Total pages in book: 128
Estimated words: 120230 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 601(@200wpm)___ 481(@250wpm)___ 401(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 120230 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 601(@200wpm)___ 481(@250wpm)___ 401(@300wpm)
Postdiagnosis, the phone also served as a security blanket because it came with voice assistance. I’d used it prior to the day my life changed forever, so that was the one accessibility feature I didn’t have any trouble utilizing. It gave me comfort to know I could call someone if I suddenly lost my sight in the middle of the day far from home.
The latter was a ridiculous fear. My vision loss would be a gradual thing, a slow erosion of the world of light and color. But fears were hardly rational things to begin with, and this one haunted me.
The world vanishing at the flick of an internal switch.
Mouth dry, I activated the trusty flashlight function and trained it on the page. I was sure now of what I was seeing, but I still couldn’t quite make it out, my vision too damaged. Thinking fast, I switched to camera mode and took multiple pictures of the drawing from every angle, both as a whole and in pieces.
Then I used my fingertips to zoom into one of the pictures.
. . . cold and lonely and silent.
I hadn’t imagined it. There were words hidden in the image. Words written in such a fine, fine script that it seemed impossible.
Heart thumping, I began to flick backward through the book, searching for more text. They weren’t there at the start, I realized, only began to pop up about a third of the way through.
I began to shoot.
My neck hurt and my shoulders were stiff, my chai ice-cold, by the time I reached the end of Clara’s concealed testimony—and my battery warned me it was at five percent.
Closing the book, I put it back where I’d found it. I wasn’t sure I wanted to share my discovery with the others. It felt like a secret between me and the woman who’d arrived into this house as a new bride beyond unprepared for the life she was now expected to live.
Aaron was probably the only one who might look close enough to notice—but he was more interested in the recipes than in the sketches, so chances were high he wouldn’t figure it out anytime soon.
Throwing away the rest of my forgotten chai, I did the dishes and left them draining on the rack. No dishwasher out here. I wondered what Vansi would make of that—if there was one chore my best friend would do anything to avoid, it was the dishes.
Everything tidy, I turned off the kitchen light only after I was in the doorway with the hallway light aglow in front of me. Darkness fell in the kitchen . . . just as the hallway light flickered and went out. The small lamp in the distance that illuminated the staircase followed a split second later.
I froze, a lump in my throat and my heart a thudding roar in my ears.
Spots of color floated in front of my eyes . . . and then there was nothing. Just black. My eyes would never adjust to the dark, never begin to pick up shapes. I’d lost that ability. Biting back a whimper, I stretched out my left hand and pressed it hard against the wall. I used that as an anchor as I tried to remember the layout of the hallway and how many steps I had to take to get to the stairs.
I had my phone, but it was almost out of charge. I’d need the light more on the stairs than I did now. Breathe, Luna, I told myself, but I couldn’t stop the shallow, fast rhythm of my gasps. My eyes burned dry as the desert and as arid, my fingernails clawing into the wall.
The black air suffocated, wrapping itself around my throat, tangling in my hair.
“It’s not real,” I whispered and it was mostly air. “It’s not real.”
My parents had bought me pretty night-lights when I first moved into our university flat. A sweet gift for the daughter who’d never quite grown out of her childhood fear of the dark. Most of the time, however, I forgot about it. It was easy to do so in a city apartment with streetlights outside and constant activity on the roads.
But there was no light here. None.
A small buzz and then the light fixtures spluttered back into life.
Throat cracked and without moisture even as sweat trickled down my spine, I stared at the hallway lamp for a second before jolting into motion, racing up the stairs and almost falling to my knees when I slid on that damn floor runner. Catching myself barely in time, I powered on until I was behind the door to my room.
Safe, I was safe now in this contained space where the worst I could do was stub my toe.
Digging out my charging cable, I plugged it in and hoped the generator-run system wouldn’t decide now was a good time to pack it in. I might devolve into a full-on panic attack if I lost my lifeline to a world that I could no longer trust to remain in vivid, sharp color. I might open my eyes tomorrow morning to another dark spot, another cluster of crystals eclipsing my vision.