Dear Diary VI

Dear Diary VI

1. January

Part I

Louise chomped, then swallowed another piece of sweet popcorn, whilst she looked up at the cinema screen: “Galaxy Wars” wasn’t really her favourite genre of film, but then Michelle had asked to see it in her own special way. She had a way with words, Louise thought dreamily, as the opening creep appeared for “the Return of the Clone Menace”; something about rebels, bases and suchlike. She turned to the darkened, indistinct shape on her left, and whispered in its ear, ‘doesn’t it look like an eye chart?’ The dark shape nodded, light reflecting haphazardly off the shimmering, dome-like lenses of its glasses. The dark shape produced something that, for its own requirements, was a far easier means of communication in a cinema: a mobile phone in silent mode. A few quick button presses later and the shape showed her a message, ‘better or worse?’ Louise smiled, and again whispering into the shape’s ear said, ‘much better with you.’ She had no reason to complain about her vision, either: only a few weeks ago she’d had new lenses put in her frames, right eye minus 14, left eye minus 11.5. At last the difference was diminishing, leaving her with a more normal looking appearance, except that she wore what anyone would call thick glasses. Michelle had no complaints: she happily held Louise’s hand, then later squirmed around a little in the cinema seat, pressing herself as best she could against Louise’s body, gently touching her in places only a lover could, but avoiding stealing her glasses, as she had done before: Louise did want to be able to watch the film now that she had made the effort to get there. Michelle contented herself with glances through the edge of her girlfriend’s thick lenses, and later on, watching the reflection of lasers on the perfectly flat fronts of Louise’s lenses.

Meanwhile, Kirsty accessed the diary file on her laptop computer, and began to type ‘Dear Diary, today is the 8th of January. I haven’t been good at telling you what’s been happening in my life recently because I’ve been so busy at work and elsewhere. As you might recall, my name is Kirsty, I’m 25 years old , of moderate height and weight, told that I’m attractive despite my glasses - which if I remember correctly, are about minus 16 each and quite thick, and unlikely to get any thinner. I work in Insurance, which although not really exciting, is a decent job and my current position as Section Leader gives me some underlings to boss around, and also some responsibility which is fairly well rewarded. Recently I have been very tired, and I have been asking myself “when did I last get my eyes tested?” and honestly I cannot remember when. Surely it was last year? I thought getting older meant I only need eyetests every two years? I really can’t think when it was I got my current scrip. I seem to be getting a headache more and more often these days, it’s not much fun.’

She took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes a little with her palms, as if trying to conjure up clearer vision through some obscure magical ritual. Of course, that wouldn’t work. She opened her eyes and gazed incoherently at the screen before her. Even a foot away it was a blur, stretched and distorted by her astigmatism just to make absolutely sure that it couldn’t be read without correction. She blinked, and looked around her, and the world seemed to shift and swim around her; a near-impenetrable miasma of light and colour. For a moment, the question floated in her mind “how did my eyes get this bad?” Then she put her glasses back on and the world jarred back into focus. Or did it? It occurred to her that the once perfect-seeming vision she had enjoyed, thanks to her glasses, perhaps wasn’t quite right. A little blurred, maybe? “Kind of”, she mused, as she turned back to the laptop.

She ignored the growing feeling of not-rightness, and typed ‘Yes, I definitely need to get to the optician and soon. I can’t see a thing without glasses, I’m sure that’s no surprise to you. My lenses are a sort of plastic, can’t remember what it’s called, they make my eyes small but I can’t help that. The frames are metal, shaped like elongated rectangles with slight curves up and down at the top and bottom respectively, with a sort of small black plastic section that fills in that useless bit where the ear pieces join up with the rest. I think they were in fashion when I bought them. I’ve got too busy to worry about fashion so much these days.’ With that she yawned, turned off the laptop and lay on her bed, staring up at the ceiling as she’d done so many times before, albeit with various amounts of detail as her eyesight changed. Before long she was fast asleep, still wearing most of her smart office clothing.

Kirsty opened her eyes, and the first thing she noticed was that she was seeing clearly, and wasn’t wearing glasses. She was in a darkened room, then abruptly found herself in a deserted street. She looked up at the brick wall nearest her and saw a notice. On it, in big black letters it said “Forbidden”, and below that, a stylized pair of glasses. Walking around the wall she found a house: as she drew closer the wooden front door seemed to transmute to a kind of mesh or netting: she heard screaming, then saw a nondescript woman banging at the mesh, crying for help. Someone appeared to pull her back, and she heard a harsh male voice say, ‘don’t complain about your vision. You know the rules.’ She heard a sound like a wave rolling up a stony beach, and then she recognized it as massed footsteps: she turned to see a column of black-clad soldiers marching in formation, crushing and grinding as they went countless pairs of glasses into the ground. That sound was drowned by another: crying. She saw a darkened figure crouching huddled down an alley, sobbing…

And thus she stirred, for a moment confused that the crying continued, then realised it was her daughter next door. She straightened her askew glasses and got up, cursing herself for not having got dressed for bed, then called wearily, as she went next door, ‘okay dearie, mummy’s coming.’ She went into the nursery next door and turned on the main light. Annie stood up in her cot, gripping the bars with her all her strength, save for that portion devoted to crying. Despite the fact she couldn’t see much, she knew it was her mummy. Upon that realisation, she quietened somewhat, and let herself be picked up and fussed over. Her mother cooed and told her the night light was naughty for going wrong and thus plunging her into the darkness she much disliked. Kirsty told her, with a note of exasperation in her voice, ‘come on, lets find the spare one, shall we?’ Annie giggled.

After a few minutes rummaging, to her relief she found the spare one, plugged it in, and thus got Annie off to sleep again. With a quiet but heartfelt sigh, she returned to her room, got undressed for bed, before removing her glasses and turning off the light. However, despite her tiredness, sleep eluded her; so after about half an hour she turned the light back on, returned her glasses to her face and got up, then sat before her laptop again to write some more in her Diary file.

‘Hello, Kirsty aka chief slave again. Just been woken by Annie - I think - and cannot sleep. I suppose by now, being as you are a particularly attentive diary, you will know that I have quite a large family, all with some odd problems, all of which seem to fall on my shoulders. Where do I start?’

‘Firstly, I have a little baby girl called Annie who is just so cute and lively, but needs to wear glasses. That might not sound so strange, especially in my particular corner of humanity, but she is just coming up to 2 years old now. I remember being able to see clearly without glasses up until I was about 6 or so, I think, it’s so long ago it’s a struggle to remember the details. It seems so unfair for her to be lumbered with such strong ones at her age. I do hope she’s not going to be bullied at school, that is such a horrible thing. To be honest the optician isn’t quite sure what her vision is right now: we won’t know until she can really tell us what she can see. I’m kind of dreading that, because I think she might not get 20/20 vision. When will be the first time she will say “mummy I can’t see it?” Oh, to have all these dreams and hopes for your child and then you find out she can’t see!’ She paused and stared at the screen for at least a minute. Then she continued ’no, I won’t get angry about that again.’

‘There is some good news to tell about Emma. Previously my well-endowed middle sister seemed to specialise in being awkward, and causing mum and then me so much trouble and strife. I still don’t really know why she did what she did, and I really wish she hadn’t got me involved with it. She’s sort of changing. She’s kind of restrained now, just about sensible and just about normal. She’s got a job at the hospital where Melissa used to work. She’s getting interested in charity work at a local church, although I don’t think she’s actually found God, she seems to be sniffing around after him. I don’t really get what she’s saying about what she believes in, but if it makes my life a little easier, then I’m not complaining. What’s really good is that once a week she does this group, or class, you might call it, to help girls accept their glasses. Now that might sound a little odd, but I know how hard it can be to be called speccy-face or four-eyes, to be dependent on these ugly horrible things on your face to let you see clearly. Everyone else is happily being pretty and normal and getting a nice boyfriend, and you’re stuck with whatever’s left over, feeling that you’ve got the short straw and that’s just your hard luck, or worse, you did something wrong somehow. She’s had some great successes, turning shy and resentful girls into young women who can happily wear glasses and not worry about it. It’s all a question of attitude, Emma says: after all, she knows all about attitude.’

‘Talking about attitude, my youngest sister seems to have got some of her own. She’s too decent to do what Emma did, but last month I had a heck of a job with her in the optician. She had to have a particular set of frames and no other would do. I even tried asking her if she’d like to try contacts, but she chewed my head off. And that girl with the pebble lenses and funny stutter she hangs out with… I’d like to tell her to get rid of her quick sharp, because she’s scaring the boys off, but I doubt she’d listen to me. Oh, that’s a bit nasty I know, but one pair of glasses is enough to cause trouble, two, well, who knows?’

‘Melissa, one of my twin sisters, is doing much better now. She’s still learning to lipread as best she can, and teaching us fingerspelling, which she swears is easier to see as long as we’re not doing it naked: she’s got really lousy vision which seems to have stabilised at around 20/200 for now, as I recall. She spends a lot of time at the college training centre, doing extra sessions learning more lipreading. The best news about her is that she is in line to get a Cochlear Implant, so she can hopefully regain some hearing. Oh, that would help her so much.’

‘Amy for some bizarre reason seems to be living a nice peaceful life the other side of town. Sometimes she comes to help with Annie when the babysitters let me down. I’m going to get something properly sorted out for that, maybe get a live-in child minder for Annie, because everyone else is too busy these days.’

‘Apart from all that, my life is generally straightforward. A day off would be nice, though.’ She shut the laptop, a wry smile on her face, and went back to bed.

Part II

A few days later, a dark, chilly Tuesday evening saw Emma driving to the college where her sister Melissa was learning to lipread. Her eyes went heavenwards as she apologised for shouting at a pitifully poor specimen of driving by someone else. Then she looked at herself in the driving mirror. Her round, appealing face was dominated by her glasses. Unlike Kirsty’s wavering view of them, they were just exactly what she wanted: they were tools. It never bothered her much that she couldn’t see well without them. What was the point of worrying about them? They helped her see, that was that.

She nudged them onto her nose, ignoring the obvious lenticular lines in each lens, which were part of the package. It was the person that mattered to her, not the details. She got out, holding a slim attache case, and walked to the door, with the same sort of calm determination she’d long possessed. Her clothes were darker and more businesslike than those she previously wore, but no clothes could really hide her ample curves. She was an attractive young woman, and myodisk lenses would never change that.

Once inside, she gave a cheery greeting to the cleaner, went to her assigned classroom, opened up her case and sat waiting for her class to arrive. There was a new girl tonight; but Emma never worried about anything these days, and this was no exception. Her name was Tracy, and Emma had details of her age, prescription, etc: -2.5 each eye, a little astigmatism. A fighter, but not like Emma: she was fighting the wrong fight. The myopia wouldn’t go away, so why fight to see when glasses would help with that?

She watched her little flock trickle in: first there was Emily, tall and skinny, fairly pretty. She was getting somewhere with Emily, because she now wore glasses here all the time, even though she admitted she took them off outside or whenever she thought she could get away with them. Then Nadine came in, a rather shy young girl, wearing plus glasses she still obviously hated. There were about ten or a dozen of them when Tracy came in, not wearing glasses, her eyes red from crying. Emma got up, took her aside and spoke kindly to her, telling her she was among friends; that everything would be okay and she could just sit listening for now without having to wear glasses if she didn’t want to.

She then guided her back to the group, and introduced her, saying, ’this is Tracy, a new friend.’ A girl called Jenny brought her a chair, giving a her kindly smile, so Tracy sat down next to her, staring at Emma with nervous expectancy. Emma smiled, and said, ‘well, thank you all for coming tonight. Does anyone wish to begin?’ Her gaze swept from one to another, barely resting on each, before Caroline got to her feet, her chair scraping on the floor as she did so. She drew breath, and said boldly, ‘my name is Caroline… I’m 15 years old and I need my glasses to see. It’s kind of comforting to me to be able to see clearly, all the little things in the distance I didn’t realise were there before, or maybe I forgot about. After a while,’ then, after she slid off her glasses, ‘going without glasses becomes kind of strange, uncomfortable, almost weird. I mean, look around you: everything is nice and clear. Now, look at things without glasses.’ She stopped to allow the girls to take off their glasses. Emma saw lots of squinting as brains that had got a little too used to seeing with glasses struggled just as they had until fairly recently. Caroline put hers back on, and waited for them to do the same. She asked firmly, ‘isn’t that better?’ there were some mumbles of assent, nods and the like, then a sprinkling of applause as Caroline sat down.

A couple of similar speeches followed, one, a girl called Samantha, told of her surprise when a boy asked her out, another, telling of the attention she now received, simply because she wore glasses, ‘people want to keep trying them on. It’s a little strange because when I didn’t have them, nobody much noticed me.’ Emma asked, ‘do you mind being noticed?’ The girl went a little red in the face, shrugged and replied a little shyly, ‘it’s not so bad really.’

After that, Tracy got to her feet, still not wearing her glasses, and said, ‘you’re all very strange people, I always thought glasses were ugly things’, she looked at Emma, and said ‘I can’t see too well, but yours look really ugly, you know.’ Emma blinked in surprise: nobody had said that to her for a long time. Another girl spoke up without standing up: which wasn’t really meant to happen, but Emma let her speak. ‘Tracy - that is your name? Tracy, it’s all a matter of perception.’ There was a little laughter at that. Jenny touched Tracy’s arm, and told her, ‘you might not believe me, but there’s something about glasses. Some people find them attractive to look at.’ Emma nodded, knowing far more about this than she was prepared to admit, even here. The girl continued, ’they like the shinyness, the way they attract attention to the eyes, you can use that. They like the way your eyes are smaller, the cut in.’ Tracy sat down and allowed the girl to talk more about the way glasses looked, not just as ugly things on the face, but as ornaments or decoration. Tracy looked sceptical, but at least she was still listening. Emma smiled, approving of what was being said. There was quite a bit of applause and agreement with what she said, at least from the more convinced members of her group. As they talked more, Emma pretended not to notice Tracy opening her glasses case, then tentatively putting her glasses on.

Towards the end of January, Kirsty sat down in her office chair at work and looked around her office. It seemed different, but these days she hardly had time to worry about mundane stuff like her own life. She picked up the latest company news document, and there it was, just as she’d been told: her idea for glasses insurance had been taken up. She sat on a swivel chair, gently rotating back and forth, smirking to herself; then the phone rang, and she was lost in someone else’s problems again. That strange feeling of itching and discomfort in the back of her eyes seemed to get lost in a sea of more immediate worries.

By the time she was back home, after a day at work including a particularly tedious but necessary meeting and dealing with those issues that could not wait till tommorow, she was exhausted, a headache seething between her eyes and thumping elsewhere inside her skull, as she tried to concentrate on the late news. She thought she heard something about a victim of something horrible, but was dozing by the time the news was over. The next thing she knew was being shaken awake by Emma. Her headache had eased to a whisper, but threatened to shout once more. Emma called out to her, ‘Big sis, are you okay? You look like you had a bad dream. Anyway, the babysitter’s gone home.’ Groggily, Kirsty got to her feet and forced herself to stay awake a little longer, whilst she showered and prepared herself for bed.

2. February

Part I

The first Saturday afternoon in February found Louise awaiting her girlfriend in town, sitting on a bench, watching people go by. The occasional man caught her eye, wearing glasses of course; other facets of their appearance being of little account to her; but as always the thought hung in her mind “why can’t he be a girl?” Then a particular girl appeared a short distance away, her hair dark blonde, falling in seductive cascades around her face, her body deliciously curvacious, wearing thick plus glasses. It was Michelle, her luscious girlfriend. She smiled and waved: briefly it occurred to Louise, as she stood to greet her, that she didn’t think she could love anyone else. Michelle stuttered out “L….L…L…” By now, Louise had long experience in the art of deciphering her girlfriend’s appalling stutter. They embraced and kissed a little on the cheeks, as if perhaps they felt it wasn’t time to go public with their relationship. Michelle’s big, heavily madeup eyes fluttered magnetically at Louise. Instead of attempting more speech, she reached into her bag and took out a few small black rounded things, which she then proceeded to show Louise. At first, Louise was puzzled, but then remembered Michelle mentioning, in her own special way of course, that she was going to try lens blanking: just for the fun of it, she had said by phone message.

They retired to an area where fewer people where bustling about, whereupon they sat down again on a convenient bench, then Michelle handed Louise a lens blank. Curious, Louise held it to her glasses, and found that it neatly covered her entire left lens. Michelle grinned, and clapped a little, so Louise said to her, ‘you sure these are going to fit?’ Michelle nodded, then reached out, briefly touching the front of Louise’s right lens, and then her own with a gentle fingertip. ‘Both of us? Oh, now I see… Now I know why you wanted me to get the same frames as you!’ For it was true: Michelle had nagged Louise about getting identical metal frames for her glasses, in part out of love, and partly because it would make this little escapade easier.

