I walk to my couch and sit down quickly, trying to avoid her eyes. She dances her way over to me and sinks to the floor in front of me.
Life, Harrison, her hands move slower than normal, life can be grand. Despite what you think, or what you feel, life can be full of good. Just because you’ve been robbed of a few things, please don’t give up yet.
I watch her hands with anger. She has no idea what this is like, or what it’s been like. No one does. The only thing she and I have in common is that she can’t hear either. She doesn’t know what it feels like to be a prisoner in your own body. To be caged by your ribs and skin. To be given an outlook that is not enticing, and to worry about when it will happen to you. I’m a time bomb that a madman forgot about, silently ticking away until it’s time to just blow.
You have no idea what you’re talking about.
Maybe not, but I’d understand it more if you told me. Have you ever told anyone how all of this makes you feel? Doctors don’t count.
What does it matter? My hands become rapid, laced in anger. I imagine I’d be yelling if I could speak. I don’t want to live in a constant state of worry or panic, and I have been for a long time. I’m just waiting for the bottom to drop out. Waiting to wake up and not be able to seen the sun, or not be able to feel if something is warm or cold. I’m waiting for everything to be gone. Death looks pretty good from where I’m standing.
She shakes her head and looks at the ground. But what if, Harrison…what if it never gets any worse for you? What if you don’t lose sight, and then you find that you’re seventy years old and you’ve wasted all this time worrying about losing something, so much so that you forgot to see life. You forgot to experience it because you were waiting for darkness?
THEY TOLD ME IT WOULD PROGRESS.
She holds her hands up in defense and I notice I’m shaking. I’m not used to defending myself to anyone. I’m used to people avoiding me, to letting me be, but her, she’s here in my living room, preaching to me about how I need to live life.
I’m not trying to upset you, I’m trying to get you to see…to really see things.
I see the world, Veyda. It’s all I’ve got left.
She shakes her head. You see it, but you’re not really looking at it. It’s not just about having sight, Harrison. It’s about feeling what that sight does to you. See places for their beauty, their incredible landscapes or architecture, not because you think you’ll never see them again. You can’t look at the world—at people— like that. You need to look at things to really see them. To feel them. To be a part of them.
What’s the point, Veyda? Why bother seeing things for what they are, if eventually I’ll be covered in darkness anyway?
The point…She pauses for a moment and glances out of my large floor-to-ceiling window, toward the lake in the distance. The point, Harrison, is that regardless of how life has been gifted to you, it’s all you have. One chance is all you get at this. Do you really want to spend the next however many years waiting for something bad to happen? Think of all the things you could be seeing instead. You’ve lost sound, and scent, and taste, but you still have sight. There’s still things to be seen. Don’t succumb to the darkness yet, not when there is still so much light.
I don’t respond to her, instead I just keep my eyes on her, trying to understand where she came from and what gave her this outlook on life. People like us, the ones who were given a bad hand in life, we’re the ones who usually keep to themselves, but here she is celebrating her life, and mine. And I’m not worth celebrating.
I’ve spent the entirety of my life waiting to lose another part of myself. I’ve spent so much time alone, I don’t know what it’s like to be with anyone.
There’s still time to learn.
When she lays her hands in her lap she is smiling at me, that same smile she gave to me the day she thanked me for saving her life. The same smile she wore at my door not minutes ago. She was genuinely happy to see me, happy to have a moment to talk to me, even if our conversation were silent bouts of angst and realism.
You’re the first person who has ever given me the time of day like this.
She shakes her head again and brings her hands to her chest.
That’s not true. You attract attention wherever you go, but you’ve only ever seen what you wanted to. See that’s the problem with waiting for the end to come, you miss all the in-between parts. And those are some of my favorites.
Something on my face cracks and I feel my lips quiver. She notices but continues on anyway.
I noticed you at the coffee shop for a long time, Harrison. But you always sat in the corner with your head down. You never looked at anyone or anything, except for when Tanya would bring you a new coffee. You’d perk up for a moment, you craved that interaction, but you always missed it because you were too focused on being different. Too focused on living a silent life in darkness and madness. The night you saved me, I recognized you. I knew exactly where I had seen you before, and for an instant it looked like you recognized me, too. You looked, and I mean really looked at me. If I hadn’t survived, I think I would have died happy because you finally looked at something like it had purpose.
I wanted to die that night. I cut her off. I wanted to push you out of the way so that car would trample me. I wanted out of this world so badly, that I would resort to suicide.
But you still saved me. Regardless of what you wanted, you still were prepared to do some good and save me.
I thought back to that night and the way she looked right before I pushed her out of the way. I remembered how it felt knowing that even though I was about to die, she could possibly live. There was a fleeting moment where I did think that.
This world isn’t all that bad, Harrison. You just have to be willing to actually see it for what it is, not just what you want to see.
I don’t know where to start. I motion slowly and she reaches for me and grips her tiny hands around mine.
Let me show you.
***
Veyda makes it a point to spend the next several months showing me the world. I watch her like a hawk for the first few weeks of time we spend together. I mimic her actions and responses to things. She points out landmarks in the city that I’ve walked past a million times but never noticed before. She points out the clouds in the sky and their reflections in the puddles beneath my feet.
She never looks sad, even when we pass a quartet of musicians playing acoustic guitars in the park. Instead she sashays herself across the grass in front of them, and refuses to leave until I join her.
