Tag Archives: blind

Review of Joanna Maciejewska’s Short Story “Black Eyes, Luminous Monsters”

springSince I’ve received my copy of The Cloaked Press science fiction anthology Spring Into SciFi 2019, which features my short story “The Recall,” I started reading some of the other stories. The first one was “Black Eyes, Luminous Monsters” by Joanna Maciejewska.

Okay, I hated the title but loved the story. We are taken into a world at war, but it is between the human colonists on the planet and a strange and highly lethal alien biomass called “The Anomaly.” Trapped in a bunker, a medic named Kyara is tending to a wounded and likely dying soldier when the Anomaly attacks. The only way to escape is to retreat to the evac zone, but the biomass grabs Kyara and she knows she has only seconds to live.

The humans have a single defense, beings called Stabilizers or “Stabs” which have the ability to combat the Anomaly. The problem is that the Stabs are just as dangerous, and spending any time in the presence of one could also be deadly. During the fight between the Anomaly and the Stab, Kyara passes out, sure that she’s about to die.

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Strange Sight Expanded

strange eyes

Found at freestockphotos.name

Ronald Connor sat on the sandy shore and stared up at the cliff where it all began. 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, Shannon, his fiancée, left everyone else 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, or even to understand exactly what was happening to him.

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What I See When I Look At You

blind

from the Tommy Edison Experience YouTube channel

The contents of his uncle’s safe deposit box were arranged across Brian Vail’s desktop. He moved the monitor, keyboard, and mouse of his PC to one side to make room. He wouldn’t be using the computer because he already had. The notes, letters, drawings, and other minutia organized in front of him contained far more relevant information about his condition than the internet did.

The origin of the sight was shrouded in mystery, though his Uncle Ellis, the most recent possessor of this ability before Brian, thought it went back to the 12th or 13th century, an ancestor who lived in either Southern France or Spain. He’s nameless, but was thought to be a mystic, one who dared to seek out the literal face of God.

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Strange Sight

cliffs

© 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