S E W A K T U

B L I N D

A heavy, coarse voice rang in his ear, breaking through the darkness that didn't cease even as he blinked. He had never paid too much attention to the voice before, not before today. It was a familiar voice, the voice he had been hearing every day since he was just a little boy, a voice he had stopped paid attention to before he lost his eyesight completely. Now they sound foreign to him.

He sighed. The engine hum ceased and silence took over for a minute. There was a clicking sound followed what sounds like a heavy thing swinging, its sound swished through the air. In that instant, he could hear mutterings and footsteps, a sound of rubber sole dragging through the gravel, a faint speeding car growling far away, bird chirpings, and even the whisper of his own breath. The soundscape quickly replaced the silence he used to associate with darkness. He never knew darkness could be so rich.

"Welcome home." this time the voice was even more familiar. Not too old, but not too young either. He'd describe it as baritone and if the voice was to take part in a choir, it would easily fits in the middle tone. The air it carried was rather polite, unafraid but less charismatic.

The young man stayed still until he felt a warm hand touched his fingers, wrapped around them. He held onto them, then began moving towards the direction the warm hands pulling him to, slowly guiding him away from his seat. He stepped down, carefully measured the distance of the car's floor to the ground until he couldn't step further. Even the ground felt so alien to him. He thought it was a little farther, but it wasn't, it didn't take long for him to hear the sound of his shoe heels clicking on the ground. His other foot followed, this time more comfortable, and as he was stepping out, a warm touch guided his head away from what he predicted as the car's door frame.

"Steps, my lord." The other person faithfully guided him through the steps into the place he used to be so familiar with. He rubbed the floor with his feet and began slowly ascending, knowing when and where to step as it was familiar to him, but unsure as it had become so unfamiliar to him as well. He realized he had begun to pick more sound down to the most trivial. The swinging door, their steps across the smooth floor, even the faraway sounds coming from at least a hundred meter away before him.

"I would like to go to the library." He said.

"Certainly," the man guided him through the house. The young man's hand started to roam. For the first time in his life, everything felt like they've been magnified and enhanced, more real than they used to be. The rough touch of leather, the cold stone he remembered as marble, the softness of the wood grains and the crack between them. He reached out and found something hard and cold curving in the middle. He felt around it for a while and realized it was the door handle to the library.

The world brightened a little and another soundscape reached his ears. This time he could even smell something else. The humid smell, the slightly woody yet sweet scent, was it the scent of a newly grown spring grass? Immediately an all too familiar image of a hall sprang in his mind. A large hall with plain marble flooring, brightly lit by the white glass doors on one side of the hall. Behind the door was a vast garden with a forest standing across the lawn. 

He remembered the room well. Behind him would stand rows and rows of books on dark stained wood shelves. A little far across them would be his favorite lounge chair and his desk. Of all sudden, he felt a pang of nostalgia struck his chest. He wanted to see them, all the lights and the flowers but darkness was all that spread before him.

"Will you please tell me what's outside," he asked as the man guided him to the sofa.
"We've just trimmed the lawn," the man next to him spoke softly, "the grass is neat and wide now, my lord. The lilies are about to bloom, the petals are turning yellow around the bush and the forest has regained their color back. The weather is nice today. We are having a bright blue sky with some thick cloud over the horizon, just right above the forest, smaller clouds are scattered across the sky. We've been having drizzles in the evening, perhaps we'll have that too today."

The young man was quiet for a while, picturing the described scenery as he inhaled the spring breeze.

"Where's Beet?" he asked after a while.

"Miss Claire takes care of him while you were away, sir. She'll be back in an hour or so."

"Alright."

Even his own voice sounded strange

The downpour came as predicted. The same man delivered to him a message that Claire will be a little late due to the rain. He nodded and asked him to bring the girl to where he was when she came.

When the men had left he stood up and started to touch anything within his reach. He slowly walked along his desk, then when it ended, simply walked until he bumped into another thing. Feeling around he knew this was the piano seat. As he sat down his fingers first placed, then glided through the wooden key. He recognized the square raised hills among the other flat boards, the lines among them, the clear sound each key made whenever he pressed them, the metal nook on his right foot. He smiled. It was the only thing that remains the same, the only thing able to give him a sense of comfort.

He raised his hand and reached to the farthest end of the piano. His fingers glided on the polished smooth surface, stopping only when they hit the edge of what felt like a thin book. Perhaps he could start with a little warming up, he thought joyfully, some minuet would do.

Suddenly the reality struck him in his face. He sat there frozen, holding the thin book before him as his breath began to pace up. He was a prodigy but all his plays were based on reading someone else's works. He could not, and he had never memorized any song. He largely depended on reading, and now it was robbed of him. He was left with nothing but darkness and perhaps silence.

Slowly he traced the bookstand up to where the topmost flap was. The book found its place there and with a shaking hand, he touched the key again. A bulge had begun to swollen in his chest, choking him as he pressed a key with trembling hand. His eyes began to wet, his throat hurts and his breath smothered. He bit his lips. He could hear himself whimpered.

His fingers moved although slowly. He began to press down the key one by one. He tried to think of any song he used to play but no use, everything was jumbled up. After a while, he just gave up. He wanted to play, anything, even though the notes didn't make sense, he didn't care. 

Even though it sounds like a lunatic banging on the keyboard, he didn't care. Notes after notes started to reverberate in the room, soft at first, then they gradually grow louder, faster, weirder. It was his tantrum, the only expression of desperation and sadness he could make. The notes turned aggressive, his fingers tapped, danced, marching as he likes. He didn't care. He didn't even stop to think or to breathe. He shuts himself out of the world, listening and adjusting to nothing but a great deal of despair inside him. It didn't sound like tears anymore, it sounded like drumming rain and roaring thunder. His fingers were hurting, his face was wet and the board grew slippery from the nonstop strike. The notes streamed down his head, to his fingers, then exploded into the room, screaming and running through the ceiling. He didn't open his mouth but the notes were his voice, and they pierced through the air like a madman rage.

And then he stopped. Completely. For a minute his hand hovered around the keyboard. Silence took over, its weight muffled and swallowed every bit of sound in the room. Not even the sound of the rain beads knocking on the windows could pierce through the silence. They even add to it.

Slowly he lowered his hands and began to bawl. Cold tears rolling out his eyes endlessly, like water leaking from a broken jar his despair rose through his throat and spilled out of his chest. His fingers dug into the crease of his eyelids, pressing as of hoping it would tear apart the shapeless, nameless dark veil thrown over him. He wanted to see again.

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An experiment: writing a story without using the sense of sight. Let me know what you think!