It has always been difficult being a blind man in a small town. You can sense the sidewalks clearing as you approach, sweeping the pavement with your white cane. The old saying that the visually impaired have heightened senses is very true, and I can sense the pity as people move out of the way or hold a door open. I should be appreciative, but over the years your outlook can sour. I was lucky enough to find a beautiful woman (I know what you’re all thinking; yes I can tell), a decent job answering phones and an apartment that fit my budget. Things were good, that is until Thursday.
I was having dinner at home with my fiancée Jen and we were in the middle of discussing an article she had read about advances in sight restoration technology, when I heard a scratching sound coming from the floor above. She didn’t hear it at first but it grew louder to the point where it sounded like someone was trying to dig through the ceiling from the apartment above. Jen is pretty friendly with the girl upstairs, who is a petite and in her early 20s – an unlikely source for such an aggressive scraping. I volunteered to go upstairs and check but Jen insisted that she go instead, as she doesn’t like me taking the old staircase and the elevator is at the far end of the hallway.
Seconds after Jen left to go upstairs, the scraping stopped. Jen returned a few minutes later and immediately told me that nobody answered the door. Her tone seemed less expressive than usual, and the concern I would expect from her in a situation like that was noticeably absent from her voice. Loud noises and nobody answering the door was enough to put me on edge though, and my immediate idea was that we should call the cops.
Jen had a traumatic experience a few years ago involving the police which I am not going to get into, so I was hesitant to suggest it knowing she would be anxious about having to speak to the police. She wasn’t. Still lacking concern or any other noticeable emotion in her voice, she agreed and even handed me the phone. Her hands were cold and clammy, which was the only indication of stress I was getting from her in a situation where she would normally be in tears. I knew something was amiss. I could hear the cops show up and leave minutes later, and nothing seemingly out of the ordinary happened aside from the police never coming to our door to ask us what happened. I wrote it off in my mind as nothing, finished my cold dinner and went to sleep assuming that the events of the night were of no concern.
Friday morning came and things got weirder. Jen leaves for work early, so waking to find her half of the bed empty wasn’t a surprise, more of an indication that I should be waking up for work as well. I got ready and walked outside to wait for the bus, which usually arrives every 5 minutes in the morning. After 15 minutes I was getting concerned when no bus had arrived, in fact, not a single car had passed me. I heard people pass me on foot, but nobody was speaking. They seemed to be walking erratically and dragging their heels.
To make it even creepier, every single pedestrian was stopping dead in their tracks within a few feet of me. I could feel them glaring at me. A few times I threw out a nervous “can I help you?”, but nobody responded. No bus, no dogs barking, nobody talking – except for one person – a child. He stopped dead like the others but he spoke, breaking the longest silence I had ever experienced. “Can you not see me?”. His voice seemed angry, as if he was offended that I couldn’t see. As if my disability somehow ruined his day.
I decided to call my boss to tell him I would be late. No answer – which is basically a free pass to skip work. I called Jen, who’s phone was off, and left her a voicemail telling her that “I am really freaked out right now and I am staying home from work, see you when you get home”.
She got home around 5, much earlier than usual, and despite my frantic voicemail she still seemed uncharacteristically unconcerned. “I had dinner at work and the food is making me feel sick, forgive me if I seem odd”. I didn’t even acknowledge it. “Jen, did you notice anything strange outside today?”. She had walked into the bedroom and slammed the door before I could finish the sentence. I had been looking forward to talking to her all day, but I couldn’t be mad if she was sick. I ate microwave pasta and went to sleep on the couch, hoping everything would be normal in the morning.
Or course it wasn’t. When I woke up in the morning, my calls were going to voicemail for everyone, the radio was nothing but static, and the tv was a solid audio tone on every channel. While I was eating some cereal the bedroom door opened, and what came out of the bedroom that morning wasn’t my fiancée. It paced around me in circles and the more I called out “Jen!”, the more frantically it darted around the room. It wasn’t Jen and I should have figured that out by then. I tried to get closer to it and I could feel the breeze and hear the footsteps move impossibly as it evaded.
Thinking that this was Jen playing a cruel joke on my weakness, I got angry and tried to grab at her wrist. Unfortunately I got it. It was thinner than Jen’s arm, and felt frail, cold and slimy to the touch. The moment I made physical contact, it shrieked with a piercing tone that I have never heard a person produce before. The shriek was joined by a chorus of other shrieks, with more and more distant voices joining the chorus as the seconds went on. It didn’t just sound like everyone in the building had joined in, it sounded like everyone in the entire town.
I jumped back, covering one ear with my left hand and the other with my right shoulder, not wanting to put my slime covered right hand anywhere near my face. Whatever was standing in front of me, shrieking louder than any human could, has replaced my fianc̩e, my neighbours and my entire neighbourhood Рbut not me.
I went for a walk this afternoon, a very long walk. There is a school for the blind about 3.5 miles outside of town and I figured it was my only shot at finding people like me who were unaffected by this phenomenon. There wasn’t a single car on the highway, at least none that were moving. All were stopped in the middle of the road and vacant. About a quarter mile outside of my town, my white cane struck a chain link fence. I followed this fence for over an hour, and although I haven’t checked the entire perimeter, it seems that the town has been sealed off entirely.
I could hear helicopters all around the perimeter but none got close enough to have possibly seen me. I took comfort knowing that this…whatever this is…has been contained and went home, hearing footsteps and rustling bushes the whole way, as if the entire town was silently gawking at me. When I arrived home, she was there – it was there. Hissing, darting back and forth, unable to comprehend why I could look right at it with no consequence.
Every curse can be a blessing. As I sit here typing this, my disability is the only thing preventing conversion. It has been moving about this room for the past several hours, snarling and shrieking, obsessed with what it cannot have. I am no longer afraid. It knows killing me would be letting me win, and I don’t think it is capable of accepting defeat. But there is no way for it to win now, and only one way for me to win. I am not posting this asking for help, I am posting this because people have friends and family in this town and I want them to know that looking for these people will put them in danger.
When or if they find me, I will be the only one here who went by choice.
This is not surrender, this is victory in death by choice.
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Credits to: WeaknessIsStrength
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