Time Ages to Blind

Fanfiction based on Blindess by Jose Saramago

“Look it!” A little girl chirps excitedly. She rushed around her mother’s feet.

“It doesn’t matter how, just get it done.” The older woman pressed in a hushed voice.

“Mother! Look it!” The little girl whined incessantly, now hanging from a knee smoothed by cream pantyhose. The older woman shrugged the extra weight, and forcibly snapped her phone away into her purse.

“Honey, you can’t be like that when I’m on the phone.”

“But . . . look.”

Lightly darting about was an exceptionally blue butterfly. The wings glimmered with even purple hues that illicit pure magic in the mind of  a child. Also in the direction of the quaint insect approached an older man. The woman turned slightly to face him, butterfly and child caught between them.

“Daddy! Look it!” She pointed slightly frenetically to the sky, determined to get some satisfying acknowledgement. Yet, by the time he drew close enough, the smear of exquisite blue had fluttered away.

“That’s very special dear.” He concluded with a pat on the head, he moved on to share simple short syllables with the older woman the little girl stewed. Her pout fest was infringed upon when a delightfully familiar blue hue filled the edge of her vision. A young woman draped in a flowing shade of blue was moving across the floor. The blue shades fading and brightening with each undulating step. The little girl had identified her next fixation of awe. Even more enthusiastically due to her increasing sense of desperation, the girl directed the adults’ attention to the vivacious young woman in blue who had brown locks and glasses that framed her face just so. The older pair glanced halfheartedly, but the man’s face immediately burned with recognition. He looked askewly to his wife; the blush deepened. Before much could be noted, the lovely girl with brown hair and dark glasses floated away. The older man, clearly flustered, hurriedly redirected his wife and child home. The little girl protested instantly.

“But Daddy, you have to see the butterfly that the lady looked like!”

“Honey, another time. Let’s go.”

“Daddy, please!” she rose, getting increasingly hysterical. Her juvenile patience wiped away by the older man’s crushing indifference. If the lady had got her attention surely the butterfly would garner the attention she craved. The older man approached the little girl with the clear stiff movements of ‘We are going home. Now.’ She jerked away despite not being touched. Unfortunately, she had blundered into a particularly sunny spot that a particular blue butterfly favored. upon the bottom of her white flowered sandal was the crushed fragment of a wing. Horror dripped across her features, head to toe. First her eyes, the quivering lip of a wail about to break, the delicate lift of her shoe in the air. The older man, still unaware of her source of grief, scooped up the puddle of a girl and headed to the car. The older woman followed close behind; silent. She was eyeing the lovely girl with dark glasses in the neighboring cafe. Finally, the girl revealed the culprit between sobs.

“Butterfly!. . . blue! . . My foot!” The older man pieced together the event, but this extra stress had raised him above his breaking point.

“You are so clumsy I’d swear you are blind!” he snapped. His sense of regret was weak because he could not see the effect of his words on the little girl as she had maxed out her emotional display.

By the time they had returned home, the little girl was silent. When her mother tried to get her out of the car-seat, she wouldn’t move.

“Mommy. I cried the blue out of my eyes.” She reached out in a disturbingly authentic manner of the blind. Put off by the extra affectionate term, the older woman mumbled, “Don’t be silly dear. Come here.” She lifted the child into her arms; and promptly saw an unflinching wall of flawless milky whiteness.

Reviews

[guy drori]

I expected the ending to be different, yet yours was nonetheless still good. Even though it was a short story you were able to make the characters 3d characters and not flat or shallow. Great job! Really enjoyed readnig this