Author: H.G. Bells

It’s been a bitch learning how to type blind.  I was never the best at typing before; the homerow approach seemed lost on me, and I sort of invented my own waay.  I get the computer to read it to me, and if something sound off, I change it.  Anyway, that’s just a bit of introduction, so if something is off (spelling etc.) sorry (sometimes my friends or home-care worker will look over things for me, but I don’t want any of them reading this).  It’s only been half a year.

The day I lost my eyes was a sunny, crisp, fall day.

At first I tried to tell people what happened, but it was too weird, and it changed how they interacted with me.  Even I know it sounds cray.  Cray cray.  So I made up something else, something more plausible.  Everyone thinks I was attacked by a dog.

A dog, I said finally.  It was a dog.

But I don’t like lying.  It’s really terrible ,to know this, to know that someone else might be attacked, and not be able to stop it… because I sound crazy.

A sunny, crisp, fall day.

The seawall, Vancouver, BC, Canada.  Anyone that’s been here knows it; a beautiful walk around the amazing Stanley Park.  Under the Lions Gate Bridge, around the point looking out at that huge island across the Georgia Strait.  I was out taking pictures of the fall colours.  They were beautiful.

Godamn, when I remember colour sometimes it makes me so damn mad.  And I want to cry, but I can’t anymore, so I scream.  Usually into a pillow, sometimes not…

It was magic hour, that golden sunset just lighting the autumn colours afire everywhere I looked.  There were a lot of people out.  The seawall is a popular place for joggers, bikers, people walking dogs, fellow photographers, all sorts of people out just enjoying the day.

I got a lot of good shots that night, I think.  My friends told me they were really beautiful.

It was getting dark, and I was still snapping away.  There were fewer people; I could see my breath.

There’s no lights along the seawall.  The ambient citty light makes it easy enough to see, and the stars were out.  And it was a full moon to boot!  I know I know, full moon, you’re thinking werewolf, right?  Well sorry to disappoint.  But I wish I had been a werewolf… then it maybe would have killed me.

This was something much worse.  Werewolves we’ve seen.  American Werewolf In London is one of my favourites.  Werewolves at least would be a known foe.  This was… so alien, so strange.

It started with a feeling.  That feeling that tells you something isn’t right.  That someone’s watching you.  That you need to leave, now.

There’ve been a lot of murders in the park over the years.  A serial killer once used it as his stalking ground.  Vancouver’s pretty safe, if you’re not a street worker or homeless.  But sometimes you get that feeling, and you know you’re not safe.  And I started to leave.  I was pretty much in the middle of the walk though; I could go all the way around the park, or cut through on the trails.  Nuts to that.  The woods at night, with that feeling… hell no.  I took the clockwise way around, under the bridge.

That’s when I heard the whispering.

Even with that feeling, if you hear someone in trouble, you stop and check it out.  At least, I did.

Whispering for help.

Please help.

In the woods, just in the bushes, still green, not yet covered by the fall leaves.

It wasn’t far.  I saw someone crouched on the ground, head turned down, whispering.  Whispering at something.  Someone.

The thing, how to describe it.  It was like… a child?  But wrong.  Its head was way too small.  Its back was all bent and bony looking under a really big t-shirt.  It crouched over someone- they weren’t moving.  Their eyes were gone, bloody holes in their head.

The thing whispered at the body.

“Help me, help me someone,” it said in this rasping voice that made my teeth hurt.

I was frozen in place.  When you see something unexplainable you think you’d run, but really you sort of want to keep looking, until it makes sense.  So you can see that it’s not really what it appears to be.  Until it’s not a monster eating someone’s eyes.

The thing looked at me.

It was dark in the trees, but I could see the glisten of blood on its too-small face.  Its eyes were gone.  Not bloody, just, black holes.

“Help me,” it whispered.

I backed up.  It stood.  Its legs were too long for its body.  It took frighteningly fast steps towards me.  I stumbled out onto the seawall and began to run.  It overtook me in seconds and leaped on my back, pulling me to the ground.  It flipped me around and crouched over me.

“Please, don’t, please,” I said, breathless.  It’s face was terrible to look at.  Without eyes, where should I look?  How could I plead for my life?

“Please, don’t,” I said again.

It whispered at me then.

“Pleeeese donnn’t,” it said slowly.

“Please don’t,” is said again.

I struggled.  Its head struck down at me with such force it made me see stars.  Then all of a sudden its face was pressed against mine, and I felt its hot tongue slip inside my eye lid, under my eyeball, probing… and then it sucked, and my eye was gone.  It nipped its teeth together and threw its head back to swallow- my eye.

“My eye!” I whimpered.  It brought its face back down to mine again.

“No!” I shouted, trying to push it away.  It was impossibly strong.

“Please, no!” I said as it opened that hideous mouth.

I wrenched my head to the side, trying to avoid that awful mouth.  It pressed into me and kept me still.  This one it had to fight for.  It ended up with more than just my eyeball, but hey, at least I tried.

My eyes.  Gone.

My face was wet with blood.  It started licking me.

I started to feel weak.  That hot, disgusting tongue lapping over my cheeks; sharp, rasping, licks that stung in spite of my greater injury.

And then I heard them- the sound of running; someone shouted.

It leaped away from me.  I only heard the first two steps it took into the woods, and then it was gone.

The people that came to my aid were mostly helpful.  One called 9-1-1.  One tried his best to comfort me, telling me everything would be ok, just lay back, help is on the way.

The sound of a third person vomiting is what made it hit home, just before I passed out.  And I knew it was real.  The hot blood on my cheeks smelled funny.  I’d never smelled my own blood before…

Anyway, ambulance, hospital, recovery, blah blah blah.  The expected, the boring.

Talking to the police was interesting.  That body in the woods… I wasn’t much help.  They referred me to a psychologist, who came to me in the hospital until I was ok to go home.  It was a dog, must have been a dog.  Yes yes, music, and the delicious smells of cooking, all these other wonderful things to experience without sight.  She was really helpful, but when I knew what I’d seen it was hard to ‘begin the healing.’

And then I went home.

I knew adapting to life without eyes was going to be difficult, and that was before I realised that my encounter with the thing was not limited that one, terrible night.

I woke up my first night back in my own bed.

Whispering.

“Please don’t,” it said.  It was at the corner of my room.

I’m not entirely sure about this part- see, no denying that I was attacked, and ,my eyes ARE gone, but this part, the part where sometimes I wake up in the night and hear it whispering- this part I don’t know is real.  I could be dreaming.  I hope I’m dreaming.

Because then, when I feel that awful tongue on my cheek I can just tell myself I’m dreaming, and in the morning it will be all ok.

But in the morning my cheek is raw.  It hurts.

I can’t stop thinking about the whispering.

“Please, don’t,” is all it ever says.

I’ve leapt out of bed and tried to go affter it before, but it’s too quick.  I always wind up back in bed, and it always comes back.

“Please, don’t.”

My cheek is raw.

“Please don’t.”