What if we’re off beat?
You can feel it here if you pay attention. She responds quickly with her hands before placing one on my chest, right above my heart.
I spend all of my time looking, and really searching for new things to see, that I forget about the possibility of never being able to see again. Even if it would be stripped of me someday, at least I could see the world for now.
I invite her to dinner at my family’s estate on the north end of the city. She smiles excitedly as we are driving up the tree-lined drive, and keeps her hands in mine the whole time. I smile back at her, something that I realize I’ve been doing a lot of lately. Something that I find easy to do now that she does it so much. She pointed it out to me one day, and I didn’t even know that I remembered how to smile. I stood in front of the mirror that evening just staring at myself.
I collect my thoughts as we reach my parents’ front door and exit the car. My mother, for the first time in years, doesn’t boast that look of shame on her face when she sees me. Instead she’s smiling, and opens her arms to Veyda who hugs her graciously and immediately begins signing with her. They both look happy. I notice the smiles, the animated hand gestures, and I watch my mother tilt her head back and open her mouth on a laugh.
My father shakes my hand and asks how I’ve been. He tells me I look different, taller, sharper, and a little more demure than I used to. I glance at Veyda who turns to meet my gaze just as mine
locks on her, and I realize how much life she has given me, in such a short time. And to think, she could be missing from this world if I hadn’t had the desire to die, and jump in front of a car for her.
It’s the first time I think about life in a good way, and not view her as the angry, scorned woman who just wants to make my time here hell. For the first time in forever, I fear death immensely, because the thought of never seeing, feeling, or being with Veyda again, terrifies me. I think she feels the same way, because she doesn’t let go of my hand all evening.
***
I spend the next five years seeing the world. Between trips to islands I can’t figure out how to spell to the ruins of old castles in England, I feel like I’ve seen enough of the world to write a travel magazine filled with reviews and places to stay. Veyda lingered by my side through all of it, and I don’t think I would have had it any other way.
I still haven’t lost my site, and in fact, my sense of smell started to come back partially two years ago. I noticed I could smell something burning from upstairs one morning. It took me several minutes of convincing myself I was awake to acknowledge the fact that I could indeed smell. I ran through the hallway and down the stairs rapidly to find Veyda fanning a tray of bacon that she left in the oven too long.
She turned to me with a frown on her face and moved her hands rapidly.
I’m sorry, I turned away for one moment and it was just a moment too long. I can make something else for breakfast.
The corners of my mouth twisted upwards and I inhaled deeply. It was there, and it was faint, but I could smell the burnt meat and it might have been the loveliest thing I’ve ever smelled.
I smelled it burning upstairs.
I’ll spray some air-fresheners and get the fan going, but–
Veyda paused mid-sentence and narrowed her eyes at me. You smelled it?
I nodded quickly, eagerly and she threw her towel down and ran to where I was standing. Holding my face with her hands, she stared into my eyes like she was looking for the sun. I grabbed her wrist with my own hand and pulled it to my nose, the faint smell of perfume danced across her skin. I was wrong. This was the loveliest thing I have ever smelled.
Veyda spent that morning crying and finding things for me to test my ability to smell on. Spices and perfume samples, she’d pull from magazines. She made an appointment with my doctor the next day, and I was sure this was all just a fluke, that I would wake up senseless again, but that never happened. Blood tests and nerve examinations showed nothing new, nothing to report, but I could smell. That much was certain.
The doctors would later tell me that for whatever reason, the disease was regressing, something they had not seen or heard of until now. Scent and taste came back to me at about fifty-five percent, but for me, it could have been one hundred. Anything was better than zero. They also told me about a new implant device that worked wonders on deaf patients, specifically deaf patients like me who had lost the ability to hear at a young age. They told me I was a perfect candidate for it and that they’d love to put me through the program. The implants would allow me to hear sounds around twenty percent with the promise of progression, and although I would never be able to hear completely, I would hear some loud noises, and muffled sounds of voices. Veyda seemed excited about this possibility for me, but when I asked if it would work for her, the doctors told me she wasn’t a candidate for the program. She assured me she was okay with me having the implants placed, but I never went through with it.
But you could hear again, even partially. Isn’t that what you’ve always wanted? To hear the sounds of the world?
I shake my head and reach for her hands, kissing the tips of her fingers along the way.
I hear everything, Veyda. And nothing is as loud as you.
She smiles at me, the same smile she’s always given me and I pull her against my chest.
***
Epilogue
I NEVER DO lose my ability to see. I watch my children grow and hang onto Veyda like she is something they never want to let go of. I wake up every morning and press my lips against hers, and drink her in the way the Earth drinks in the dawn.
Life is loud, and blinding at times. It can also be bland, quiet, and even dull, but in those moments where it lacks the full force to be seen, it is still beating on. There has never been anything louder in my life than silence, and I love the way that silence sounds.
Hayley lives in Ohio with her husband and pets. She is an avid lover of Tom Petty, exploring, flamingos, and of course, writing. When she isn’t writing, she works as a PR Coordinator for an Orthodontist and because of this, is always smiling. She has a soft spot for poetry and thrillers, and loves a good scary movie any time of the year.
Find more of Hayley’s works here
https://www.amazon.com/H.B.-Stumbo/e/B01A4ODI2I
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Beast: An Anthology Page 28