Michelle then produced a small screwdriver from her bag. She held it to the edge of her glasses and made a sort of twiddling motion with it, as if she was about to unscrew her glasses and let them fall to pieces right from her face into her lap. She then pulled her glasses from her face, and felt Louise take both them and the screwdriver from her. Michelle heard her say firmly, ‘okay, honey, you asked for it, now I’m gonna replace your right lens.’ Michelle alternated between staring into the distance, where she found her vision blurred only to the extent of her astigmatism and that part of overfocussing that had been driven out by fulltime glasses wear, or else occasionally glancing at Louise, for her an uncomfortable smear sitting close to her. If Louise was doing something else, she would have not the faintest clue, but by now she completely trusted her. She looked at her girlfriend’s mouth, and it occurred to her that it was a good thing she wasn’t deaf like Louise’s sister Melissa, since she perceived her mouth as a misshapen blur: Louise had told her all about her sister, and that misfortune didn’t really appeal at all. She heard Louise hiss an irritated curse. ‘W…Wha?’ Stammered Michelle, as always, relying on Louise to fill in the words she couldn’t enunciate. Louise told her, ‘It’s OK, the screwdriver slipped, I didn’t scratch your lens, only the frame a little. You’d never notice, let alone anyone else.’ She saw Louise check it again, just in case, but could not read her expression.

Then she heard her voice, reassuringly soft, ‘here we go honeybun, look at me…’ She opened her glasses out and carefully pushed them onto Michelle’s face, pushing aside her shoulder-length, bushy blonde hair. Louise watched her for a moment, a curious expression on her face. She asked ‘W….w…’ Louise had to abruptly snap from considering Michelle’s one-eyed countenance, the way one side was corrected by a heavily curved lens, the other covered by a very gently curved shiny black piece of plastic, to deciphering Michelle’s severe stutter. This wasn’t so easy all the time, despite her long experience and endless patience. ‘It looks weird?’ Michelle shook her head and tried again, but couldn’t get Louise to understand. She got out her mobile phone and typed in a brief message ‘u look confused. It’s weird, though.’ ‘Weird for me too. I feel shortchanged. I’m used to two big beautiful eyes, but at least I still have the bigger one. You sure about this?’ Michelle nodded vigorously. As she handed the removed lens to Michelle for safekeeping, an oldish guy wandered by, glanced at them and muttered audibly, ‘damn weirdo lesbians.’ Michelle glanced up at him, and told him in her usual garbled fashion to fuck off. Louise chuckled at that as they got up and walked out into full view of the milling crowds.

The following day, a Sunday, saw Emma standing in the church hall, listening attentively to the pastor talking about his recent visit to an orphanage devoted to disabled children in a particularly poor part of Africa. Of course, the demand outstripped the ability to aid everyone there: it lacked basic equipment and living aids that such a home in the richer West would be expected to have. He told his flock to consider how these children coped with poorly-maintained second hand equipment, how those who had visual problems had little access to glasses, etc. Emma’s ears pricked up at that. His next words sunk in deep, ’those of us who are used to such aids, perhaps they should consider giving them up for a while, perhaps for one tenth of the time, so that they can discover what these poor children have to endure. If in doing so, you save some money, you should donate it to their assistance fund.’ Emma drove home thinking about that all the way. She sat at the wheel after parking her car, staring at herself in the driving mirror. Thoughts raced through her brain, “what’s my prescription these days? Minus 18 or something? What’s 10% of that? Does it include astigmatism? I’m going to have to get my eyes checked… Can I do without some correction?” She stared down the road into the distance, wondering what that would be like. She slipped her glasses down her nose and peeked over them. Although she had this view of the world every morning before donning her glasses, doing this outdoors seemed different: the unfamiliar would be extremely hard to deal with. She wasn’t so keen on that eventuality. She thought “surely it’s not going to be as bad as that,” then pushed them firmly back onto her face and got out, knowing she had some thinking to do. Emma being Emma, she never had any problems wearing glasses, as long as they weren’t hand-me-downs: in fact she quickly adapted to them, so for many years had no experience of being shortsighted for long. The blur she experienced when she needed a change irritated her, but never got out of hand, because she naturally refused to allow it.

At the same moment as Emma was sitting in her car, Kirsty was upstairs playing around on her laptop, idly surfing the net. On an impulse, she typed into webscan “Thick Glasses”, and was instantly astonished at the result: there were thousands of references, so many that there was no way she could go through them all. Most of them were advertisements for glasses - she glanced over them and saw a reference for another site “Eyescene” - then clicked on news results for glasses. Idly she thought that perhaps someone had thought of a way to avoid glasses altogether. No, that did not come up. What did come up chilled her as she read it: ‘Spechunter claims 3rd victim,’ then, ‘police have located another body: it has been identified as that of Holly Bishop, who was reported missing last week. They refuse to rule out a connection to the two recent murders of young women here in the north of England. So far the only connection that can be made is that they all wore glasses, and that the glasses have been taken from the dead bodies.’ She just had time to open the Eyescene link and read the first page “the discussion site with a different outlook on eyewear”, when the door opened and Emma called out to whoever might be around, ‘hello, everyone, I’m home!,’ and that was the end of that.

A few days later Louise was sitting on her bed: it was late at night, or more accurately, early in the morning: this was simply because she didn’t want to be disturbed. Gingerly, she held up the black lens blank Michelle had left with her to her left eye. It was two or three years ago she’d had to go around like this for real, with no choice in the matter about whether she would have the patch or not. She shivered a little as the only weakly forgotten memories came flooding back: all the teasing, all the fuzzy vision. With a strange feeling of deja vu, she took off her glasses and found that, as usual, everything beyond a few inches seemed to vanish, only to reappear in a sort of distorted uncertain fog, an alien view of the world that glasses chased away. For just a moment she wondered how her vision had got this bad, then she set to removing the left lens from her glasses, struggling to hold it close enough so that she could see the tiny screw head, and yet far enough away so she could fit the screwdriver in between the glasses and her face. The trick was to loosen the screw enough so that the lens would come out, not so much that the screw fell out: she knew she’d probably lose it if it fell out. It all seemed so easy and so much fun out there in town last week, but then it occurred to her that she had done this to someone else’s glasses, and could see what she was doing perfectly. It was comforting to consider how easy things were with glasses, not so much to be deprived of them.

She pushed the lens out and put it on the bedside cabinet where she could see it, if not in much detail, and replaced it with the black plastic lens blank. A few minutes later the deed was done and Louise sat staring around her with just one eye, not two as usual. She picked up her diary, and wrote ‘Hello Diary, tonight I am trying out lens blanking in the comfort of my own bedroom. I am pretending to be blind in one eye. Michelle gets a tremendous thrill out of it. It just seems like old times to me, and I didn’t find it thrilling then, more like depressing. It’s like you can see but not see. Everything on the left - I have to turn my head to see, I remember all that from before. The only good thing, compared to last time, is that I can see clearly.’ She paused to look at herself in the mirror, then started writing again ‘It is just like before, except that there’s a big black shiny thing where my lens should be, instead of a opaque white patch. There’s no other difference. Hey, I wonder…’ She heard movement, and froze, hoping she was imagining it. ‘Go away… Go away…!’ She murmured urgently to herself. There was a knock at the door, and a call, ‘hey, Louise, get to sleep. I can’t hear you, but I can tell your light’s on.’ Louise sighed with relief, turned the light out, waiting not entirely patiently for the deaf and near-blind Melissa to come and go outside. Finally it went quiet outside, so Louise put the light back on, half expecting another knock at the door. There was none. She quickly scribbled in her diary ’this does have a funny sort of risk of being found out. It kind of makes me a little naughty, like I’m skating on thin ice, doing something I shouldn’t do. Okay, good night from me.’ As quickly as she could, she replaced the lens in her frame and left her glasses in their usual spot where they could be found quickly with her hands, and went to bed.

Part II

One night about a week later, Kirsty awoke with a start and looked around her. The shabby hut she lived in for, well it had to be said, she didn’t know how long, was despite the darkness, easily visible to her. She heard sobbing, and the door opened: a figure was brought in by a couple of black-suited guardsmen, who dumped her near Kirsty, and then silently left, locking the door behind them. The figure sat in a pathetic bundle of ragged, dirty clothes, small and helpless. Kirsty could see it had black hair, but could discern little else despite her strange visual powers. Kirsty coughed a little, in order to gain attention, and said, ‘hello, my name is Kirsty.’ The figure looked up at her and squinted. She unsteadily got to her feet, and said ‘I can’t see you very well, but I need a friend. Can you be my friend? My name is Diana, by the way.’ Diana was small and skinny, malnourished and unsteady, but would have been quite pretty if things were better for her. Kirsty kindly offered her a place near her that was somewhat more comfortable, thanks to some old sacks left lying there, where she fell asleep.

It seemed moments later when daylight streamed through the window. Kirsty awoke to find her new friend still asleep. The door was unlocked, and black-suited guardsmen peremptorily ordered them out. There was a small gaggle of similarly-attired wretches outside, and they were both pushed towards a larger group of such. One of them came up to her, squinting and struggling to see, touching her a little, even smelling her, before announcing softly, ’never seen you before. Not that I can see much, without my glasses.’ Instantly they were at work in a field, tending some plants Kirsty had never seen before, but thought might be edible. After a while, Diana came up to her and whispered surreptitiously ‘I know you can see. I can tell you are doing this too well, too neatly. You need to leave some bits of weeds behind, or else they will know.’ Kirsty was taken aback, and said ‘I don’t understand at all.’ ‘We are glassophiles, you are not: you are normal and pretty, you can see, you should not be here.’ ‘I think you are right, I don’t belong here. I come from another place, where glasses are accepted, where some people actually like them. I wear glasses. Nobody really worries about them, well, not these days.’ Diana looked incredulous at that. Kirsty brushed her hair from her own eyes with her hand, and her glasses just appeared. Now curious, she waved her hand over Diana’s face, and glasses appeared in front of her eyes too. Diana gasped in astonishment, then shook with fear, taking them off quickly. They vanished, and then so did Kirsty’s, but she could still see. She whispered to her new friend ‘I don’t understand what’s going on here. But I do know this: we have to get out of here. I will help you. And… All these poor wretches.’ With that, Kirsty felt herself being shaken awake. A blurred shape was talking to her. She knew the voice: Emma. She said, ‘wake up, Big Sis. Your new housekeeper is here. You’ve overslept again.’

Later that day, Melissa arrived at the lipreading class: the journey there was silent and fuzzy as normal, but for her rather interesting: she’d been picked up by her teacher, Alan, a man in his 30’s. At first she’d really struggled with her lipreading: she’d been unable to get anywhere, and took out her miserable, ill-tempered frustrations on him. But now that she was learning and getting somewhere - adapting to her need to interpret the shifting blur of someone’s mouth - she realised how patient, helpful and kind he was. She had the worst vision of anyone in the small class. She also wondered what her cochlear implant would be like: she was really looking forward to that, her hopes high for a return to something like normality.

Once inside, there were the usual one-on-one practice sessions with other people. But whenever Alan was around, she would ask him some question along the lines of ‘Alan, I can’t see you very well, your mouth is in shadow, can you come a little closer and say that again?’ He willingly came closer: for her, recognizing, seeing detail and the rest soon became difficult beyond a very few feet. But when something really important needed saying - he would oblige. After the class was over, she walked up to him, and then said, ‘can you say that again, please? I was too far away, and not looking in the right direction.’ His expression changed, but for her that detail was unknown. Her myodisk lenses constrained her field of view enough that she had to turn her head, and that made her direction of view quite easy to guess for someone who knew her and her visual problems, and her limited visual acuity implied she could not be looking at something very far away: there was little point her sparing much more than a brief look at any detail beyond 10 feet. So she couldn’t really have been looking over his shoulder. Patiently, he came a little closer and repeated it for her, despite the thought vaguely occurring that Melissa ought to be capable of making out most of what he was saying anyway at that distance, thanks to her training. He asked her, ‘are you ready to go home?’ To which she replied, ‘yes please.’

Once back outside it was all blank darkness to her, particularly beyond the grey area where lamps aided those who could see properly to their cars. She unfurled her white stick, and set off boldly in the wrong direction. She felt a touch on her elbow, but didn’t flinch: she expected it. She turned, and allowed him to guide her over to his car. Guiding an effectively deaf-blind person was more difficult than the process for person just blind: communicating information about obstacles was a problem, so they were best avoided where possible, thus making the journey longer and more convoluted. She huddled up close to him, dependent on and grateful for his assistance. There were regular stops for turns and opportunities for very brief explanations of where they were headed next, by means of tracing letters on her palm. Then she felt her hand being guided to something hard and cold: the roof of his car. She felt him brushing past her - as he did so, she turned in preparation to get inside the car, brushing a little harder as she did so. Then the courtesy light came on in the car - it was her whole world at this point; a misty ethereal yellowish blur, although she could see some vague impressions of larger detail inside.

Once sitting inside, she felt and saw the other door open and him sit beside her. She turned to him and thanked him for his guidance ‘I’m sorry, I forgot where your car was. Sorry for causing trouble.’ ‘That’s OK.’ The interior light switched off, and thus she was again plunged into the useless darkness, then the front lights came on, thus giving her some reference point, although for her they revealed nothing of the darkened world worth seeing. The journey home was again silent, her vision seeing the lights of oncoming cars but nothing else. She sat there thinking about her upcoming operation, looking forward to being able to hear and communicate again in the dark. But then, she had other ways to say really important things.

Some days later Kirsty sat in her chair, tapping quite furiously at her laptop’s keyboard, telling her Diary ‘I have a lot to tell you, as usual. We have a new housekeeper-cum-babysitter called Victoria, or Vicky as she likes to be called. She’s from Spain and speaks with a funny accent sometimes, but she works hard and Annie likes her. I suppose we’ll all be eating Paella before long. About Annie, she’s running around causing trouble, and saying things, glad I don’t have to watch her all the time, otherwise I’d be exhausted. She just looks so cute! I’ve got a feeling things will be alright for her.’

‘There’s something else I’ve recently discovered. There’s this website called “Eyescene” which I’ve found, it’s a great resource for all things related to glasses. I think I told you I keep getting these headaches and I’ve sort of dipped my toes into one of the conversations, and they all advised me to go to the optician and get it checked out. Obvious you might think, but I never have time these days for much beyond sleeping, eating and insurance sales. These people on Eyescene all seem quite friendly, I can see myself talking to them again.’

The last day of the month found Emma pacing around her small office at the hospital, then sitting at her slightly tired desk. It dimly occurred to her the whole office was tired, but at least it was clean. That came of being in charge of the cleaning here, and also through her formidable nature. Her face seemed to harden a little as she had come to a decision. She opened her handbag, and took out a small cardboard box. Then she rummaged a little more, and took out a small screwdriver she’d bought recently for this purpose. She opened the box and saw two gleaming glasses lenses, both cleaner and certainly newer than anything else in her office. She couldn’t tell any much difference between these lenses and those in her frames, which sat there quietly and innocently ready to give her 20/20 vision. They seemed to be just as thick - within a fraction of a millimetre, and had the same size bowl. Something godly had told her to reduce the strength in her lenses, and that was what she would now do. As quickly as she could, she removed the old lenses and replaced them in her frames with the new, then pushed her glasses rather casually onto her face. She shivered a little, as the reduced lens power made her vision noticeably poorer - not close up, but in the distance. Charts and clutter pinned to wall charts now became disturbingly unreadable. Hurriedly she stowed away the old lenses and her screwdriver.

The rest of the day passed interestingly for Emma: at first she was scared someone would twig her horribly feeble vision, but then, it was only reduced by 1.75 dioptres and she could still see quite well. Inspecting cleaning was a challenge she’d not quite anticipated, but again, she got away with it. Every so often she became slightly irritated that she couldn’t see things, but then thought on the matter, looked at something closer and mostly comforted herself. Once home from work, Louise was out, Melissa couldn’t tell, and when Kirsty came home, she appeared not to notice either. Emma sat in her room contemplating the blur. She told herself it wasn’t great, but it would be okay. She wrote in her diary ‘If Kirsty didn’t notice this, then nobody will. Except me and the god of glasses, that’s if there is one.’

3. March

Part I

A few days into March found Kirsty sat at her desk at work, tapping away at her laptop. ‘You would not believe the world I have entered into during the last few weeks since I discovered Eyescene, it seems like a dream land, filled with strange people and strange ideas. Yes, I know, I’ve met some strange people before and been fooled by them at times, but this time they seem genuine. There is one in particular called “Hadrosaur” - he says that he uses that as a joke, to imply he is old and decrepit. He’s older than me I know, but he sounds quite fun. He asks all sorts of questions and talks a lot about how girls in glasses look so alluring - haven’t heard that for a while, but it’s not unwelcome. He’s in Insurance too, and I think I will try to arrange a meeting with him at an upcoming industry show I’ve heard about in a few weeks. I can’t wait.’

