Sights Unseen

Sight is a strange thing. It gives us the unprecedented gift of visual observation of the amazing world that surrounds us. But, when you think about, we don’t really need sight. If the human race had been created without, we would have managed fine by living off our other senses. We could hear each other, we could smell objects, and we could feel whatever was in our reach. Yet, we were created with eyes. A profound intelligence lies within the structure of an eye, creating an image of that which surrounds us. This I discovered at the age of eighteen, when I was first given the gift of sight.

I slowly opened my eyes and found myself stared down by four, wait, five people. One of them was a slightly blurred outline of a female. A middle-aged man gently questioned me, “How many people do you see?”

Hesitating, I counted again. “Five”, I replied, confidently.

This raised the eyebrows of everyone in the room, except for the woman’s. Giving me a kind smile, she left the room, with a trail of thin fog floating behind her. As soon as it appeared, it drifted away like a fading dream. Little did I know, this was the beginning of a major turning point in my life.

Say the name Emmett Richards and everyone would tell you that I was the blind boy across the street. When I was young, I was excluded from the neighbourhood games, and was never popular. Given the chance of an eye transplant, my father jumped at the opportunity. Even though I was excited to see, I did not know at all the problems sight would bring to me.

I had seen the ghost-like apparition adorned in a sombre gown ever since the day I had received my new eyes. Furthermore, I had seen the apparition in my dreams, lifelike, calling my name in vain and despair.

At first, the dreams were faint and blurry, as if they were affected by the morning mist. In due time, they became more clear and I gradually realized that this woman was the donor of the eyes that had granted me the gift of sight. She needed my help. Nevertheless, I had been shadowed by haze and uncertainty by what these pleads meant.

Her voice was clear now, very distinct yet feeble. She had pleaded to me, “I need your help Emmett. My sister is in grave danger. Only you can save her.”

Pleas of help identical to these came on a regular basis, with them eventually fading away into the morning’s mist. Ever since the requests, I had surfaced my detective skills by looking into who the donor of my eyes was.

Subsequently, I found out that it was a woman with the name Leyla Marlette Brandon, who passed away after a lingering struggle with lung cancer. I also found out that she had a living relative, her sister Atlanta. Finally knowing who my mysterious pleader was, I was able to respond to the pleas in both my dreams and in real life confrontation.

Her eloquent voice drowned in pain and anguish, as she pleaded to me in my next dream, “My husband is going to kill my sister. Please help her.” She touched my hand in my dream for reassurance before fading away into a blanket of mist and haze. I didn’t know what made me so close to this woman, but it felt as if it was my duty to help her sister, especially since she gave me the wonderful gift of sight.

I knew what I had to do next, and before I knew it, following the ghost woman’s unspoken instructions, I found myself on an airplane to Montreal, Quebec. Finding Atlanta Brandon was not difficult, yet finding Leyla’s husband was. I had no evidence or hints at his identity from Leyla, and I did not know how to confront Atlanta about it. What would she think of me when I say that I have contacted her sister through dreams and confrontations when she was deceased?

The plane landed, and I hailed a cab outside the airport. The whole ride there, all I could think about was the ghost-woman. That, and her mysterious yet desperate please for help, that I was now diving head-first into. The cab pulled to a stop. I checked the address the telephone operator had given me and I knew that I was in the right place.

As I hesitantly stepped out of the car, an ear-splitting scream tore through the air, making me cringe before I ran inside the dilapidated house to find the source. I rushed inside, not bothering to knock or ring the doorbell. Barging in through the door, my eyes widened as I saw a petite woman with short brown hair and frightened hazel eyes. She was covering her head with her hands that were drenched in spots of blood, in an attempt to reduce the impact of the beating she was receiving from the tall, muscular figure of a man.

I screamed in order to get his attention. When he turned around, I saw his shocked and fearful expression. He dropped the bat he was using and tried to slip past me to the open door. Before he could get by, I jumped on him and pinned him to the floor, preventing him from moving. From the corner of my eye, I saw the woman phone emergency as she dialled the numbers with her shaking hands. I struggled with all my might to keep the man under my grip, but all he did was throw putdowns at Atlanta and at how she found someone else to save her when she couldn’t save herself. I wanted to tell her the real reason as to why I was there helping her, but I knew that that information could wait.

Before he was able to get away, emergency sirens flooded the air and emergency personnel came filing in the house. The police officers took the man from my hands and I looked over to Atlanta. She was shaking continuously, and when she saw me with her frightened eyes, I gazed at her with genuine concern. Immediately, she took advantage of my arms, which I offered and stayed in an embrace as I comforted her, assuring her that Leyla’s husband would never touch her again.

“Thank you!” she sobbed breathlessly, “Thank you.”

Later that week, I stepped onto the balcony outside of my bedroom and inhaled the fresh, moist air that the morning had to offer. I looked straight ahead, noticing that the morning was still refreshing, despite the time. Closing my eyelids to hide my sapphire eyes from its glory, I felt the mist brush upon my face. Shivering, I opened my eyes, which darted off to the balsam firs surrounded by the misty fog. Leaning over on the balcony railing, I looked around calmly knowing that I had yet another ten minutes before I had to get ready for my classes.

“Wow,” I whispered into the thin fog as the white, cloudlike matter swirled around my exhaled breath. I added subconsciously afterwards, “The effect of a morning’s mist is like a fading dream.”

Staring directly into the mist, I wanted to know just how condensed thin grey molecules of cloud water could make something like balsam firs look intoxicating. I felt myself drown in the sight of the mist as I recollected my confusions. I had prevented a murder from happening through talking to a disturbed spirit, who happened to be the owner of my eyes.

I exhaled into the mist as it swirled around my breath. Dazzled by the act of the mist, I smiled, before hearing a faint ‘hello’.

Spinning around, I saw the faint apparition of a woman staring at me with the same dazzling eyes I saw when I looked in the mirror. Smiling at Leyla, I whispered into the air, “I’ve done all I could Leyla.”

She merely nodded in response, before beaming widely, “Thank you.” Taking a few steps away from me, she slowly vanished into morning’s mist, disappearing from my life forever. I inhaled one deep breath of what the morning had to offer and stepped back inside my two-story house, knowing that the morning’s mist would always be the home of fading dreams.

“You’re welcome,” I whispered to Leyla, more like to the morning mist in which she disappeared in, which was subdued as the dawn revealed radiant sunlight, emerging through the balsam firs.