When Light Becomes Absent

Chapter One - Darker than Night

As I open my eyes I see, nothing. My head hurts like hell, but opening or closing my eyes does not make any difference. My world is pitch black, I feel not even half awake, and I can´t move. What the freckle, I think I can feel my muscles but something is... I get hit by a wave of nausea. It feels like I am having some sort of sleep paralysis, then another wave of nausea. I feel cold sweat running all over my body while I lose the grip I had over my mind. I feel I am slipping... this is not sleep.

When I wake up and turn my head it feels like there is a huge ball of quicksilver bumping into what´s left of my brain. I rub my eyes, scratch my face and try to find the courage to open them and let the light in.This is gonna hurt is what I think opening my eyes.

I close them again, I open them again, I close them again.

Well indeed it hurts, but that is not because of the light. I never heard that the absence of light was bad for your hangover headache, or at least that is what this one feels like. Now I know that drinking unhealthy amounts of alcohol for a longer period of time can impair your vision, but it does not make you blind overnight. That is unless you consumed Methanol which can kill the optic nerve if used in high concentrations.

What did I do last night, the thought itself already hurt my brain and I did not even start to think about what actually happened. All I could remember is being in my own apartment, having a simple dinner. I remember it was a work day, so that would normally mean no parties for this old man.

I pinched myself and opened my eyes again, yup I am sure I am awake. And I am sure my eyes are open, damn this is weird. I felt a slight stream of anxiety flowing through my veins. Had I turned blind overnight? Was this temporary? What if it´s not? What if I am never again able to see?
No sunrises anymore, never seeing the face of my kid, of my girl.

My stomach turned and I felt a little sick just thinking about how I took the gift of sight for granted for so many years. I tried to get a grip and focus on my breathing, that is weird....

I don't hear anything, no cars, no neighbors, no birds, nothing. The shock of not seeing might have pushed this to the background, but as I was trying to do a bit of meditational breathing it jumped out on me.

It were not my ears as I heard myself yawning and scratching, so my ears were just as bad as they were last night. It was the loss of all the familiar sounds we hear every day. The cars passing by, the neighbor's dog, now there was nothing.

Although my eyes couldn´t confirm I was getting a very weird feeling, this was not my place. This just couldn´t be my place, but if it wasn´t; where the hail Marry´s did I wake up?

Now a couple of years back I might have woken up in just a random girl's bedroom after a night of intense partying. Even though my head did feel like having been to an intense party I did not do those kinds of things anymore, did I?

Did I end up in one of those soundproof hotel rooms? The ones in the city center that promise you a perfect undisturbed night of sleep?

I raised my arm to search the bed and see if I was not alone here. When my fingers touched something it was definitely not the warm body of a girl, nor the cold body of a dead girl, luckily. But it was cold, cold and rough like concrete. Whatever I was laying on it was not a bed, it felt like a very thin mattress with a plastic cover, just like the ones they used in jail. But there at least they were put on something that resembled a bed.

This one must be lying on the floor, the idea of lying on the floor, on a jail-like mattress, and unable to see anything made me want to get up. For what I knew it could be crawling with rats here. Well no, not rats. Rats make noise and this place was silent as no baby has ever been. But what about spiders, I never heard a spider walk...and they love dark places.

Well they might love them, I don´t. This was beyond weird, beyond scarry. This whole situation was very disturbing and so were the explanations my mind was trying to come up with.