The following Saturday saw Michelle leaving the house accompanied by a figure that at first glance could have been anyone. She was female, and reasonably young, but her face was cowled and hidden by the hood of a grey hoody-top. Once down the street a little way, Louise’s voice quietly announced from beneath the hood ‘I still feel silly doing this.’ Michelle stuttered out something that was incomprehensible to all but Louise, who answered, ‘alright, I said I’d try it. But only like this, okay?’ Louise felt in her pocket and found her lens, thus to some extent reassuring herself that unlike before, her binocular state could be easily reinstated.

They walked along the road to the bus stop, barely talking: Louise nervous, Michelle lacking in small talk as always. The bus came, Michelle went aboard, followed by Louise, who only showed her face and her travel card to the driver, not the rest of the world: he stared at her just a little too long for comfort. Louise followed her girlfriend, and they sat at the back: thankfully for Louise’s feelings, there were few aboard. The picture on Louise’s travelcard had been subtly altered: a piece of sellotape carefully stuck over her face, and the left lens then equally carefully blacked out with a black pen, so as to match her own blanked out lens.

Louise sat hoping she would not be noticed, answering Michelle’s stuttered questions skillfully, looking up as little as possible so as not to expose her currently assumed condition. Her mind wavered between wishing she hadn’t agreed to this and then hoping it might get better, even perhaps be fun. After a while the bus travelled further into town, filling up gradually, and Louise realised she was looking around just as she had with two eyes, and also just as she had two years ago in her patched state, remembering the way things were back then. Her hood had somehow worked its way down through movement, exposing her face more generally. Michelle smiled, enjoying the view and the feelings it engendered in her. A little boy of perhaps 3 years old got on with his mother, a nondescript slightly overweight woman. She met Louise’s gaze, and looked away. Louise looked at the sign that indicated that the Railway Station was near. “Two stops to go,” she thought.

After a some time watching things go by, vaguely she realised she was being stared at. She heard a child’s voice chattering, and then more clearly, ‘Mummy, is she a pirate?’ Louise sat trying desperately to ignore both that innocent question and the greasy squirm she felt in her stomach. The mother glanced at her again, then gave her son a quiet lecture, telling him not to ask things like that. He stared a little longer, thoroughly confused. He got a whack, then as the bus lurched to a halt, the unpleasantness of being dragged up from the seat and down towards the door. Michelle squeezed Louise’s hand encouragingly.

Once at the train station, Louise and Michelle went to get tickets at a machine, which of course didn’t need to understand Michelle’s stutter nor could stare at Louise. She caught a snatch of conversation from two people nearby, ‘she’s such a pretty girl, shame about her eye though.’ Louise tugged her hood forward, doing her best to ignore it until the train came, which they got on. This time it was somewhat harder to be inconspicous: people were looking up at her from seats as she walked down the aisle in the middle between the seats, and thus could see her cowled face. The two girls sat together and chatted a little: Michelle asked with her voice, supported by some texting on her mobile phone what it felt like. Louise quietly told her, ’ I feel very uncomfortable, I feel like everyone is staring at me.' Michelle looked around. There was only one oldish man in a suit who could possibly see them; his attention was fully engaged by his large newspaper. She shrugged, then typed on her phone, ’this is exciting! Love it!' Louise looked a little pained. Michelle tapped away on her phone and showed Louise the result. ‘Sorry, Forgot u not like it much.’ ‘Why did I choose such a weird girlfriend?’ Michelle pointed at herself, and looked slightly puzzled and displeased ‘N… N… Nor…’, she stammered out, and Louise told her firmly, ‘darling, you’re not normal, even for a lesbo.’ Michelle laughed. The man with the newspaper glanced at them, ruffling his newspaper in irritation: that set the pair of them into barely-suppressed fits of giggles.

The train stopped a couple of times: at one of them, a man standing on the platform stared at Louise, so she stared back obstinately. Then, at the third stop, a woman pushed a young girl aboard, somewhat older than the kid they’d met on the bus. The train lurched into motion unexpectedly, and the woman quickly pushed her child into the seat facing Louise, and sat down beside her. Despite her apparent one-eyedness, Louise soon realised that she was being coyly inspected. The girl looked a little timid, even scared. She shivered a little, and her mother noted it, then glanced over at the two girls opposite her. To her, they just seemed at first glance like two normal teenage girls, curvy and attractive, the girl near the window slightly prettier - but the glasses didn’t help. But the pretty one, she’d lost her left eye in some accident, and was forced to have a black plastic thing instead of a lens in order to cover it up. The woman felt sorry for her, but only momentarily, because her daughter was whispering in her ear. She glared at her daughter, and replied, ’no, she’s not. Shush now.’ The girl began to shiver a little, and cringingly allowed herself the briefest of glances at Louise. She told her mother softly, ‘yes, she is. Mum, I’m scared of her.’ ‘Don’t be silly. She’s only a girl.’ ‘But she’s got that thing on her face.’ The mother looked apologetically at Louise, and said to her ‘I’m sorry, she gets a bit silly sometimes.’

Louise was by now earnestly hoping the girl would get over it, or that they would get up and leave, or at least do something else, but no, they stayed aboard; then the girl began to cry, saying, ‘she’s a monster - she’s going to eat us!’ Louise felt and looked confused, and then a little queasy: she didn’t remember feeling like this when Michelle did it. Michelle leant comfortingly against her, but despite this Louise didn’t feel so happy. Finally, thankfully, the train slowed for their stop. Louise ignored her apparently-disfigured face, the howls coming for the distraught child, and everything else. Louise pushed Michelle to get out of the train as fast as possible, by means of quickly going to the doors. She felt like pulling the doors open before the train had even stopped.

At last the train stopped, so she pushed the button to open the doors and scampered out, followed by her now panicking girlfriend. Michelle called out ineffectually for her, then found Louise leaning against a wall, hyperventilating. Wordlessly she dragged Louise to a bench, then once sitting managed to calm her down somewhat. Louise was crying a little, and needed some considerable hugging from Michelle as reassurance. Eventually Louise collected herself, and read what Michelle had typed on her phone, ‘you had enough?’ Michelle looked abashed, even guilty. Louise relented, and told her, ‘okay, we’ll do some more. But no more little kids, please.’ Michelle nodded happily. She took back her phone and typed out, ‘u look sooo sexy!’ Louise grimaced a little at that, but Michelle’s face told a different tale. Louise had to ask, ‘you’re getting an orgasm because a kid thinks I’m a one eyed monster?’ That was a question that would have stumped Michelle even if she hadn’t her severe stutter, so all she could do was look helpless; her big eyes watching Louise hopefully, fearfully, wondering what might come next. Louise shrugged, and said, ‘come on, Honeybun, let’s go then.’ Michelle smiled, and accompanied her out of the station.

Some time later Louise sat on a bench with Michelle in another town centre, alternating between looking around and talking with her girlfriend, feeling somewhat more relaxed, but rather glad she was in a different town centre: there was a chance she would be recognized, but not nearly as likely. At least here she felt more comfortable pulling down her hood a bit more, silently telling herself that this was how she coped before, so she could cope now. She noticed a boy sitting on a nearby bench - only a few feet away - he was probably about 12 or 13, spotty and not very tall. He casually ate chips bought from the local market, and was studying the two girls sitting nearby, munching thoughtfully. Louise almost ignored him, but then he finished his chips, dumped the greasy paper in the bin and went over to them. He stuttered a little, nowhere near as badly as Michelle on a good day, but then said, ‘do you mind if I sit with you, and ask a question?’ Louise straightened up, and looked at him with her one uncovered eye, wavering between telling him to get lost, and being friendly enough to talk: the latter won over. She nodded her assent, thus he sat next to her.

‘So, how did you lose your eye?’ Louise looked at Michelle, who shrugged and gave a little smile, and Louise gulped a little: she’d hoped not to be asked this, and metaphorically kicked herself for her stupidity. The boy noticed her discomposure and hurriedly asked forgiveness. Louise wasn’t really listening to his apology too carefully: she was trying to think of an answer. Quickly she came to a decision and said, a sombre look on her face, ‘oh, I got caught up in a car crash, part of the car bent and bashed my eye in.’ She shivered, thankful this was merely a lie, and hoped that it would be enough. He asked, ‘Does it hurt?’ ‘No, not now.’ Louise felt her girlfriend give a strange quiver, as if someone had tickled her. The lad watched Louise for a moment, and was about to ask another question, when his friend called out and thus he was obliged to rejoin him, but after he stood up, he coyly told her she was pretty with one eye. Louise blinked, then heard Michelle give a soft moan. At that, Louise gave a groan of exasperation: she knew exactly what that meant, and rolled her eyes skyward. Then she turned to her and told Michelle firmly, ’that does it, no more fooling around with blanked out lenses for me. The next one asking questions will be asking to look at the scar: I’m going to put my lens back in, coz I’m sick of being told I’m some freaky ugly monster thing. I know all that gives you the butterflies, but for me, it’s making me feel queasy. I wanna be normal again.’ Michelle started to whimper and sob a little, but Louise got up, pulled her hood over her head, and stalked off to the nearest toilet whilst feeling for her lens and screwdriver in her pocket. Some minutes later, when she reappeared, she had two eyes again, and nobody stared at her or gave her pitying glances, which felt good to her, but there was no sign of Michelle. Louise felt a pang of regret, then anger. She hadn’t wanted to do this: but had agreed out of love. When Michelle had done it, it was fun, if a bit weird. Feeling numb, she went home on the train alone, and once there, sat in on her bed crying a little.

Part II

The next day was bright and breezy, thankfully dry and not too cold, so Kirsty, Emma and Annie set off for a walk in the park - and perhaps a little play on the swings. Kirsty helped her on to a child’s swing, started pushing her gently, so causing Annie to giggle happily, and then turned to her younger sister, asking, ‘can I ask you a question?’ ‘Yeah, sure…’ ‘I’ve been having these headaches a lot recently, and I can’t remember when I last changed my glasses. I don’t suppose you remember?’ ‘Me? No, not a clue, sorry Big Sis.’

There was a short pause, then Kirsty asked, ‘can you read that sign on the gate from here?’ Emma looked momentarily uneasy, glanced at the sign, and then answered, ’no, should I be able to?' Kirsty’s mouth tightened, then she gave a quiet, uncertain “mmm”. After a short pause, Annie giggled again, and then Kirsty asked, ‘can I borrow your glasses?’ ‘Why? Wanna start a fire? It’s cold enough to need one!’ Emma found herself being fixed by that irrefusable small-eyed glare she’d seen before many times, then said, ‘okay - no need for that…’ She took them off, handed them to her eldest sister, commenting dryly, ‘please don’t ask me to read the sign now.’

Emma didn’t really see the fine details, but could see Kirsty take off her own glasses and try her pair. The first thing she said was, ‘you’ve still got such a big head!’ ‘Thanks. Can you read the sign?’ ‘No. And they still give me a headache, or make it worse. I hope it’s not the myodisks, because I’ll be wearing them soon.’ ‘Aww, they’re not so bad. It’s probably because your astigmatism is at a crazy weird angle!’ ‘No, it’s yours that’s at the crazy angle.’ Emma gave a sigh of exasperation, demanded her glasses back, on the not unreasonable pretext that one of them had to see in case Annie ran away. Kirsty readily agreed to that, and handed them back. Gently Emma suggested, ‘perhaps you’re just over tired, low on sugar, something like that. It can give you a headache too. Try eating a chocolate bar, see if it helps.’ ‘Yeah, I’ll get fat.’ ‘Oh, that’s not so bad really.’ ‘How would you know?’ Emma glanced down at her ample bust, then smiled a little. Kirsty glared at her again, then said mock-sternly, hands on hips, ‘keep them under control, please.’ Quite soon they were both remembering past misdeeds, and giggling more than Annie ever did, who sat in the gently moving swing, looking confusedly at her Mummy and Auntie Emma, her tied-on thick plastic-lensed glasses not telling her exactly what was going on nor why.

Kirsty sat down in front of her laptop that evening and found the appropriate file, and began to type ‘Dear Diary, today I compared my vision with Emma’s in the park. I know she hates having poorly corrected vision so I can assume that if she can see something, I ought to be able to see it too, so if I can’t then therefore I should get my eyes tested and my glasses changed. I couldn’t really do much of a test: it’s a bit rude to ask really, but she couldn’t see any better than me, so I can assume my vision is okay. That is a small relief, but it doesn’t explain the stupid headaches.’ She stopped and shut her eyes for nearly a minute, but found that didn’t really help, so opened them and continued typing ‘Perhaps I shall try eating some chocolate. Or else compare my vision to Louise. Ahh, but, she may not have exactly perfect vision like I assume Emma would have. Hang on, I know who I can ask. My friend Hadrosaur, when I see him, I can check with him: he told me he has 20-20 vision and doesn’t need glasses, although he says he admires girls with glasses. I’ll be seeing him for real in a few weeks, I can’t wait. Perhaps I can put up with this headache stuff a bit longer.’

Emma landed on her bed a short while later and pulled the diary from her bookshelf. Many pages had been missed: she was not a diary person, not usually anyway. Nevertheless she opened it at the correct date and began to write ‘Oi, Diary, it’s me Emma. It’s been a very long time. I just have to say that I’m worried about my big sister Kirsty. She’s getting these headaches, which I know usually means a visit to the opticians and new glasses ASAP. Unfortunately, if I had told her the truth today, I’d have to let go of my little secret. I know I am doing the right thing but it means I have to deceive my big sister. I hope either she will work it out herself, or else perhaps she will adapt to lousy vision. I have, after a fashion. You get used to the fogging in the distance. It’s nowhere near as bad as I thought. I can do this, I can deal with it. See you soon, bye.’

Later that night, Louise wrote in her diary, feeling rather emotionally torn and confused, her eyes reddened from crying ‘It’s me again, Louise. Forgive me for my wobbly writing today, but I’ve been having trouble. My girlfriend and I - I don’t quite know what to say or how to say it, but I think we might be having a breakup. Where do I start? She got me to do this doing this lens blanking thing with her, first of all at home and then outside, in public. You know, I didn’t enjoy my previous experiences of this, and back then I wished I could be free of the stupid thing sooo many times. And now, I have this crazy girl who gets a kick out of it! I’m not sure I can take it. It wasn’t so bad with her doing it, although I had to deal with all the funny looks and stupid comments, but then I tried it myself, and, oh, the things people said to me. I haven’t seen Michelle since I left her there on that bench. She sent me a text this morning asking if I was okay, but I don’t know if I am and I don’t know if I want to see her. Why can’t I have a normal girlfriend? A normal life? Yeah hah hah I’m a lesbo, so I can’t have a normal life. Okay, normal girlfriend then will have to do. Maybe I can change her, make her more normal. Ha, ha, ha. Perhaps I can teach her to talk properly instead of stuttering…’ She stopped as the obvious answer came to her, and began to cry a little.

Just over a week later, Kirsty looked down at her peacefully sleeping sister Melissa. She’d just been delivered into the recovery bay after her operation to install the implanted receiver and electrodes for her cochlear implant: there was a big protective pad over her right ear where this had all been done. She’d been told to look out for infection and dizziness afterwards, and would need to help her vulnerable sister recover - as if she had nothing else to worry about or do, but then this was her sister. Her vision swam, her headache seething threateningly, so she shut her eyes. She heard footsteps, but ignored them for the moment. Then she opened her eyes and looked down the corridor: For a moment she thought that she was looking at another Melissa, but then realised it wasn’t. It couldn’t be, so therefore it was her sister Amy, identical except for her better vision and ability to hear, as well as minor differences only someone who knew her would be aware of. She called out, ‘is that you, Kirsty?’ Amy was rather better at recognizing people in the distance than Melissa, and thus could use public transport without so much difficulty. Kirsty gave a tiny sigh: at least in her current state, she could see better than Amy, although that was hardly difficult. She put such problems aside, and replied, ‘yes, it’s me.’

Amy’s vision was restricted, distorted and much minified, but even she could tell an empty chair from one in use, so sat down next to her sister and looked straight at her. Kirsty was well used to her strange gaze, it being fixed and much corrected, tiny eyes blinking from within small circles: it could be quite unnerving to those who hadn’t seen such before. Amy asked her older sister hopefully, ‘how’s it going?’ ‘oh, the doctor said it all went smoothly and there’s no complications at present. She should be coming home today.’ ‘Ahh… That’s good news.’ She reached out and grasped Melissa’s hand, and told her gently, ‘get well soon, Smelly Melly.’ Kirsty chuckled at that, then replied on Melissa’s behalf, ‘Amy samey.’ Amy smiled, and commented, ‘you don’t say it right: It’s Amy Samey, not Amy samey.’ ‘I’m not a twin.’ ‘Yeah, even I can see that.’

