The Optometrist

The chair was cold. Icy on her skin, and yet she couldn’t move. She didn’t even know if she had the intention of getting away or if every will that was once present in her body had disintegrated in the air. She looked through the hole. She looked through the lenses like she was directed to,

“What can you see?” the woman asked.

“Nothing,” she replied quietly.

“What?”

“I said nothing,” she repeated. The woman pulled a slider,

“Now?”

“Nothing,” she said emptily, clasping her hands together in her lap,

“And how about now?” the woman asked,

“Still n-” but she paused for a moment, “I see a house.”

“And where is that house?”

“On a hill,” she said emptily, staring at the image before her,

“Do you see anything else?” the woman asked,

“A little girl,” she said, “with brown skin. With brown hair. With brown eyes.”

“What the little girl doing?”

“Shes crying.”

“Why is she crying?”

“Because her mother stabbed her father,” she said, choking on her tears, “because her father is lying on the kitchen floor bleeding to his death.”

Chapter one;

2006 was not the worst year, nor was it really the best. But a step into the twentieth century always promised great things; artificial intelligence, space exploration, immortality, a cure for cancer, devices that attached to people’s brains, flying cars, and a utopian society. But the closer humanity had gotten to making a break in technology the closer humanity came to its fall, for now kids were glued to the tv. They were playing mindless games that rot their brain, they spent hours upon hours wasting away their time because they had every right to; life was obsolete. It was not amazing, the sun was scarcely shining, laughter was as rare as authenticity, and hope had burned in Hell for a long while. But these are all just mere thoughts of a pessimist, of a person who was stuck in the lowest of lows. The unbreakable cycle was as tedious as anything else.

She left her appointment, dragging her feet as she left out the door into the rain. The city was dark, gloomy, greyer than the day she watched her father be lowered into his final resting place. That heavy feeling over time had been replaced with a void of emptiness. Endless sorrow. Some say grief was supposed to last two years, but for her it lasted nineteen. It followed her wherever she went, it did whatever she did, and she couldn’t run from it, for she had tried. She couldn’t bury it, for it rose out of the ground, it resurrected, and it rested upon her soul. She couldn’t delegate the feeling to another. She couldn’t drown it in the harsh rainwater. As powerless as ever she stood, and she wished she didn’t. She wished that she fell down the rabbit hole. She hoped that the world would fall in the hands of a black hole, and she would be enriched in darkness, engulfed in the confines of death. But she wasn’t. She simply couldn’t be.

Connecticut wasn’t the worst place to live. New Haven was honestly a tourist attraction, for people would want to come all of the time. Families up from the south came, college students who had only dreamed of going to Yale visited the campus, and Connecticut was beautiful year-round. Walking through the parks was as peaceful as peace came, and things rarely happened here. Rarely. But in the case that they did, the entire town knew of it in a heartbeat. The news was quick and relentless, and so were the papers. Endless, as it seemed they printed and printed and printed some more and then some more. She wasn’t one to pick up the papers nor hold the remote in her hand to turn on the news. She no longer had the will for knowledge of the real world, and nor did she want to subject herself to such depressing tales. Not after what happened. No. Not after what she saw.

She got in her car, and she was driving back home. The roads were wet, and she ran through puddles as if they were nothing. They were nothing. Insignificant. Water that would soon dry up as water vapor and ascend into the sky. So maybe she was a bit jealous of the water; they got to leave in a way that was not painful, not brutal. To live in such a peaceful way was only one of her greatest desires. But it was selfish. So, she swallowed that feeling back down where she’d tried to keep it.

The roads were quiet, and the clouds above weren’t clearing. Perhaps that was why no one was driving; there would be a storm soon. For the last few days it had been raining relentlessly, but if she was going to try to be an optimist, at least the drought was broken. It had been alarmingly dry, and now it was not. The moisture in the air was disgusting, but she tried to focus on the positive. She tried to be happy that she was blessed with water from the heavens in the first place. So she arrived home, and she put a smile on her face, even when the water soaked through her shoes and got her sock wet. She forced a smile on her face even as she dropped her house key in the tall, wet grass, and she smiled when she had to get on all fours to find it.

Her neighbors had already believed that she was strange, and it didn’t take a genius to figure that out; they spoke to her as if they were speaking to her mother; slowly. Condescendingly delicate. Calmly. As if she was bound to have a psychotic break. As if she was going to stab them too.

She felt the coolness of her key on her fingertips, and she grabbed it. She went over to the door and unlocked it, twisting the doorknob and pushing it open.

Her hands were muddy, wet with dirt and blades of grass, and every step she took her shoe squeaked and the water inside sloshed around against her feet and between her toes. She went through the hallway into the bathroom, and there she closed the door behind her and ran herself a shower.

