When I was a child I lived with my parents in a beautiful mountain-top cottage in Chattanooga, TN. It wasn’t a big house but it was a paradise for a small child who loved the outdoors. I spent all my time out in the hills, baking in the summer sun. The mountaintop was a small, tight-knit community and my parents wouldn’t bat an eyelash if I would leave the house at first light and not come home until after dark, they knew I was safe, and frankly, were probably glad to have some peace and quiet in the house.
My childhood days of adventuring came to a sudden end a week after my 11th birthday. That morning over our breakfast cereal, my dad had told me the circus had come to town and overnight had erected a massive red and yellow tent just outside of the baseball field in the valley below. My mouth hung slack jacked over my Rice Krispies. Chattanooga was a decently sized town, but outside of the baseball field, the aquarium and the great outdoors, there wasn’t much for a kid to do back then, so when my dad offered to take the family to the circus that weekend as part of my birthday celebration, I couldn’t believe it. I made sure the hug I gave to my dad every morning lingered a few seconds longer that day before I ventured out onto the mountaintop forest.
I ran through the forest, legs pumping like pistons. I was so excited. The Circus! How lucky was I to have such a good dad?! I finally reached my destination, a tall pine that rested on an overlook that jutted out over the valley below. I was going to get a glimpse of that circus tent.
I don’t remember anything else that day. I still wonder if I ever got a brief glimpse of that tent.
From what I was told, a branch snapped and I fell about 35 feet onto the rock outcrop below, knocking me unconscious. When I didn’t come home that night my parents called the police. Eventually they found me broken and bloodied and still unconscious. A few days after that I woke up in the hospital, and a few moments after waking up I realized I was blind.
I hit my head on that rock outcropping in just the right way to knock loose something in my brain and, just like flicking a switch, I lost my vision. My world that was once filled with green trees, brown dirt and blue skies was now enveloped in a complete and utter blackness.
The next few years were hard, very hard, but like all things, you get used to it. You adapt, you learn new things, you find new passions and carry on with life.
I say all of that to tell you I’m 40 now. I’ve been blind now for most of my life. I’ve grown and adapted and after several years I finally feel like I’m able to be happy with my life. I have a job (I work at a school for the blind), several friends, and I live alone in a house that I have finally been able to buy after years of saving. Things have been going well for me, really well actually. After all these years in the dark I finally feel like my feet are back up under me, I finally feel at peace with my life and the circumstances I’ve found myself in. I finally feel like I’m back in control of my life. I’m a completely capable adult.
Or I felt that way until this week...
It all started on Monday.
I had a shit day at school. A real stinker. Kids were assholes, my boss was an asshole, the weather sucked. Just an all-around bad day. We all have them. As soon as I got home that day I was going to get into bed and go to sleep just to put this day behind me. And that is what I started to do. I walked in, drank a glass of water and crawled into bed, but it didn’t feel right, something was off. I laid there for a few minutes when it hit me. My bed was warm when I crawled in, only on one side, as if someone had just gotten out of bed moments before I walked in the room. My mouth went dry and I laid in silence for several more minutes, listening. I decided I was just imagining things, got another glass of water and went to sleep.
The next day, after work I came home and plopped down on the couch to ‘watch’ TV. Yes, us blind folk do that sometimes. Some shows you really need eyes for, but with modern accessibility features scenes are described for us. It’s pretty cool, it’s like having a robot read a screenplay for you, kinda weird to get used to, but it’s better than sitting in silence. So, I’m sitting there, not really listening to the TV, more zoned out than anything when I notice I’m feeling heat. Nothing too intense, just a low steady heat is coming from my right side. It took me a minute to realize it was heat coming from a lamp on end table right next to me.
I don’t turn on lights in my house, ever. Why would I? I have lamps and lightbulbs screwed into their sockets but I never use them. Friends use them when they come over but that’s about it. I haven’t had anyone over at my house for probably a month at that point and I definitely would have noticed the heat from this lamp before now if it had been on that long, I sit in this spot next to it nearly every day.
I turned off the lamp and put it behind me. I didn’t have an explanation for it, but why worry myself right?
Full disclosure – besides being blind, I’m also an idiot.
I listened another episode of NCIS, microwaved some dinner and decided to head off to bed. I left the kitchen, took 4 steps down the hall as usual, turned to walk through my bedroom doorway and BAM. Damn near broke my nose on the bedroom door. This is when I got a little bit freaked out. I NEVER close my doors. I’m fucking blind and I live alone, I don’t need the hassle of feeling for a doorknob every time I enter or leave a room. Someone had been in my house.
I’m not going to lie to you, I was scared shitless. I haven’t been that scared since the day I woke up in that hospital in Chattanooga knowing my entire life had just been changed. I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket to call 911 but my hands were shaking from the adrenaline and I dropped it. I heard the phone bounce off the carpet and hit the baseboards of the wall so I dropped to my hands and knees and started feeling around for it. Five seconds later I still hadn’t found my phone, had it bounced further away? I swear I heard it hit the baseboards right at my feet. I slowly expanded my search, crawling my way down the hallway, arms splayed out in front of me trying to scour as much of the carpeted floor as I could. Nothing.