They spent some time chatting about old times, swapping anecdotes then asking about their respective children. Joey had perfectly good vision, but Annie’s situation was much less clear. Amy asked, ‘what do you think is going to happen? When will they know?’ ‘I don’t know. Not this year for sure, she’s too young to test her visual acuity properly. Oh, I really hope she will see okay.’ ‘If not, she can join our little blind club.’ Kirsty gave a twisted smile. ‘Between us all, we have some experience of crappy eyesight, no?’ ‘You could say that…’ Amy turned fully to her, gently put her hand on Kirsty’s, then said to her, meeting her gaze with her own encircled version, ‘you know, we all depend on you for so much, we’re very grateful. Even Emma. Especially Emma, I think. I don’t know what we’d do without you, probably all fall apart. You’re the very best big sister.’ Kirsty smiled, and replied, ‘all part of the service, Amy Samey.’ Amy laughed, then replied, ‘that’s more like it. We’ll make a twin out you yet.’ At that Melissa stirred, so their attention turned toward her.

A couple of weeks later Emma was finishing up at church hall and getting ready to go home when one of the men there came over to her. She thought he was quite sexy, wearing glasses that were nowhere near as strong as hers, but alas he was married. That had never stopped her before, but now, she was trying her best to be good. He asked ‘Emma, we’ve got a proposition for you. Come with me, and we’ll talk about it.’ Emma smiled: in her opinion, propositions were usually pretty good as far as she was concerned. He took her into a small room and for a moment she thought he might be up to no good, but then she heard voices, snatches of conversation, ‘it’s been okay so far…’ ‘I really empathise with those poor kids in Africa…’ And suchlike.

Once inside, she soon realised everyone there wore glasses, and had reduced their prescriptions by 10% as the Pastor had suggested. He wasn’t here, but the man who brought her in asked everyone how they were getting on, and after some assurances that things were going OK, he then suggested a further reduction. The rest all looked at each other dubiously; Emma felt as if everyone else was looking at her - which was not really such a worrisome thing for her. Some voiced doubts that they might be going too far. One older woman, with a prescription about minus 12 or so, piped up and said ‘I think I’ll stick with what I’ve got.’ A few others agreed, with perhaps less enthusiasm than resignation. Emma thought a moment, and then boldly said ‘I’ll do it.’ Now everyone really looked at her, some curious, some amazed, some admiringly. ‘I said I’ll do it. It’s for the children in Africa, right?’ The man asked her if was sure, so Emma replied ‘I’ve taken off 1.75 already, another 0.75 can’t be so bad. I’ll get used to it.’ There were some words of support and praise for her efforts, and then the small meeting broke up. Emma got into her car and sat there for a moment, considering what she had done. Was it crazy? Possibly. To herself she thought firmly “what Emma wants to do, she will do. Watch out world.”

During the early morning of the last Friday of the month, Annie ran into the kitchen saying repeatedly, ‘can you see it, can you see it?’ Kirsty called her over, and hugged her, ‘okay, you be a good girl for Vicky.’ Vicky came in: she wore glasses - metal framed, with distinctly less power than most people thereabouts: probably just over half the power of Kirsty’s. Kirsty blinked at her, and she said in her spanish-flavoured accent, ‘ah, I felt, errrm, left out, that the words? Everyone here in the house, are wearing glasses?’ Kirsty shrugged and let her get on with caring for her child: she needed to get ready for work.

Once on the way to work, whilst sitting on a train looking both businesslike and alluringly sexy, she thought about Annie: surely it wouldn’t be long before she was ready to go to the optician for more accurate eye testing. That was good, but then she’d soon realise that she couldn’t see very well. She gave a sigh, and her attention returned to the view outside. Her eyes seemed to pull a little today, silently complaining to her that something wasn’t right. Then someone sat next to her, and the thought was gone and the start of a busy day took over.

That same day, Emma came in from work looking and feeling a little flustered. She’d switched her lenses again; this time another 0.75 of correction having been removed, making a total of 2.5 taken from her. From her point of view, much of the world was lost in her own private fog. She kept telling herself “I’ll get used to it”, but then immediately wondered, worried, then called hopefully upon whatever divine strength might exist to see her through. It helped her feelings, but made things no clearer. She heard on the TV something more about the spechunter: apparently another young girl up north somewhere had been stabbed and her glasses taken. Emma found herself more listening rather than looking: the writing on the screen being unreadable. Now she truly understood what it was like to be her twin sisters. She hurried upstairs, hoping her blind sister Melissa wasn’t around - at this point, she might as well be asking her to read things, rather than vice-versa, that being the usual situation.

4. April

Part I

The first Wednesday in April was a day Kirsty had long been looking forward to, she thought as she walked into the exhibition centre hosting the insurance industry fair she was visiting. She’d been to some before, but none had this particularly special spice: she was going to meet her friend, Hadrosaur. As normal for this sort of business engagement, she dressed appropriately but not severely, trying to give off a sense of appealing efficiency. She was a little early for her meeting with Hadrosaur, but not overly so. She chatted with some sales representatives from other companies for a while about business; it was interesting for her but not incredibly so. She had business of another sort entirely on her mind.

Then she went to hang around the stand where they’d agreed to meet. She did her best not to look as if she was waiting nervously for someone, but this was difficult to avoid. As she looked another way, someone came up behind her and said softly, ‘hello, I think “I seen” you somewhere before.’ She turned to look: he was taller than her, of medium build, a hint of a belly, in his late forties, thinning hair greying a little, reasonably handsome and wearing a slightly worn grey business suit. He smiled and there was a glint in his eye. Kirsty stuttered a little, so he said to her, ‘it is Kirsty, isn’t it?’ She gulped, and said, ‘yes, I’m Kirsty.’ He smiled again, and gave her a handshake, as if all that was on his mind was business. ‘Can I get you a coffee?’ ‘Okay, lead on.’

Quite soon they were seated at a small table, sipping coffee. He asked about her headaches, something he’d talked about before on Eyescene, and she responded by telling the truth ‘I’m still getting them, I haven’t been to the optician: I still haven’t had time.’ ‘Oh, you should make a little time for yourself, and especially your eyes.’ Kirsty looked at him a little askance, and then admitted, ‘perhaps you’re right. I’ll do it as soon as I can.’ She paused, bit her lip a little, then asked, ‘could you help me? You did say you had 20/20 vision? Please could you read me something and I’ll try to read it myself.’ He read the cafe price lists, the signs advertising fried chicken nearby, signs on the nearest of the trade stands. Some of what he read, Kirsty could read easily, other things, she couldn’t, some she could just with a little bit of squinting. He said mischievously ‘I can see you squinting.’ She darted a look at him, and admitted, ‘okay, I give in, I can’t see as well as you.’ ‘So you’ll go to the optician then?’ ‘Yeah, yeah, no need to nag, these headaches are killers.’

They chatted amiably for a while, then Kirsty got ready to leave, saying, ’thanks again for the coffee, and the, erm, eyetest. I’ve got business to attend to, people to meet.’ ‘I understand. Perhaps we can meet again?’ She rummaged in her handbag and took out a small box containing business cards, took one out, wrote her mobile phone number on the back and slid it across the table to him. She got up and walked a couple of steps away from the table, thinking she’d made a friend: he seemed harmless enough, but probably too old to date. She told herself it would be nice to have someone to trust, and to rely on, though.

He turned over the business card: it read in big, bold, important letters ‘Kirsty Johnson. Section Leader, Personal Insurance Sales.’ She didn’t see the glint in his eye reappear as she made to leave, but she did hear him say to her ‘I knew someone called Johnson once. Oh, must have been twenty, twenty five years ago now.’ Kirsty didn’t quite understand what he was talking about, but her departure slowed a little in order to allow her to listen. He then said, ‘her name was Jane.’

Kirsty stopped in her tracks, turned and stared back down at him still sitting at the table, wondering what was coming next. ‘That’s my mum’s na… Oh, come on… You’re never…?’ ‘She wore strong glasses, like you, big square plastic ones, they were in fashion way back then. Your birthday is 25th of March as you told me. I remember, because I was there.’ A flash of memory came to Kirsty as she stood there, looking astonished. In her late mother’s effects was a picture of her holding a baby - which was Kirsty when she was a child. She couldn’t remember the details, but the glasses her mother wore sounded like the ones he described. Silently she went back to her seat, and sat staring into his face, then said ‘I knew there was something familiar about you.’ He shrugged, so she continued ‘I know what it is now. Your face reminds me of me, when I look in the mirror. I didn’t get it before, not properly.’ ‘Do you get it now?’ ‘Well, you’re not wearing glasses, but despite that I know - I think. Either you killed him and you’re an imposter…?’ He smiled, and replied, ’no, I’m not an impostor. I’m your father.'

Kirsty gave a little quiver, stunned, and delighted - and then full of questions. ‘I could ask you a million questions.’ ‘As could I, but - at least we met. You’ve grown into such a lovely young woman, it seems like a miracle to me.’ Kirsty felt herself melt a little: he was a charmer, she knew why her mother had fallen for him. He asked, ‘do you live with your mother, or did you leave home yet?’ Kirsty’s face dropped, feeling pain she couldn’t utter. Gravely, she replied, ‘my mum died two years ago.’ ‘Oh, I am sorry to hear that. Perhaps I could visit her grave. She was important to me too, you know.’ Kirsty nodded, nudging her glasses up to wipe away a tear. ‘Anyway, I know I’m not your mother, but I’m here now.’ Kirsty brightened - mostly. Nobody was like her mum, but a long-lost dad, well, that was some consolation. She straightened, and then said ‘I don’t have any business here today anymore. Come on, let’s get out of here, go for a walk, and get to know each other.’ Dryly he said, ‘oh, but Insurance Sales is so exciting.’ ‘Don’t be silly. It’s just a job. You’re far more important. Come on Dad, lets go.’ And so the two of them left the exhibition centre.

About the same time Emma was driving to work: for her, it seemed that the world was a foggy and slightly distorted place, her still brain struggling to adapt to the blurred images her vision gave her. Every time she found herself struggling to see something, she consoled herself that she could still see something. It wasn’t as if she couldn’t see the cars: they were plenty big enough. It vaguely occurred to her that she needed to be able to read the number plates, but couldn’t remember how far away, and when it did occur to her to wonder why that was important, she told herself there was much more to driving than reading number plates. Stubbornly she told herself that unless she crashed, and told a policeman she couldn’t see, they’d never know. Anyway, it was the will of something divine, she knew not what.

She rounded a corner, and saw a yellow blur by the roadside. As she drove closer, she realised it said something, but she couldn’t tell. “Why did they have to go and make the letters so small?” She thought complainingly to herself. It said something about a road closure on something date: by the time she got close enough to read it, she didn’t have time to do so due to the speed of her car. She then realised her car was going into the kerb, so she stepped on the brake, causing her car to skid almost to a halt. The car behind her swerved and drove around her, hooting as it went past. She gasped for breath, and gave thanks to whoever was watching for their protection, then cautiously resumed her journey to work.

Kirsty arrived home from her trip to the industry fair early that evening, got dressed into something rather less businesslike, then sat before her laptop, thought for a moment, then began ‘Dear Diary, I never guessed quite what would happen today, I thought I might meet a friend, perhaps an acquaintance at most. Instead, I found my father. He seems like a really nice guy, all sort of sweet, charming and caring. He lives up north somewhere, but he says now he’s met me, that he wants to move down here. Oh boy this is the best thing that has happened to me in a long long time! I’ve learnt so much today but I can’t put it down here right now, my head’s still spinning, and for a change not just because I’ve got a headache. He’s already helped me so much: now I’m sure I need new glasses thanks to him.’ ‘Talking of good news, it seems that Louise has wised up and got rid of that girl with the stutter. Louise’s a sweet girl but a bit of a soft touch. Hope she can find a boy now without someone like her around scaring them off.'

With that Annie again demanded attention, and who was she to deny it?

Emma arrived home a few minutes later looking anxious, then somewhat relieved. Kirsty didn’t really notice her condition because she was preoccupied with telling her Diary about her long-lost and now found dad, Vicky was too polite, Louise not there and Melissa too poor sighted to notice. After dinner, Emma went upstairs to her bedroom and had a panicked rummage around for her old lenses. Where were they? She couldn’t find them at all. She didn’t want to revert to her reserve glasses, hidden safe under the wardrobe, although she was sorely tempted. She abandoned the search, attributing their loss to divine will. She carried on with her attempts to deal with 2.0 dioptres of uncorrected myopia, with -.5 astigmatism thrown in.

Part II

Kirsty answered her phone during the afternoon of the next day, whereupon she heard a distressed sob ‘Kirsty, it’s me, Amy. My boyfriend dumped me and left!’ She heard more sobbing ‘I don’t know what I did wrong, but…’ ‘There, there, calm down and tell me all about it.’ Amy struggled to tell her, her voice breaking, ‘he told me it was over, that he’d found someone else who could see without glasses…’ She gasped for air, then continued unhappily, ‘he told me I was an blind ugly freak! I thought he loved me!’ Kirsty heard her dissolve into helpless sobbing. Kirsty told her, ‘okay, okay, Amy dear, don’t worry… I’ll be over as soon as I can. It sounds like you need a hug.’

The following Saturday morning, Vicky knocked at Louise’s door and said in her accented English ‘Hello, Louise, I’m having package for you. From the Postman.’ Louise took it from her: it wasn’t very big, about 10cm square and less than half that deep. Once Vicky left, Louise opened it: protected by some padding was a lens. With a tiny gasp, she realised what it was and what it meant: it was goodbye from Michelle. Some time ago - she couldn’t remember when - they had swapped lenses as keepsafes, as tokens of love. Louise had taken to keeping hers very close, as had Michelle. She locked it away in her money box, did her best to avoid crying again, and then got ready to go out. She had schoolwork to do: that meant a visit to the town library.

A few hours later found Kirsty rummaging around in the attic, looking for items to show her newly-rediscovered father. Most of the stuff from her mother’s old room had been been gone through and got rid of or stuck in boxes, and then left up there. The poor light from the single naked bulb made it hard for her to see, but thankfully she didn’t expect to be reading much up here. She blinked and valiantly ignored her headache, now seeming an ever-present companion, through hardly a friend. There were lots of old pictures, including the one her father had mentioned. She smiled at the old photos of various family members, five girls and their mother in yesterday’s fashions, wearing funny-looking glasses from other times now lost beyond fickle memory. She also found her mother’s glasses cords, two of them, long and tough. Well, who would want weak ones with strong glasses to keep on? She wondered if Amy & Melissa might want them: they were good as new, so stuck them in her pocket.

And then, at the bottom she found something sticking out from beneath one of the jumbled piles of photos, some in books, some still in the packets as they had come from the developers: it was a leg. She pulled at it, and found she couldn’t move it, so had to remove some of the stuff and try again. After some pulling, it came free, and she saw what it was. It was a toy dinosaur, fairly realistic - despite it being made of dark purple plastic, and about 20cm tall. She felt her nose twitch, sensing a sneeze coming on caused by the dust. “Time to get out of here,” she thought to herself, so got the things together she wanted to show her dad and hurried downstairs.

It was too late: she had just put the things down on her bed, including the dinosaur, then gave a convulsive sneeze. That set her head spinning, and the nascent headache she’d felt all morning flowered into miserable bloom. She felt like someone had punched her on her forehead, her eyes itching and threatening to join in. Despite this, she picked up the toy dinosaur and looked at it closely. ‘I remember you. I played with you when I was a kid. Do you remember me?’ She made a “grrr” noise on behalf of the plastic dinosaur. ‘I wonder who bought you?’ She made the dinosaur mimic a sort of head-shaking motion, and then put it down, telling herself quietly, ’now I’m talking to plastic dinosaurs: this headache must be really getting to me.' Indeed it was: a feeling of dizziness swept over her, and she had to sit, then a few moments later, she lay on her bed. The whole room seemed to spin, and then, she fell asleep.

Kirsty awoke, to clear vision without glasses, and saw that she was in a forest, very near the edge of a small clearing. Before she could get up, a young woman tripped over her. She glared at Kirsty intently, squinting a little, and then smiled, once she recognized her, then asked, ‘it’s you, isn’t it? It’s really you! Where have you been?’ Kirsty shook her head in bemusement. Vaguely she realised that she had no headache. ‘What’s going on? What’s happening?’ ‘There’s no time to explain. The Hadrosaur is coming.’ ‘The what?’ The girl got up and said urgently, ‘quickly, run, it’s a big, terrible monster, and will get you if you stand there waiting to be eaten!’ Kirsty heard a deep growl, a rustling in the trees and leaves from the far side of the clearing, then heavy footsteps coming toward her. Diana ran. Kirsty stood, waiting to see what would happen. There was something not right about this, but she couldn’t tell quite what.