She got out and wrapped a towel around her body. She went upstairs into the bedroom, and there she saw her husband cradling their baby in his arms. A small smile tugged at her lips, and she kissed him on the cheek. He smiled back at her,

“Hey,” he said, rocking their baby back and forth, “how’d it go?”

“What? My optometrist appointment?” she asked, and he nodded, “It went fine, I’d say. My vision is still as bad as ever, but at least it isn’t getting worse.”

She took a look at her child, her one-year-old boy, and she ran a finger over his cheek.

A product of love. A product of marriage. A product of her devotion to her husband. A child was more than she could have ever wanted, but more than she deserved. At times she’d stare at him, watch as he babbled happy nonsense in the mornings and reach up to her at night in the crib. He wanted his mother. He loved his mother, the same way that she loved him; endlessly, but so much it was almost painful. Love was a terrible thing. It was something binding. An eternal bond, a condition of the heart and mind. It was blind, and she’d already had terrible vision. It was the epitome of a deep wound, and she’d gotten stabbed long ago through another body.

Her husband looked at her, and he nudged her gently to bring her out of her self-deprecating state,

“Is that all you wanted to tell me?” he asked, and she nodded,

“Yeah,” she told him gently, taking her fingers back from her son’s face, “I’m gonna put some clothes on,” she said, and when she went into the closet, that was exactly what she did. She slipped into pajamas, and when she got out, the evening had settled into night. The stars were twinkling through the darkness, and her son lay in her crib. She joined her husband, interlocking her arm with his as she watched her son breathe. In and out he went, and she wondered how blissful it was to be a child again. As helpless and loved as one’s baby, as one’s angel. She reminisced on memories that she did not remember, and she thought about times in which she had no thoughts. To be a baby must have been nice. No responsibilities. No obligations. No pain. Nothing but kisses and cuddling. Nothing but being fed and being watched. Nothing but crawling and being picked up. Nothing but mindless giggles and cries of discomfort.

Her husband held onto her tightly, wrapping his arm around her waist,

“I love Elliot,” she said to her husband, “I’m hit with a wave of sentiment. I don’t know how or why, but I think the hormones haven’t stopped,” she looked at her husband, “I think I’m an emotional mess.” And he shook his head,

“You’re no mess,” he squeezed her, “you are only a mother. I’m emotional as well. Deeply.” She blew a kiss to Elliot,

“Goodnight my love,” she said softly, “my son.”

Her husband took her to their bedroom. They walked over to the other side of the hallway and laid her down on the bed. She looked at him, and he took a glance into her eyes. Her soul. It didn’t take long to suspect that she was hiding something, whether it be a few thoughts or an entire part of herself,

“You look sad again,” he said gently, and she took her glasses off. She put them aside on the table and she laid against her pillow,

“I think you mistake sadness for exhaustion,” she told him, “I’m not sad. I’m fine.”

“I’ve heard you say that far too many times in my life,” he said. He sat on the bed beside her, and he held her hand, “what’s wrong?” And she sighed at him,

“Absolutely nothing,” she told him, “I’m fine. I’m doing alright. It’s minor stresses, that’s all. That and I’ve been up since four this morning, please,” she begged, “come to bed. Let’s get sleep.” So, he gave her hand a gentle squeeze and reacted to her plea,

“Okay,” he told her. He got in under the sheets along with her, and he held her closely,

“I wanted to thank you for staying with Elliot today. I know you had plans, but you took care of him. I hope he didn’t cause you any problems?”

And he shook his head, his hand on her waist even still,

“Not many. He’s a good baby, all things considered. I just wish you stayed home more often so he saw you. He’s just a baby, he can’t comprehend much, but I believe that he realizes your absence.”

“Thats ridiculous,” she said,

“Yeah. Well, that may be, but it’s a bit bigger than a theory. It’s a matter of principle. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think that you were actively avoiding him, despite your words claiming to love him so much.”

She glared at him in the thick darkness,

“Are you suggesting that I’m running away from him?”

“Maybe,” he said gently, “I wouldn’t exactly put it above you. You’ve been doing this for months.”

“I have appointments, Theodore,” she said harshly, “I have to go all across town, I run errands for you while I’m out. You were the one that said you’d stay with your son.”

“As much as I’d love to give you credit for all that you do, I need you to realize that I cannot live through you. I cannot both be a mother and a father,” he sighed, “do you even love Elliot?”

“We are not having this conversation,” she took his hands from her body and threw them back, “how dare you? How could I not love him?- I gave birth to him. I love him with every fragment of my being-”

“Do you?” Theodore asked, “do you really?”

“Goodnight,” she turned over to her side, and she cradled herself. She held her body in her own arms,

“Okay,” Theodore said softly, “if you don’t want to talk to me, then you don’t have to. But I’m not going to let you ruin our son.”

Ruin.

Is that what he thought of her? That she was capable of such destruction?