Tears were beginning to well up in my eyes, lame I know, but like I said I was having a bad week and I was really scared. I sat for a moment, calmed myself, evened my breathing out and restarted my search. I only had a few square feet of space left to search, just the space in front of the laundry room door and the guest bedroom door, it wasn’t a long hallway. I army crawled down the hall scraping my arms across the carpet when the very tip of one of my fingers brushed up against a solid object in the middle of the carpet. Finally! I army crawled a few inches more and let my hand fall where I had felt something solid. There was nothing there. Confused, I crawled a few more inches and tried again, nothing. I crawled a few more inches and reached my hands out again. My right hand fell on…. something. Too big to be a phone. I gently rubbed my hand across its surface. It felt cold and dry, almost fleshy. I realized what it was when it moved out from under my hand. I had grabbed someone’s foot.
I screamed and threw myself backwards, struggling to regain my feet, my legs had turned into jelly. I collapsed onto the ground and listened; legs pulled up to my chest ready to kick out at any noise within striking distance. I’m not sure how long I was on the ground, it felt like forever. After a while I slowly got back up to my feet. I stood still and listened to the air. I couldn’t hear anything but the wind blowing through the trees in the backyard and the hum of my air conditioner but I could feel someone staring at me. I knew that less than 15 feet from me someone was standing in the doorway of my guest room, barefoot and holding my phone. My mind conjured a head of wild hair, torn clothes and dirty hands that wrapped around the handle of a butcher knife.
Slowly I backed away, feeling along the wall with my hand, searching for my bedroom door so I could place myself within my house and plan my escape. The air tasted electric and the silent house held an enormous tension that felt ready to explode. Any moment footsteps would launch themselves towards me from the hallway and I would feel a knife plunge deep into my chest or neck or useless fucking eyes. My breathing was getting heavy again. Was that my breathing? My mind was racing through the possible outcomes and ears were straining to pickup anything in the silence.
Finally, my hand brushed against the door frame of my bedroom. My hand wrapped around the doorknob to steady myself and I used the next quarter second to formulate a plan in my head. Turn around 180 degrees. Take 4 steps. Turn left. Take 5 steps. Door should be there. Unlock door, leave house. Stand in the middle of the street and scream my head off until a neighbor or a passerby stops to help me. Solid plan.
Just as I was about to turn around to put my plan into action, I felt the doorknob to my room rotate under my hand and pull itself away from me, opening the door. I felt one hot, smelly breath on my face and I bolted. Turn 180 degrees. Take 4 steps. Turn left. Take 5 steps. BAM. I ran into the kitchen island. I was panicking. My strides were longer when I ran. Too bad I had never sprinted around my house before to learn what this would be like. I reached onto the island and grabbed my knife block and pulled out the first knife I could find. I put my back to the kitchen counter and swung the knife wildly in front of me. I shuffled my way around the kitchen island, feeling my way towards the door when I felt a finger poke me in the forehead and muffled laughter as I slashed the air wildly around me, inching closer and closer to the door.
I found the door knob and pulled the door. It was locked. Fuck I had forgotten about that. It wasn’t a problem, but it delayed my exit by another 2 seconds. Just long enough to hear a knife slide out of the knife block on the kitchen island. I exploded out of the house and ran into the street screaming. I can’t remember if I was screaming for help or if I was just plain screaming but it wasn’t even a minute before a woman’s voice called out to me.
“Sweetie, it’s okay, drop the knife. Its okay, I can help you” the woman sounded like she had just smoked about 3 packs of Marlboros or her throat was filled with gravel. “It’s okay shhhh” she cooed.
I lowered the knife and listened to the woman as she approached.
I’ve been blind for nearly 30 years. I know what things sound like. I can tell what kind of cars are on the road by the sound of their tires. I can pick out and isolate specfic sounds in a loud room. I know what it sounds like when people walk with shoes or sandals or boots or bare feet. This woman walking towards me had bare feet.
I started screaming again, slashing the knife wildly in all directions and heard the woman scamper off back towards my house.
In the end one of my neighbors called the police. Not about my situation, but because there was a total psycho screaming and waving a knife wildly in the street outside her house. I don’t blame her, either way it got the police here.
They found two people in my house. They had been living in the guest room. I probably would have found them in there if I ever went in there. The police said they had probably been in there for about two weeks. A couple of meth heads looking for a place to squat and figured they could just live in the house of a blind guy and as long as they were quiet, they wouldn’t have any issues. I guess they just figured I would think my house was haunted or something. It makes me sick knowing these people were in there for so long watching me from dark corners and laying in my bed. I’d probably walked right passed them a few times or cooked myself dinner while they sat on my couch and watched me.
Before I hit the POST button on this there is one more thing that I’m still a bit worried about. I’m typing all of this out through a dictation app. You know those apps where you just talk and your computer will type it out for you. They’re essential for us blind folk. Anyway, I’m sitting here in my room talking this thing out and I swear to God, in the breaks when I stop to think, those little pockets of time where my house returns to that deathly silence of a few nights ago, I swear, I can hear someone breathing in the room with me. I think the police might have missed one. I still don’t think I’m alone in this house.
You’re not.
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