Abruptly it burst through the trees into view: it looked like a dinosaur, but purple, just like the toy one she had found in the attic, but full-sized and certainly full of ferocious life. And there was something else: the Hadrosaur wore glasses, perched incongruously on its nose, thick lensed, distorting its already ugly face and tied on somehow. A tiny eye writhed and danced behind each lens, each like a fish swimming behind giant ice cubes, but quite definitely seeing her. With a roar, it started toward her, so Kirsty ran. She dared not look back lest she slow or stumble, but could hear it stomping away behind her, getting nearer alarmingly quickly.

Ahead of her she saw a large rounded rock, and thought perhaps she could lose the creature behind it, so she dashed around it and stopped. There was a hole in the side; big enough to squeeze herself into, and darkness beyond. Breathlessly, she forced herself headfirst into it, squirming her way in as fast as she could. Behind her she heard the beast’s footsteps slow to a halt. She pulled herself to a ball, her back pressed against the unseen rocky wall of the small chamber. She thought to herself “surely it couldn’t get in here?” Then, “surely it’s too stupid to realise where I am?” and then whispered, ‘go away!’ To her astonishment, she heard a deep, rumbling voice, ‘you don’t lose me that easily! After all, I just found you.’ Kirsty gave a little gasp, as she realised the creature had spoken to her. She saw a huge leg swish by the opening, heard the creature move away a little, then all was quiet. After a while, she cautiously moved toward the opening, stuck her head out, intending to have a quick look outside.

It was standing a few metres away, staring at her with those oddly squirming eyes looking though those thick lenses. It charged at her: Kirsty wriggled back into the rock, narrowly avoiding having her head bitten off by its huge jaws. A moment or two later, she felt the enormous rock being rocked, then again, harder; It seemed to shift a little. A few more shoves followed, and Kirsty was tumbled almost upside down. She cried out, ‘for crying out loud, bring on the giant pink sabre-toothed fluffy rabbit to save me!’ She heard deep derisive laughter, then more heavy-limbed movement, and after that, a strange screaming sound, like nails being dragged down a chalkboard, followed by much roaring and gnashing of teeth, then she saw a tuft of pink fur tossed near the opening to her rock-ball sanctuary. She closed her eyes.

Abruptly, Kirsty opened her eyes, and saw nothing but pink fur before her. She squirmed away, a look of horror on her face, until she realised that she wasn’t in a ball of rock, nor being chased by a crazy dinosaur. The giant pink rabbit she saw belonged to her daughter Annie, who held it very near her face. Blissfully cheerfully she said, ‘mummy! Bunny says wake up!’ Kirsty carefully straightened her awry glasses on her face, and recovered her composure. Everything was alright. She said, ‘sorry Annie, Mummy had a bad dream.’ ‘Bunny will look after you.’ ‘Yeah, I suppose so.’ Slowly it dawned on Kirsty that her headache was gone. She smiled.

Kirsty accompanied Melissa to the hospital about a couple of weeks later, with the intention, nay the hope, that today her implant would be turned on. As normal, Melissa needed patient guidance and people speaking to her both close and carefully with their enunciation, otherwise she’d quickly be lost. She was sat down in a chair beside a computer designed to test implants like hers, full of hope and anxiety, hoping that the darned thing would work. Some minutes later the doctor gave her a countdown with his fingers - near enough for her to see, which wasn’t very far away - and touched a key on the computer. She jumped as she started to hear, then started to cry as she realised what was happening: the world was not just what little she could see, she’d now be able to make sense of things she couldn’t, and that really meant a lot. Before long she was hugging the doctor and Kirsty and everyone else within reach. She said to Kirsty, ‘your voice sounds funny - like a robot.’ ‘Yeah, sometimes that’s how I feel too.’ It wasn’t long before people found they could call her name in order to get her attention, rather than tapping her arm and thus usually causing her to jump in surprise. She sat at home watching TV, unable to read the captions but able to hear the voices coming from the fuzzy faces. And then, having got this far, she told Kirsty ‘I want to go and live with Amy. She’s my twin, and she needs me. Actually, we need each other. Can you take me please?’ ‘Are you sure you’ll be alright?’ ‘Yeah, we’re two blind girls, we’re twins and so should always stick together. No offence to you and our other sisters.’ ‘None taken, I understand.’ Kirsty took her to her sister’s flat with some basic belongings, whereupon she was warmly welcomed.

The last Tuesday evening in April found Emma at her self-help and support group for new glasses wearers. It had been raining heavily, making her view of the world even harder to work out at times. She felt somewhat uncomfortable telling people how great clear vision was with glasses, when she herself had worse corrected vision than some of the newbies had uncorrected vision. After that was done with, they trickled out in ones and twos. The last one was Caroline, who went out, leaving Emma squinting unhappily at something on the far wall. She heard heavy rain, and Caroline coming back in. She asked ‘Emma, could you give me a lift to the bus stop, please?’ Emma got to her feet and said, ‘of course, of course. Come with me.’ Caroline was certainly not dressed for rain; wearing only jeans and a tight sparkley red jumper which clung to her youthful curves insistently, and had once been for best, but now was slightly worn. She smiled, and followed Emma outside, where the rain was tipping down relentlessly.

They drove to the bus stop, but for Emma it was obvious, even with her inadequate vision, that there was no bus shelter. Grimly she made a decision, ‘you can’t wait there, you’ll get soaked.’ ‘Can you wait?’ ‘No, I need to get home, I’m tired. Where do you live?’ It transpired Caroline lived out on the outskirts of town, where Emma seldom went. She trusted her instincts to get her to approximately the right area, but told her, ‘you’ll have guide me when we get near, I’ll be too busy avoiding puddles.’

Emma fought back her sense of panic as she drove: driving was okay with her poor vision when things were familiar, since she could make do with recognizing familiar features and landmarks to find her way. But once off her normal beaten track, she needed to look at signs, which for her were too small to read unless close up, but Caroline didn’t appear to notice that, thankfully. She offered up a silent prayer to whatever god who was in charge of rain for assistance. Caroline eventually guided her to the appropriate road once Emma had asked “are we near yet?”, “Which way now?” etc, a couple of times, trying to avoid any suggestion that she couldn’t see well.

Eventually they got to Walker Road, and Caroline got out, thanking Emma profusely whilst wiping a drop of water from the front of her left lens with her finger. Emma advised her, ‘get inside, looks like there’s more coming soon.’ Caroline scampered inside, leaving Emma to the journey home. She gave a sigh, started the car, turned around and went up the road.

It occurred to her she couldn’t remember the way home in all its detail, so picked a road that looked familiar. In fact, to her they all looked pretty similar, so looking for landmarks was unlikely to be useful: she didn’t come to this part of town often enough to know it without good vision. She was looking for Monument Road - so she stopped at a side road, and squinted at the sign. It was so hard to read, and it was starting to rain again, so Emma decided to go on to the next one. The road sign here looked very similar to the last one: with a bit of squinting she thought saw a road name beginning with “M”. The blur looked right, she decided, and so turned and drove her car down it.

For a few minutes, she felt secure, then slowly she began to wonder. There were houses, but they seemed different: further apart, set further back from the road. Then she thought she recognized something, so carried on. At least it was well-lit, which helped her considerably. She went down into a slight dip and saw and heard some splashing as her car went through some localized flooding a few centimetres deep. Past the next rise, the street lights rapidly petered out, followed by the houses. She turned on full beam, and carried on, trying to keep a lid on her rising panic as the rain started to beat down on her car.

After a few more minutes she drove through a deeper patch of flooding, this time splashing water all over the place. The road narrowed to a typical country lane: high hedges each side, bumpy and not well maintained. She was getting pretty scared by now, so decided to turn back. Finding a place to turn around wasn’t easy: the best she could do was a farm gate, surrounded by a sea of soft mud. Her wheels spun, then gripped, and after much shunting and struggling she was turned around and going back the way she came.

She ploughed into the patch of flooding she’d splashed through so blithely about 10 minutes ago, only to realise belatedly that it was considerably deeper. Her car shuddered to a halt, then something went pop under the bonnet. She sat shivering with panic, trying to get the thing going. After a few tries, she did so. Her relief was short-lived, as she quickly realised the main beam on her car no longer worked. She drove her car steadily out of the minor lake she’d driven into, then drove along a little faster, jumping at everything. She really couldn’t see much at all, but did her best to avoid the muddy banks each side, but alas, failed to notice the y-junction ahead she’d driven past previously with little notice from her. She slammed on her brakes, but her wet muddy tyres and brakes failed her, so her car ploughed straight into the stout hedge separating the two country roads. She banged her forehead against the steering wheel, narrowly avoiding breaking her glasses, and drifted off into unconsciousness.

Some minutes later the rain eased, and another car drove from the other fork of the y-junction and stopped. A man got out, and discovered Emma sitting at the wheel of her car, head slumped forward, clearly unconscious. She was an attractive young woman, large breasted, a little plump otherwise perhaps, but perfectly acceptable. And she wore thick glasses. He thought to himself “it’s surprising what you might find just by driving home. Usually, I have to look so hard for what I want, and this might be exactly right.”

Kirsty sat feeling weary as she attended a late meeting at work. She was there with the other section leaders being introduced to their new department head: his name was Bernie, a fat, balding man in his 50’s, and generally highly unattractive, especially to a young attractive woman as she was. He looked at Kirsty a lot, which made her feel even more uncomfortable. And then he started to speak, introducing himself, ‘hello-my-name-is-Bernie. I’m-your-new-department-head. I-hope-we-can-all-get-on-well-together.’ His voice was slow, deliberate, droning, flat and extremely annoying to listen to. Kirsty silently told him to shut up, stop leering at her and go away. Instead, he droned on excruciatingly boringly about the latest sales promotion; she forced herself to stay awake and alert enough to take in what was being said. It was one of the disadvantages of being a Section Leader, she mused unhappily: wasting her time listening to bores talking about the most tedious aspects of insurance sales. She even had to contribute, which was really not what she felt like doing. For the moment, her headache seemed mild and mostly bearable, almost nonexistent, as it had for the last few days, but just then someone handed out a list of stats and figures. She started to read them but her vision started to blur and swim a little, causing her difficulties in reading it quickly enough to keep up. Suddenly she felt a sharp pain behind her right eye, and almost gasped in surprise. She tried for few more moments to read the damned thing but couldn’t do it, so asked to be excused. She scampered into the restroom and stared into her eye, minified by her thick lens, half expecting to see a dagger sticking out of it, but it looked perfectly normal to her. She could see normally, at least in the distance, yet closer up, her vision complained. She swore to herself, and promised not to put off an eye test any longer. After a while, she went back into the meeting room, and carried on till late, trying to concentrate, trying not to read too much, and then went home very late, thinking only of bed, trying to forget about Bernie and his boring voice.

Some time later Emma woke up, feeling groggy and dizzy. She was in darkness, but she could hear a steady rumbling which she felt throughout her body. Dimly she asked herself “where am I?” Something stopped her moving her arms and legs: she felt something rough tied around her ankles and wrists. She started to squirm around, but could do nothing to free herself. She felt something tickling her face around her mouth, and realised her mouth was well covered with something else. She began to cry out, but her voice could not be heard by anyone who might have wanted to assist her. She tried to pray for help, but started to sob a little instead. It became obvious that she was trapped in the back of a car, bumping along with no idea where she was going, fearing the reason why.

During the morning of the last day in April, Annie stood up in her cot, and saw something interesting: her vision was good enough to see things quite well for a few feet, and that was further than she could reach between the bars of her cot anyway. What she saw was Vicky’s bag, left carelessly nearby. She reached out and pulled at it, then pulled again. Something fell out. Little Annie didn’t know everything, but knew what these were: a pair of glasses. She reached down and picked them up. Being a bespectacled child already, she knew exactly what to do with them: she opened them out and brought them to her little face to look at them, bumping them against her own glasses tied to her head. She didn’t see any better, so let go of them. They dropped through the bars of her cot and onto the floor. She started to cry a little, so Vicky came in, saw both her distress and the glasses on the floor, said something in Spanish, them picked her up to comfort her. After quieting her, she quickly put the fallen glasses into her bag, then put that well out of sight and reach of Annie.

5. May

Part I

Louise sat and wrote in her Diary ‘Hey Diary, Louise again here. I gotta tell you this, Emma has gone missing, since Tuesday night, it’s now Friday. I know she went missing before for years, but although we worried about her, it wasn’t like this. We knew she wanted out. This time, we pretty much know she didn’t go willingly. It’s worse coz that awful spechunter is around. I can tell Kirsty is scared shitless, she’s really stressed, her eyes seem to pop out of her head and she says she can’t sleep, she has a headache or something. Please please please let her come home safe. We need her, and her strength.’

The next morning Louise got up early and headed out to the town library: it was a lovely sunny May day and the girls were out, wearing clothes they’d not considered wearing since the previous autumn. Louise had two things on her mind: college work and her sister Emma. Three things, if she included Kirsty, who was forced as usual to take the brunt of it all. Despite all of this, she felt a warm, sunny feeling inside herself: she was single again, but not that depressed or anxious about it, despite the awkward manner of her breakup from Michelle. She was an attractive young woman, nearly 17 years old, wearing a tight pale blue top over her curvaceous body and darker blue skinny jeans. The glasses didn’t matter apart from addressing her visual deficiencies, which to her were of little account as long as nobody wanted her to try eye patching again. As she walked along, she caught sight of several women of about her age. There were men, but she wasn’t so interested in them, except for the odd one or two who wore interesting glasses: often she would sigh wistfully, wishing they could be a lovely young woman in love with her. Life wasn’t so kind to her, she told herself, she’d have to be lucky and work at it next time.

And then, she saw a real beauty: without glasses, Louise wouldn’t have looked at her twice, but she wore the most alluring black plastic framed, squarish glasses, her eyes minified by quite a bit of myopia, not as much as her own: Louise was steadily learning to appreciate the way minus lenses changed people’s faces for the better, and it was quite different to the effect of plus lenses. The girl’s dark eyes flicked around, as if she were suspicious of everyone. Louise loved how they seemed to be compressed into such an alluring shape. She slowed down, starting to guesstimate her actual amount of myopia, based on how much the girl’s face was distorted inwards, partly from the thickness she could see, and also from her ever-expanding knowledge of how glasses looked. How far could she see without glasses? What did the world look like to her? Did she like her glasses, or just tolerate them for the vision she got? Then the girl glanced at Louise, caught her gaze, and Louise just melted, all thoughts of how much and how far completely evaporated from her mind. Then she was gone, past her. Louise stopped and considered saying “hello,” but then, she wasn’t here to chat up girls: she needed to go to the library to work. “Who knows,” she thought, “there might be a nice girl there too - all that reading makes them shortsighted too!” She set off again, her inner smile radiating.

She strode purposefully into the library: this was, for her, a good place to see GWG’s of all sorts. Students of her age spent many hours studying, and often needed glasses to do so. There was such a girl who served at the counter logging books in and out: Louise often contrived to get served by her. Likewise, she knew other places where she knew there were several attractive young women wearing glasses, and would browse around shops with no intention other than checking out the GWG’s. But this was, in her opinion, often one of the best places to go hunting for girls wearing glasses.

Once near the quiet area, she saw several girls dotted around at desks, surrounded by piles of books of varying sizes, writing or reading as required. There were boys, too, some who looked at her. She ignored them: she really didn’t want to know even if they wore the thickest glasses in the universe. Oh, perhaps she’d have a little peek. As she walked, she pondered why some had such interesting glasses, when in her opinion they’d look far better on a girl.

