
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Just published the expanded version of this story.
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I absolutely love the optimistic end to this! Sometimes it feels like we don’t often get happy twists in the flash fiction community!
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Thank you, M.K. I try when I can. I wrote an expanded version of this tale so I could flesh out more of the details. Maybe you’ll like how things turn out for him even better.
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