There were two large desks at the end, one empty, one with just one girl working at it, whereas all the rest had at least two people. As she very much liked girls, she decided to go and share the table with this particular one, who sat surrounded by several piles of books and study-related items, staring out of the window through deliciously thick-lensed glasses. Louise’s acute love of bespectacled girls made her quiver inside, but there was more: this girl was rather tall, but also odd. The glasses seemed to be in old-fashioned, heavy frames, she wore conservative, rather plain and dowdy clothes, concealing her figure shamefully as far as Louise was concerned, and over her head was thrust a slightly tatty woollen hat in stripes of dull colours, under which unkempt tufts of ginger hair escaped the hat’s tight embrace to partially conceal her face. Louise saw her squint a little into the distance, and then as Louise stopped at the chair diagonally opposite her, she turned her head sharply, glaring up at Louise with dismay, contempt and dislike written over her face. Louise asked politely, ‘do you mind if I share?’ With a curt nod girl indicated that this was ok, and her attention returned to her work: fiendishly complicated integrals, her handwriting rapid, small, but still mostly neat: Louise wasn’t sparing much attention on that, instead she was thinking how pretty the girl was: if she could be persuaded to dress a little more fashionably, she’d be a stunner. Louise did her best not to disturb her, but couldn’t help either looking at nor thinking about her, and that caused her to drop her bag; which drew forth an superior glare from the girl opposite. When Louise subsequently and quite innocently did a few other distracting things, the girl got up unexpectedly, pushed her books into her bag with sharp movements, and strode off long-leggedly, completely oblivious to Louise’s feelings of longing. Her heart dropped, so she returned to her work, feeling chastened and wistfully hoping for better luck next time.

That evening Kirsty sat at her desk in her bedroom, wearing not very much apart from her glasses, and opened up her laptop. It beeped at her, and her tired and disorientated mind grasped the import of the reminder as she read the accompanying message: it related to her appointment at Davis and Taylor, the opticians. Alas, as she quickly realised, that was 3 days ago. Quietly but fervently she muttered to herself, ‘aow, shit!’ Then, ‘dammit, it took ages to get that appointment!’ She felt stressed again, so fitfully started to type in her diary file ‘Hello Diary, thank you for reminding me of something too late… I’m sorry, I shouldn’t say that, it’s not your fault.. It’s just that with all this Emma stuff I forgot my appointment at the optician, it took a couple of weeks to get an appointment, seems like everyone needs eye tests and glasses all at the same time these days. Goodness knows how long it will take me to get another appointment because they said they were really busy. I really would appreciate my vision being sorted out right now because I have two big headaches at the moment, one caused by my glasses and the other by whatever bastard took my sister Emma.’

She stopped and gave an enormous sigh of exasperation, then continued ’the last anyone saw Emma was when she gave a girl called Carolyn from her glasses self-help group a lift home. They found her car just into the countryside beyond the town, there’s signs of her being dragged away into another car, but there’s been so much rain that the police can’t get an imprint of the tyres or shoes. The guy - everyone assumes it’s a guy - wore gloves so there’s no fingerprints. So, basically apart from me sitting here fretting about her and hoping to hear good news, there is little anyone can do. I spent a couple of nights at the police station giving statements and asking what was happening, but with so little to go on they’re really struggling, although they are trying to avoid admitting it. Perhaps today we will hear good news.’

After another pause for a bout of worrying, she felt her other headache again, and started typing again ‘My vision is getting worse, I think. Some days I don’t notice the headache, perhaps I’m getting used to it. Okay, if you are curious and want to know the details, here goes. What things look like with my right eye is this:’ She stopped and put her palm over her left eye and looked around her, then looked through the window at things further away, then resumed typing ‘Erm, it’s kinda weird because I swear things look okay a few feet away like things across the room. Reading close up gives me a migraine if I do it too long. Things in the distance look a bit distorted: things like street lights look like little bow ties in the distance, or else, I get a sort of double image with one eye. Goodness knows how that happens, but it’s probably because I need a new lens to look through and my vision is generally crap to start with.’ She paused again to look around with just her left eye, as before around her bedroom then looking outside. ‘Well, things seem a little fuzzier all round with my left eye. No double images I think, just reading things on the wall opposite is a little harder, and looking at things outside, it all seems very blurry. I don’t like it at all. I’m just going to have to try again with getting an appointment.’

The Monday after that, Melissa stood waiting at the window, watching out for the lipreading teacher. He was coming earlier than usual, and that was for a very good reason: she’d managed to induce him into asking her out for a coffee. Melissa had experienced some male attention in the past, but since she’d lost her hearing, that had become nothing much at all. Perhaps having a bra size like Emma’s, kind and friendly nature like Louise and Kirsty’s seemingly endless patience would have helped. But all she had was herself, and that would have to suffice.

Alas for her, seeing much detail beyond the end of the front garden was pretty much guesswork: cars travelling on the road all looked pretty much the same to her, their colour excepted. But she knew what colour his car was: dark blue, invisible at night, perfectly visible in daylight: she’d seen it before. She saw a dark blue car stop outside the gate, and someone get out. Melissa was pretty rotten at telling people apart beyond 10 feet or so: even male from female was hard for her, especially if the women didn’t wear skirts. But it was the right time of day, and the blur looked about the right height. She went to the door and opened it with a smile, saying, ‘hello, Alan, good to see you.’ She had to assume he was smiling: the light wasn’t so good in the porch. She gave him a peck on the cheek and allowed herself to be guided down the path - not that she really needed that aid in daylight. At least now she could listen to him without having to stop and look up at him: she was getting accustomed to working out what people were saying without much visual help. There was some chit-chat as they walked along, Melissa needing things repeated only a couple of times. He commented lightly, ‘perhaps you don’t need me any more now?’ She caught the tone of the question, and answered as they neared his car, ‘oh, no no, I still need you…’

As they got to the car, another young woman, almost identical in appearance to Melissa stood at the window watching their progress though her powerful corrective lenses. She could hear just as well as anyone else, and had thus heard their exchange going down the path: she didn’t need vision correctable to 20-20 to see what was happening. Unhappy words flickered into her thoughts; both from long ago and more recent times: “telescope eyes”, “dim bulbs” and “blind ugly freak”. That last one was really upsetting: she struggled to avoid crying both at the thought of that and who had said it. She tried desperately to feel happy for Melissa: after all her “bulbs” were dimmer than hers, and in addition she had to rely on electronics to hear, but despite this it appeared that she was on her way to getting a boyfriend. She bit her lip, ashamed at herself for feeling angry at her twin. It wasn’t her fault: whether she blamed her boyfriend, or herself, or the sky above, none of it really made sense. She stood wondering emptily what she done wrong, not really paying attention to anything, let alone the activity around Alan’s car. Her face twisted, but then she heard small footsteps and a familiar voice crying enthusiastically ‘Mummy! Mummy! Look what I made!” Her young son Joey ran in, holding a multicoloured lump: he’d long since realised he could see a lot better than his tall, slender mum, so held it up to her. She took it, wondering exactly what it was. It was a four-legged animal of some sort, made of lego, but the front legs were smaller than the back. She asked him, ‘is it an animal?’ ‘No, silly mummy, it’s a dinosaur.’ Amy gave it back, saying with a smile, ‘well done, Joey. I’ll be there in a minute.’ He ran off back into his room; her smile vanished, leaving her to contemplate the view out of the window momentarily: they were gone. She shrugged, and went to play with her son.

Part II

Emma woke to a blur. Dimly her senses came back to her; apart from her vision, which remained very blurry. She was well used to that, being as it was the situation she awoke to every morning. She thought a couple of weeks had passed since her capture, but wasn’t sure: she felt ill, tired and giddy most of the time now, thus had lost count. In many other respects, her situation wasn’t the same as she was used to: she lay on a dirty, smelly bed, her arms tied uncomfortably behind her, her ankles similarly tied, her mouth firmly taped shut. Her captor had quickly realised her appearance belied a fierce temper, and had equally quickly put the lid back on the boiling kettle he’d found. To curb her natural aggression, he’d given her tranquilizers. Having done so, she made a more accessible sexual victim. Tightly bound as she was, she could offer little resistance apart from futile struggles and muffled curses. She felt discomfort in her lower abdomen: she’d had sex with lots of men in the past without pain, but then she’d not eaten for a few days and felt dizzy and lightheaded from lack of sustenance.

She heard a noise, so pretended to be still asleep, as if by doing so she could escape her current predicament, but alas her captor could not be so easily fooled. He pushed at her, causing Emma to give a little unhappy moan. She opened her eyes, and saw him holding something large and white, and then heard him say, ’this is for you, once you slim down a bit.’ Emma squinted ineffectively at the white blur. He continued, ‘it’s a wedding dress. I know you can’t see too well without your glasses, so I’ll describe it for you. It’s sleeveless apart from shoulder straps, the bodice has a pale cream pattern of flowers, and below that it’s all sort of waves of lace. You’ll love it, I’m sure. It’s a long time since I saw a bride in glasses, and that is an extra special sight, believe me.’ He hung it on a peg attached to the wall, and came closer. Without her glasses, his face looked like a grey lump: she could tell that he was wearing a balaclava, but then only when close up. She squirmed, and muffled curses erupted from her. He told her, ‘oh, don’t panic, it won’t be yet. I’ve got something else to show you today.’

He went out into another room and then returned, pushing a rather old-fashioned and dilapidated wheelchair which he left at the end of the bed. With some difficulty, he pulled Emma off the bed and onto the wheelchair. Feeling too sleepy and wretchedly weak to complain or interfere, she allowed him to push the wheelchair with her in it back into the other room with similar lack of resistance. Her uncorrected minus 18 or so of myopia let her see few details as she looked around, but she saw a vague blur of white stuck against the featureless green-painted far wall, a large dark lump somewhat nearer, and close by on her left, a table upon which sat an old flat wooden box, the grain invisible to her. Despite her poor vision, it all seemed oddly familiar. He sat beside her: close enough for her to kick or punch him, as she wished she could.

He picked up something from the table, and said, ‘well, being as you’re so short sighted, how about an eye test? Just for fun. I’ll be the optician and you can be the girl needing new glasses.’ Emma stared at him, wishing she were home as hard as she could. Unexpectedly, he pulled the tape from her mouth, causing her to squeal. Before she could rouse herself to speak, though, he asked her, ‘so, are you having any particular problems?’ She looked at him sourly and said, ‘yeah, I’ve been kidnapped by some creepy man who likes to fuck around with girls with glasses.’ He whistled at that, and then asked, ’no, I meant with your vision.' With little interest in the matter she replied, ‘yeah… I mean no.’ ‘Ummm… okay. Let’s try with your own glasses then.’

Emma soon found herself looking though her glasses: as before, they’d been reduced in power so she couldn’t see too well. He asked, ‘how many lines can you read?’ ‘What the fuck do you care?’ ‘Oh, come on, I’m trying to help you here. You came for an eye test, no?’ ‘Help me by untying me and taking me home, then go hand yourself into the police. Or better still, just go fuck yourself.’ ‘What do I have to do to get you to co-operate?’ She spat at him, then let loose a tirade of exotic and inventive verbal abuse as he wiped the spittle from his face and balaclava. After she’d exhausted most of the expletives she could think of, she sat panting. He went out for a while, leaving her alone, wondering what he would do to make her read the eye chart.

In fact, it wasn’t much at all: he just went off into another room to do something else while she calmed down. She thought she heard a chopping and sawing sound, but ignored it, thinking that playing along would help. She looked up at the eye chart: her deliberately undercorrected vision scattered and shattered her distance vision so badly that most of the eye chart seemed to be made completely of white space, indistinct dark blobs, then further up, things that were recognizably letters but of no particular identity. The only one she could read properly was the topmost one: the next two were guessable. She spent some time studying them, alternately squinting and not squinting, comparing the two versions. She decided that no matter how long she looked, she could not be completely sure what they were. She called out ‘E, T or F, I think, and P, I’m not sure.’

He came back in, and asked uncertainly, ‘pardon? Tell me again, please.’ With a sigh, Emma reiterated her view of the eyechart ‘E at the top, not sure about the next two, the one on the left looks like a T or possibly F, or even a P some of the time, the other is probably another P, which doesn’t make sense. Any more than my being here.’ She gave him a withering stare, the power of which was hardly reduced by the minification of her eyes or the poverty of her vision. He held up his hands in a placatory gesture and said, ‘okay, okay…’

He look her glasses from her, leaving her vision to dissolve into a horribly distorted blur. He pushed his phoropter into line so that she could look through it. He said, ‘you really need new glasses, it’s no wonder you crashed your car.’ Emma hissed angrily at that, but said nothing. He then started turning dials on his apparatus, and steadily her view of the eyechart came into sharper focus. He commented, ‘you really do need a very strong prescription to see clearly, don’t you?’ ‘Yeah, and I’m sure you’re getting off on it too!’ He gave a creepy smile, and carried on regardless of her objections.

After some further fiddling around and asking the inevitable question “better or worse” a few times, he pronounced himself happy that he had got her prescription right. Emma, despite her situation and grumpy nature, had to admit it to herself too. To him, she muttered yet another expletive. For good measure, he examined her retinas too, having her look up into corners of the room which she could barely make out. After that, he then went to an old cupboard and took out something. Emma, with her uncorrected vision couldn’t tell what it was. He commented, ‘here I have a small selection of frames you might wish to consider.’ ‘You’re joking aren’t you? No you’re not - I think. Anyway, I can’t see well enough without my glasses to tell properly what I look like these days.’ She gave an enormous sigh, and then told him, ‘oh, bring them here and let’s give it a go then,’ in a thoroughly exasperated tone of voice.

He brought over his collection of frames, some empty, some with lenses in of various strengths, but nothing really close enough to Emma’s needs. The weaker myopic lenses helped her see a little, the plus lenses made her vision even worse. In a sense, it mattered little to her: she just wanted to get away from him. But - he was willing to try sorting out her vision. “Naw, he’s just a weirdo,” she thought. She told him after he’d tried a few more frames, ’look, could you get me new lenses for my current frames? There’s nothing wrong with them really.’ He took them and examined them, and replied ‘I don’t know: I haven’t got many blanks like this, and grinding them to fit that shape of frame isn’t easy. I do have a couple of myodisk blanks to fit this frame, though.’ Emma had little choice other than to accept his offer: she almost felt comforted at the thought of seeing clearly again, then realised that the pleasure was really all his. Before she could say any more, he taped her mouth up, which left her squirming and mumbling in futile anger, then pulled her off the wheelchair and laid her squirming and protesting on the floor. He told her ‘I’ve always wanted to do it in an opticians: this is near enough.’ She tried to wriggle away from her, but being so tightly bound she could do little to stop him getting on top of her and having his way.

Part III

On the last Saturday in May, Kirsty lay in bed - it was a good day to have a lie-in, and she really was exhausted. She laid there for a while, then drifted off to sleep again.

She opened her eyes to semi-darkness, and quietly and confusedly murmured, ‘wha…?’ She smelled dampness, and smoke. The immediate thought occurred to her that there had been a fire: she became alert with a start, and heard movement nearby. A shape came toward her in the dim light of dawn, much reduced by the cave mouth in front of her. It whispered to her ‘Kirsty, it is I, Diana.” Kirsty groaned inwardly. What was going on here? She thought that she was supposed to be peacefully asleep, but instead she kept on ending up here every so often. She fervently hoped that another run-in with the Hadrosaur wasn’t in the offing: there might not be a giant pink rabbit around to save her this time. Diana spoke again ‘Kirsty, you are here to help us, we need you so much. Only you can help us.’ Kirsty felt a sinking feeling. Nervously, she asked, ‘what do you want me to do?’ ‘we need you to help us defeat the Hadrosaur.’ ‘What! Are you crazy? That thing is huge!’ ‘I know it is huge. But it is blind without its glasses. Far blinder than any of us. If you grant us the gift of glasses, of true sight, we can do this.’ In the slowly brightening cave, Kirsty was able to meet the young woman’s gaze. She did not look crazy: more like desperate, and determined. Just for a fleeting moment, that thought reminded of her Emma.

‘Okay, what’s the plan then? There is a plan, I assume?’ ‘Kirsty, there is a plan. What we need to do is distract the Hadrosaur, and then someone must jump on it from behind, take its glasses, and then….’ ‘And then what?’ ‘That… Has not been planned yet.’ Kirsty exploded at her ‘WHAT! Are you people completely CRAZY?! I want out of this! Send me home, right NOW!’ Diana blinked at her, then said without the slightest inflection, ‘we do not possess the power to do that. You are here because you are needed.’ Kirsty rolled her eyes. Despite that, Diana told her firmly ‘Kirsty, I implore you to aid us. We need you. No-one else can help. Otherwise, we will be doomed to a lifetime of blur and oppression.’ After a pause, Kirsty gave an almighty sigh, then replied, ‘oh, very well. I suppose that because this is a dream, I can’t actually be hurt… Can I?’ ‘I have no idea what you are talking about. This is certainly not a dream, it’s more of a nightmare. Come with me, if you will.’

She followed Diana outside: it was a glorious morning, and there was a marvellous sight before her: the cave where she stood at the mouth of was in a high wall of a gigantic gorge, studded with trees of all shades of green, red and gold. A clear blue river gurgled musically at the bottom. There was a narrow trail heading both up and down from the cave mouth, and she could see other caves scattered both above and below. Diana addressed her, ‘come, I will take you to meet my friends.’ This she did: they were in a cave further up the cliff. There were not many of them, not even a dozen: all were skinny, dressed shabbily, and looked around with poor vision. They all carried wooden spears with fire-hardened sharpened ends. Kirsty felt they would not be much use against the Hadrosaur. They all bowed respectfully to Kirsty, then Diana asked her, ‘if it pleases you, can you give us all the gift of true sight?’ Numbly and silently Kirsty went to each of them, and gave them all a pair of glasses, just by dint of waving her hand over their faces. This caused much astonishment and expressions of amazement. Some of them looked around at the world, others looked at her reverently, again bowing reverently. Impatient, Kirsty said, ‘comon then, let’s get this lunacy done.’ She followed Diana up the path to the top of the cliff. The scenery here was less exalted than in the gorge: more ordinary trees than below in a sort of thinned-out temperate forest. Alas Kirsty was not paying attention to what was at her feet: she tripped on a tree root, and fell forward into a patch of mud.

She awoke, confused; and found herself aware of two things: one, she was not lying in mud let alone in a forest, and two, that her bladder was full to bursting. She got up and headed for the toilet: while she was in there, she heard Annie giggling, then heard Vicky’s voice, muffled. She smiled, then murmured quietly to herself ‘Annie, whatever life you have, please let it be better than mine. And less crazy too.’ She went back out, walking slowly to her bedroom door. She heard Annie ask, ‘can you see it?’ Vicky laughed and said, ‘yes Annie, I can see. I’m not being blind.’ ‘I’m blind!’ Cried Annie, not really understanding what that meant.

Kirsty then heard Vicky ask, ‘can you see this? Do you knowing what is?’ Kirsty stopped, a perplexed look upon her face; then she started to walk downstairs in order to see what was happening. Play was one thing: vision tests, she didn’t really think Vicky should be doing. She heard Annie’s guess. Vicky replied, ‘no, not that. Try again. How does it look?’ After a pause, Annie said, ‘long…’ ‘Yes… What colour?’ ‘Silver top - Brown bottom.’ Neither Kirsty nor Annie could guess what Vicky was holding.

There was a little “clunk” sound from the playroom, as if something hard had been dropped. Kirsty put her head round the door, and thus saw Vicky in the process of standing up. She held something long and thin, but it wasn’t silver or brown. She asked Vicky, ‘what’s happening? What was that noise?’ ‘Oh, next doors making noises. And we are just having guessing game. Sort of hunting the thimble? Is okay?’ ‘Yeah… I suppose so - just don’t wear her out, please.’ ‘Yes, Kirsty. I will being careful.’ ‘I’ll be in my bedroom if you need me.’ Vicky nodded, and Kirsty left them to it, walking back upstairs, yawning all the way. Annie giggled, and Kirsty paused just for a moment at her door, shrugged and then went back into her room.

Kirsty lay on her bed, tired, trying not to worry and wishing to sleep without odd dreams: dimly remembered snatches of it remained in her memory. Something about glasses? She drifted back to sleep, and then was startled back into awareness by a loud, low roaring sound. She was standing with a tree at her back. Turning her head to look around, she saw Diana standing behind another tree a few feet away. Looking forward she could see the trees thinning out as they approached the top of the gorge, and behind her, a clearing in the otherwise steadily thickening forest. ‘Kirsty? Kirsty? Are you ready?’ ‘Ready? For what?’ Diana stared at her through her glasses. Kirsty waved her hand dismissively at her, saying, ‘doesn’t matter. I think I get what’s happening. I’m ready, I think.’ Kirsty brandished a long knife that she suddenly found in her hand, which she then put back into a crude scabbard fastened at her hip. Diana told her, ‘good. You will need to climb that tree.’ The tree Diana pointed at was thick and tall, and considerably taller than the Hadrosaur, Kirsty thought as she walked briskly over to it and began climbing. She heard the roaring and thunderous footsteps coming closer. Then she heard that strange voice again, shouting angrily, ‘you dare attack ME?? I will hunt you all down and devour all you fools, and take such pleasure in doing so!’

Diana called up to her as Kirsty climbed ‘I suggest that branch sticking out: it is a bit higher than the Hadrosaur is tall, and has enough foliage to hide you. I will lead him below you, and hopefully he will be more interested in me than in branches.’ The roaring, angry speech and heavy footsteps got louder and closer, then the ugly thing burst into view, chasing five of Diana’s companions; who were alternating between goading the creature and running from it. As this happened, Kirsty crawled out on the branch, hid amongst the foliage as Diana had suggested, then drew her knife. The monster swore at them, and for an unlikely moment Kirsty was reminded of her sister Emma. Then it caught one of them in its jaws, lifted its head and swallowed him whole. Diana walked a few steps into the clearing, waved her hands around and got its full attention by calling it a big stupid animal dropping. It charged at her, roaring in anger. Kirsty made ready to jump, knife at the ready; as she did so, she thought to herself “this had better work!” Diana ran below her, then slowed down, turned and again taunted it. It responded, bellowing, ‘you are so stupid, you insignificant flies, you should go and cower in those caves where you belong!’ The Hadrosaur stomped its way toward the tree, too angry and arrogant to notice Kirsty crouching a few feet above where its head would pass. It roared as it walked under the branch, then Kirsty jumped.

She landed behind its head, and immediately grabbed at the scales behind its head. The thing screamed and began trying to throw her off by means of thrashing around. It bellowed, ‘get off me, get off me, you fool, once I get you off I will stomp you flat!’ Somehow Kirsty hung on, despite the monster’s violent shaking and thrashing of its tail. It plainly could not reach behind its head: upon that realisation, she smiled. Then she reached up to the cord holding its glasses in place. The animal felt this, screamed again, backed up and tried to squash her against the tree she’d just jumped from. Kirsty slipped the knife between the cord and the back of its ugly knobbled head, and called out ‘Hadrosaur! Try that again and I’ll cut this cord!’ It stopped moving, shivered, and spoke in a quieter voice, a note of pleading, almost panic in its voice, ‘do not do that. Please. I need to see.’ Kirsty slackened her pull on the cord. It spoke again, almost calmly, ‘get off my back and I’ll let you all go.’ ‘You mean it? Really?’ ‘Yes, yes, of course. I give you my word.’ ‘Erm, would you take your word for it?’ Irritated, it spoke more loudly. ‘I said, I give you my word. I mean it.’

Kirsty paused for a moment, pondering whether she could take this horrible thing’s word: she briefly considered doing so, but then remembered how arrogant this beast was. She made a decision, then called out, ‘no deal!’ She cut the cord, pulled hard on one end of it, thus ripping the glasses from the beast’s face, then threw them as far as she could to one side. The beast screamed angrily ‘I’m blind! I’m blind! You bitch, you’ve taken my glasses! Give them back!’ It was plain to him Kirsty would not do so: she slithered down his back and ran silently across the solid earth between the trees, and hid behind one of them. She heard the Hadrosaur cry out angrily, ‘when I find you, I will chew your limbs off one by one, then rip your head off and stomp on what’s left over!’ It walked hesitantly around, bumping into a smaller tree. Kirsty smiled: this mad plan seemed to be actually working! It had only a the very vaguest idea of which way Kirsty had scampered: it set off in the wrong direction. It promptly blundered into another tree and swore. Kirsty gave a quiet sigh of relief. It seemed to her that it would take a long time for it to find her, even if she stayed put.

Then she heard laughter, and Diana called out, ‘hey, you big ugly blind brute! I’m over here! No, not there. Here! Oh, I forgot - you can’t see without your glasses! Isn’t that just so hilarious? Follow the sound of my voice if you want some revenge!’ The Hadrosaur ran toward Diana’s voice, roaring angrily. It struggled past and through trees more or less in the right direction, but by the time it got roughly to where Diana had called to it from, she wasn’t there, having gone somewhere else. She called out merrily, ‘what can you see without your glasses? Not very much - isn’t that hilarious! Top of the food chain, and really myopic! Ha ha ha!’ Again the beast bellowed and made its way clumsily toward where it had heard her, only to find no trace of her. She did this a couple of times more, drawing it through the thinning forest. Kirsty began to wonder if, once she got out in the open, it might be able to see her. She scampered toward them both, then veered off at an angle, and copied Diana’s actions: mockery, laughter, asking it how many lines could it see, etc. Now it was really confused, and very angry and upset at its predicament.

After a couple more times, they were all out in the open. Kirsty realised what was on Diana’s mind: draw the beast to the cliff edge, and hope the stupid blind thing would fall off and kill itself. But now, it cried out, ‘is that you, my tormentor?’ It ran toward a rock, then realised its mistake only as its nose banged hard into it. Kirsty began to feel worried: beyond the forest, it could see things, large objects, rocks and possibly people, but could not tell what they were, and there were no more rocks near the cliff edge. She came to a decision, then ran as fast as she could towards the cliff edge just as it started to search for Diana, who was crouching down and thus trying to be invisible. She wondered “what was best, moving or hiding?” It started to move slowly in the general direction which Diana had squatted, searching for something in the brown-grey blur it saw before it, its myopic eyes somewhat more useful to it away from the trees. Kirsty reached the cliff edge, crouched down and called out ‘I’m over here, stupid!’ It turned and ran straight toward her, roaring angrily, ‘don’t you call me stupid! You are the stupid one: when I get back to the Intendant, he will give me new glasses and I will kill you.’ Kirsty laughed, ‘you’ll have to find him first! Why don’t you eat me now? I’ll give you a clue even you can see!’

Kirsty stood up right at the cliff edge, waving her hands above her head and yelling at the top of her voice repeatedly, ‘here I am!’ The beast ran at her at full pelt: it could see her, and as it came near enough, it bowed its head with jaws open, then closed its mouth on nothing. Its momentum carried it right over the edge; by the time it realised that it was falling, it was far too late for it to even begin trying to claw and scrabble its way back. It roared and screamed helplessly as it fell, its tail thrashing violently. The tip hit the cliff edge where Kirsty was clinging on desperately, and knocked her up and away from it. It called out, ‘well that was a clever trick! I forgot this was here! I admit it, I’m the stupid one, and not you - for what good that will do me!’ Kirsty watched the creature writhe uselessly in mid air some yards below her. Then it narrowed its eyes, and called out, ‘is that you, my tormentor? Oh, that really is funny!’ It began to laugh dementedly.

It was still laughing when it hit the rocks hard, cracking and snapping its purple body: in places sticky white goo seeped out. Kirsty landed on its belly moments later: it hurt, but nowhere near so badly as if she had landed on bare rocks. She slid off it, and turned to look at it: it was dead, broken - and weirdly, hollow. Kirsty did not understand, and did not care to. She heard cheering from high above, then she swooned and darkness fell.

She awoke lying on her bed, looking up. She turned her head to look at the clock on the bedside cabinet. Sitting next to it was the purple dinosaur toy, seeming to stare straight at her. She asked it pointedly, ‘how did you get there?’

6. June

Part I

The afternoon of the first Thursday in June saw Louise enjoying two things: one was the bright sunshine, which seemed to make her clear vision even sharper, and much more importantly for her, a netball match between two groups of girls about her age, slim and fit, and most of them quite hot in her opinion. But there was one who stood out for her: a tall, pretty girl with nice curves and thick glasses tied on with a headband around the back of her head: no doubt she wasn’t eager to lose them, considering all the jumping around and flailing of arms. She fluffed a pass, the opposition grabbed the ball and they promptly scored a goal. The Goal Keeper marched up to her and Louise heard her say to the tall girl angrily, ‘you really need to get those glasses looked at, you keep missing passes!’ ‘I’m sorry…’ ‘Well, it’s just as well you’re tall, otherwise we’d be looking for someone else.’ ‘OK, I’ll try harder.’ ‘Humph! You said that the last time!’

Louise wasn’t that keen on netball, but she knew the rules and it was clear to her that the tall girl was struggling: she botched a couple more passes, barely getting away with them both. Despite all that energetic running, jumping and passing, her team was beaten. As they walked off, she got some hard stares from her team-mates, and Louise could just about make out some disgruntled mutters directed at the girl. She met Louise’s gaze and gave her a little smile, then a shrug. After they had all gone into the changing room through the door, Louise waited around, hoping to catch her and speak to her as she came out. This was not as easy as it seemed, for Louise discovered that there were two doors, and both could not be watched at once from any angle. So she decided to wait and hope at the first one. And so she waited, and waited. She then made up her mind, and went in: it was worth a try, she thought.

Once in, she realised the shower was still on, and it was obvious the girl was still it, her delightful form disguised by a frosted glass screen. Louise wondered what to do next, so sat down to wait on one of the benches all around the changing room proper. Nearby were some clothes, the only set of such in the room, so it was safe to conclude that they belonged to the tall girl. And sitting on top of them were the glasses she had seen on her face earlier, with headband still attached. Louise impulsively picked them up and inspected them. They seemed quite similar to her own, but with less difference between the lens strengths, and somewhat more astigmatism in the left eye. Her fingers started to explore the smooth lens surfaces, just as she had done with those belonging to Michelle. Oh, that felt so good! Then the other door opened, and a cleaning lady came in: she took in Louise and what she was up to, and demanded, ‘what do you think you’re doing?’

At almost the same time Amy peeked out from behind a tree in the park, watching events as best she could: there were some children playing in the kid’s play area, on the swings and rocking horses, but she wasn’t interested in them. She’d left Joey at a play group, and momentarily imagined that he was probably having similar noisy fun right at that point in time. But children weren’t the object of her attention: she was watching a couple sitting on a bench some 30 feet away. She peeked round the side of the tree; her distance vision wasn’t great, but she had ways to help with that. Using the camera on her phone was one way, and another way was her little telescope pressed against one of her flat fronted lenses. A little ironic smile came and went across her face: she was far from an ideal spy or lookout. Her efforts at concealment were aided by something resembling a disguise: she used a baggy hoody to conceal her face and slender frame. It did help that Melissa’s eyesight was worse than hers, and also that Alan was looking the wrong way anyway. Having established their identity to her satisfaction, she listened as best she could to their conversation ‘Melissa, you’re such a good pupil, I’m so impressed. You could be my poster girl.’ ‘Really? Oh, erm, is that all?’ Amy thought he shrugged - or was he bending his head to whisper something in her ear? Amy didn’t know for sure, but couldn’t help but feel that it confirmed what she thought was going on. She suddenly thought Alan was about to look at her, so ducked behind the nearest tree. After a minute, she cautiously peeked around it again. Were they kissing? She wasn’t entirely sure, so decided that was what they probably were doing. She murmured to herself sadly, ‘ohhh…’ For a moment she felt guilty at being jealous: it all seemed so unfair, why couldn’t she have her boyfriend back? Actually, right now she didn’t want him: she wanted to be loved, not played around with, then insulted and dumped. Then she just felt envy: she wanted some of what Melissa was getting. But how to get it? She walked off, starting to think what to do. Was she a bad girl for even thinking of trying to steal her twin sister’s new boyfriend? She shrugged - it had never occurred to her. Perhaps she could borrow him? As she walked home, she began to make plans.

That evening, Louise wrote in her diary: ‘Oh, Diary, you should have seen the look on that cleaner’s face, as if she’d never seen anyone touching a pair of glasses before. But, I don’t think she ever know what that pleasure feels like, or any other pleasure for that matter.’ She paused, then continued, ‘there is quite nothing like a pretty girl in strong glasses, and I can’t really tell, is it the girl or the glasses, or the combination? All of them seem good to me.’ She put down the diary, laid back on her bed, thinking of lovely shapely girls wearing the strongest glasses, and choosing her to be their lover - thoughts and images of flat fronted lenses, myodisks, glinting lenses and little eyes relying on the lenses to see the world, just as she did. A faint, dreamy “ohhh…” passed her lips. Then Vicky called up that dinner was ready, and that was that.

Part II

Just after 1pm the next day, Kirsty waited just outside the front door of the insurance office where she worked. It was a bit rainy, so she stood under the porch whilst waiting for her father to turn up. He said he would pick her up and take her for lunch. As she waited, she struggled to read smaller things in the distance that she felt certain she had been able to see a few months ago, and an instant later remembered she needed to rebook that opticians appointment she’d missed last month. Then he arrived in a hire car; she scampered out to meet him and gave him a kiss on the cheek. They soon sped off to a Italian restaurant; once there he and she talked, about work, her life, how things were now, how he met her mother. She did ask at one point why or how he and her mother split up, biting her lip after apologising for prying. He smiled and just told her, ‘unfortunately we had some arguments. You now how it goes: people don’t always agree, even when they love each other.’ He met and held her bespectacled gaze firmly. ‘You do remind me so much of her. She had a most memorable face, and so do you.’ She smiled her thanks, not entirely sure what to say to that apart from a quiet “thank you.”

At that, he pulled out his phone, and said ‘let’s get a selfie of you and me. Oh, the damned thing has turned itself off again. It keeps on doing that!’ Kirsty reached out her hand and asked, ‘let me look?’ He passed it over to her, whereupon she pressed the “on” switch and watched it boot. ‘what’s the code?’ ‘2503’ Kirsty’s heart melted at that, being as that was her birthday: warm and sweet feelings didn’t even begin to cover what she felt. She entered the code, it unlocked, then she handed it back, and happily snuggled up to her father for a couple of selfies.

Then he leaned back and said, ‘oh, nearly forgot.’ He rummaged in his bag, pulled out a battered old spectacle case, then handed it to her, telling her, ‘open it.’ She did as he asked her: inside she saw a pair of glasses, old fashioned and thick lensed. She took them out, unfolded them and looked through the lenses. As she did this, he told her, ‘those were your mother’s. She wore them just before you were conceived. Oh, I well remember how she looked, it was so lovely.’ Kirsty slipped off her glasses and tried them on. Her father flushed with pleasure, and commented, ‘oh, you do look so like her. Any good for the headaches?’ ‘No, no better. And they’re weaker than mine too: it’s all really fuzzy in the distance.’ ‘Let me take a picture. Go on, it’ll just take a moment.’ He raised his phone, but it decided to turn itself off at exactly that moment. Between them, they couldn’t get it restarted.

Kirsty then took them off, replaced her own glasses and gave them back to him. He put them in their case, and told her, ‘and now I shall get the bill.’ ‘No, you always get it.’ ‘I insist.’ She screwed up her face and then capitulated, saying, ‘ohh… OK… But next time is on me, yes? I mean it.’ She stamped her foot to emphasize her determination. ‘Ahh, now that reminds me of her too.’

Later that afternoon Bernie walked, or rather swaggered, to the lift at work. It was half an hour after his lunch at the pub: he’d had a couple of pints and thus felt quite relaxed, and also very pleased with himself, despite having done not much but talk about things he wanted everyone else to do. Seeing those young women around him at the pub had made him feel quite frisky and young again: especially the ones wearing glasses, which were his favourite. He mused contentedly about the sight of them, lithe curvaceous bodies, shiny lenses sparkling in the sunshine, marvellous. But they weren’t a patch on his current favourite: he’d struck lucky there. He’d worked at several facilities during his loyal service to this company, but had never seen anyone quite like this particular girl. What was her name? Karen? Kayla? Ahh, it didn’t matter, thick glasses and a lithe body mattered far more than names. He stopped at the lift door, pressed the button and waited.

Presently the lift arrived; through the frosted glass doors, he could see there was someone in there already. The doors opened, and he saw the girl standing a little away from the back wall. She met his eyes briefly, shyly he imagined, her face changed from placid to unreadable then back to placid, and he got in. ‘Hello,’ he said cheerily, hoping to engage her in conversation. She didn’t answer: instead she made room for him, backing against the wall as the lift started upwards. Oh, she was shy, he thought: probably caused by those thick glasses. That confidence she showed in meetings was a facade, he thought. If only he could break through that? He decided to try, saying to her, ‘you know, you’re such a pretty girl, even with those glasses, you ought to be able to find a boyfriend easily.’ Her eyes flicked at him, then stared into space. He thought he saw a quiver. Was he getting somewhere? If only he could induce her to look at him: corrective lenses did wonderful things to eyes, and hers were no exception.

He decided what to do. Then he belched. Then he started off again, saying to her, ‘you know, I’m free tonight if you like. We could get to know each other better - it could be fun.’ The girl stared at him again: for a moment he liked her wide-eyed, fixed gaze and expression. She seemed to quiver again, he assumed with excitement. ‘I know this hotel…’ She looked away, and gave a little sigh. He hoped it was her getting excited by the prospect, after all he certainly was. She looked up at the top of the door, where the level indicator was. Quickly she stabbed out a finger at the next floor button on the control pad, a few seconds later the doors opened, then she pushed past him and was gone. He called out to her ‘Kelly! This isn’t your floor!’ As the doors closed, he shrugged, and resolved to try again the next time he got her alone.

That evening Kirsty sat tapping away on her laptop in her bedroom ‘Dear Diary, today I met my father again: it’s so great to see him again. He’s such a kind and gentle man, I don’t know why he and my mother split up exactly, I wish they hadn’t, but whatever the reason I’m glad I know him again. He’s staying in a local hotel, he told me he was busy with some clients up north, but now can come and see me more regularly. I’m thinking of asking him to come and stay, but I’ll have to ask everyone else at home too. Oh, and he also asked me if he could help find Emma. Well, he’s a sweet man for offering, but I told him that all that investigating and probing is best left to the police, they do it all the time. After all, what we do is sell insurance, I wish that could help find Emma. I do hope she’s safe and well, wherever she is. Just wait till I get my hands on whoever took her!’

‘I must tell you about something else that happened to me today, something awful at work: my department head, Bernie, tried to chat me up in the lift! Ugh! The thought of being alone, let alone intimate with him for more than a microsecond than I really have to makes me feel ill. Somehow he seems to get the idea that he is attractive to women, and that because I wear thick glasses, I am desperate enough to say yes to anything he suggests. Oh - I just cannot put into words how I felt about that little experience! I had to get away from him as quickly as I could, and it left me feeling really queasy, I still feel that way thinking about it right now. He’s just - horrible. I would rather eat a ton of shit topped with vomit, washed down with piss than have anything to do with him. Oh, Diary, I know you’re just… a diary… but if there’s any way you can keep him away from me, just do it. Please. Pretty please.’

The following Monday, Emma awoke: her vision the usual hopelessly useless blur that she saw without her glasses. She tried reaching out the bedside cabinet for her glasses, and promptly found she couldn’t move. Something she felt but couldn’t see was binding her ankles and wrists together uncomfortably, and she could hear a metallic clanking from near her right foot. She abruptly remembered what had happened to her and where she was, so gave an unhappy sigh at her situation: the bed she lay on stank from traces of various bodily fluids, and from what little she could see of it, the sheet laid over it was old and stained. Hungry and still woozy from sleep, naked and physically helpless, she called out sharply and angrily, ‘hey! Are you there?’ As she heard noise next door, she remembered the decision she’d come to last night after the nightly session in bed. She saw a shape appear in the doorway, and said more softly, ‘hello, what’s happening? Can I have some food, please? I’m really hungry.’ As he got much nearer, she noticed his face wasn’t grey anymore: it was pink, but for her uncorrected gaze that meant little. ‘Okay, being as you asked for it nicely, you can have a little. After all, most diets don’t work if you eat nothing.’ Emma bit back an angry retort, and instead lied calmly ‘I should be very grateful to you, I’ve tried so many times to lose weight, and it never worked!’ ‘I’m very glad you think that way. At this rate you’ll soon fit into the dress, my dear myopic fiancee. I’ll just be a few minutes.’ Emma groaned inwardly, but knew she had to keep on trying her new strategy. Fighting him was impossible: she was a myopic girl bound hand and foot, dizzy from hunger and aching from his abuse. She really didn’t want to be locked away in the storeroom again: there was light coming through from a hole in the back door, enough to know there was little there apart from herself, her old glasses and her fear. She didn’t like the thought of fear, so fended it off with the hope that she might possibly get him to treat her better if she dropped her usual spiky manner and tried persuasion: not that the latter came naturally to her, but she was a good mimic of such.

After he had sat on the bed next to her and fed her some dry crackers with a little low-fat spread on, she squirmed over to him and rubbed herself as best she could against him. It made her squirm horribly inside, but then she had done many things in the past that had made her squirm like that; this was only one more such occasion. She pushed aside her discomfort and asked him softly, ‘can I have my glasses please? I would really love to see your face.’ To her, his face was an pink blur, and she really needed to be able to see it in order to aid her charade. With her reduced-strength glasses on, she could do so easily enough at this distance. He took them from the top of the chest of drawers opposite, then placed them gently on Emma’s face, onto which she artfully painted an expectant and then grateful expression as she took in his face. He wasn’t particularly attractive, and normally she’d not bother with the likes of him unless paid, but she had to try her new plan.

She smiled warmly up at him, and did some more wriggling, appearing to be trying as hard as possible to get close to him, in spite of her deep wish and need to get away from him. She said to him softly, ‘aah, I knew you were a handsome man, your voice gave it away. I think a man as attractive as you ought to have a lovely attentive wife, to me it doesn’t seem fair at all that you don’t.’ She paused, struggling not to cringe at her deception, then continued ‘I also know that you are a very kind man, for rescuing me from the car crash and also for trying to sort out my glasses, I’m very grateful for all that. I think you are a wonderful man, and you deserve a devoted wife who is ready to give you as much pleasure as she can, in all ways. I’m also really and truly grateful, and touched that you find me attractive enough to consider marrying me: a girl who has poor vision and wears ugly glasses to help her see. I’ve never met anyone who found me attractive enough to ask me to marry them, and by now I’d just about given up hope that anyone that would want me. Being rejected is so painful, and I’ve had too much of that.’ She saw that she had made an impression on him, so continued ‘I have some knowledge of sex and know ways to give a man much pleasure, especially one like you, who can see that a girl with glasses isn’t something ugly, but is actually highly desirable instead. Such wonderful men are very rare indeed, and I feel very lucky to have met you.’ She shivered at her lies, and exclaimed ‘I want you so much I’m shivering with desire! Please, if you would accept me, I would love to be your wife. I would give myself willingly to you whenever you want.’ She saw by his expression she’d got his attention and was really starting to get somewhere. But then he got up and left without a word. At that, she put a little wavering, despairing note into her voice as she pleaded, ‘oh please come back. I want you. Please, my darling. At least think about it? Will you be my beloved husband forever?’

He stayed gone for some time. Emma gave a little sigh, her manner reverting to her feelings of utter disgust at the thought of having sex with him, willingly or otherwise. Then she heard noises in the other room, again sounding like chopping and cutting. After about 15 minutes he walked back in; he carried a knife, not a large one, but enough to injure her severely quickly, or kill her a bit more slowly. For a moment she wondered what was on his mind: he was silent as he stood at the end of the bed, eyeing her. She spoke again, pushing her luck as far as she dared and beyond, ‘you know, I could make love to you much more easily if you untied me. I could give you so much more pleasure if you came into me as a lover, rather than by force. And for that, it would help if I had my hands and legs free. You won’t regret it, I promise.’ She drew breath, then continued softly ‘I admit it, I’m desperate for you. I love the feeling of you inside me.’ At that he came around the bed to her, then gently cut her bonds. He said to her ‘I knew you would come to love me, once you got to know me.’ She looked at the metal chain and shackle around her ankle and said, ‘that represents the bonds of love I have for you, darling. I don’t mind if that stays on.’ He stood up, took off his trousers, and was on her as he had been many times before. But this time was different: Emma was an active participant: she had long experience in creating the illusion that she was a lover rather than someone unwillingly obliged to act thus, and made full use of her previous experience.

Part III

Four days later Kirsty stood looking out of Emma’s bedroom window: she was waiting for Vicky to arrive so that she could go to work. And she was late. Kirsty looked this way and that, but there was no sign of her. Then her phone beeped - it was a message from her. It read “hello Kirsty, I am running late. Apologies. There’s buses strike.” Kirsty smoothed her smart business suit down her body: dressed for a corporate takeover, as her Dad had described it. Well, it wasn’t exactly that, but she had meetings to get to, and time was getting tight. A car came trundling down the road - Kirsty could not make out the number plate, thanks to her distorted vision, but could tell it was red and probably the same make and model as that driven by her father nearly a week ago, although she was no expert on cars. By the time she could have read the plate, insofar as she was concerned with such, it was hidden by a tree. Then the car stopped by the gate, and Vicky got out. Kirsty could recognize her from her dark skin and hair, so scampered downstairs to the front door and opened it. Vicky was distressed and very apologetic, Kirsty irritated but with no time to complain. She made a placatory gesture, told her Annie was in the playroom, and then quickly headed off to the train station for work.

The next evening Kirsty went to the college, having been told that Emma’s self-help group was still going: she was going to visit them. Her gently fuzzy and distorted vision made finding the right number classroom irritating: once she went the wrong way, and only really knew for sure when she heard female voices. She peeked through the small square glass pane in the door and saw several young women chatting. She knocked at the door, opened it then stuck her head in, and asked, ‘is this the glasses support group?’ a young woman, standing in before the group replied, ‘yes, it is.’ a couple of the young women nodded in agreement, while others wondered silently what this 20-something newcomer dressed in a business suit wanted. ‘Good,’ said Kirsty.

She walked up to the young woman, and asked her, ‘erm, is your name Caroline?’ to which the young woman nodded, light glinting off the front of her glasses. Kirsty continued, ‘can I talk to you all for a moment, please?’ ‘Yes of course’, Caroline replied. Kirsty paused, then began, ‘my name is Kirsty; perhaps Emma has mentioned me in the past. I am her eldest sister.’ the young woman’s eyes widened at that, seeing the resemblance. Kirsty continued ‘I’m sure you all know what has happened to Emma, and we all have hoping and have our fingers crossed that she will be found safe and sound.’ Kirsty paused, then continued ‘I was wondering if it is a good idea to continue these sessions whilst Emma is missing.’ There were little gasps of dismay, shakes of heads and one or two quiet ‘nos’ from the girls. Caroline piped up ‘I think she would want us to continue.’ Kirsty could not think of a good counter-argument to that, so after a brief pause, she agreed to Caroline’s suggestion that she join them.

She soon found it very interesting, quickly realising how much these girls depended on each other and especially Emma. She certainly didn’t want to stop what Emma was trying to do here: indeed, she approved - and wished she’d had this when she were younger. Several girls told the rest of things they saw whilst out and about, how clearly things looked, and how much easier it was to cope with the world with clear vision. There were a couple of less confident girls who needed a little boost - apparently they had either been teased or were wary of such treatment. At one point Kirsty started relating some tales from her past, both happy and less so. And of course, some of them involved Emma: talking about her made her voice crack once or twice. Suddenly Kirsty realised an hour and half had gone by and it was time for them all to leave. They said goodbye one by one, giving each other hugs, hi-fives and saying to each other little phrases like “keep seeing”, “vision be clear”, “no more fuzzy”, etc. Kirsty was the last one to leave, and walked to the bus stop alone. Was that spechunter nutcase on the prowl? She hoped she wouldn’t be the unlucky one.

Kirsty got home safe, and after a well-deserved bath, she sat in her bedroom and started tapping away at her laptop ‘Dear Diary, I’m home again from visiting Emma’s little glasses club. It’s like a sort of Alcoholics Anonymous for the bespectacled, except they’re trying to get people to start not stop doing something. All of them are ready to praise the wearing of glasses to greater or lesser degrees, and if they feel sad or miserable, they just tell each other or themselves to just look into the distance and enjoy the view! The irony being that I can’t actually see all that well into the distance right now! I’m hardly as blind as Amy or Melissa, but I would really like to see clearly again. My headaches are like a sort of permanent backdrop to my life, like really ugly wallpaper that won’t scrape off. I have a rescheduled appointment in three weeks time: please remind me if I forget. Despite the fact that I can’t see very well, and my headaches are bad, that’s not exactly the only headache I have. Louise is acting oddly again and of course Emma is still missing, that awful Spechunter seems to have stopped his murdering up north, although the police are struggling to get any clues about both of those: hopefully our Emma is still alive. We all need her, and don’t want to see her hurt. And then there’s my Dad and work problems. Every time my department head Bernie appears, he makes me feel ill - why do so many really repulsive men like girls with glasses?’ She shut her eyes for a moment, trying to ease her headache: but it was no good, she needed to see. She continued ‘The thought of clear vision and no headaches makes me smile. It’s okay for you, you’re a Diary, you’ll never get a headache - or see anything, clearly or not. Hang on, you say: I haven’t actually got the new glasses yet. I’m already looking forward to that, I just can’t wait.’

The following Thursday found Kirsty in Lacey’s: a well-appointed department store with prices to match. She was looking for bedding, and also had a quick peek at their clothes. On the way to the till, she walked past the electronics section: there were some TV’s on display, some of them on and showing various channels. They tended to interfere with each other a little, but Kirsty heard little snatches of a news channel. As she waited at the till to be served, queuing behind two older women who were talking whilst they waited, she heard ‘The Police have announced that another young woman has been found dead, she has been named as Caroline Wyatt.’ The two women’s conversation drowned out the next bit, as she heard, ‘he’s having another affair then? You sure?’ ‘pretty sure.’ Then she heard the TV again, the two sources intermingling: ‘…the latest Police theory is that there might be two spechunters, one operating in this area as well as in the north. They are however keen not to speculate further on the matter.’ ‘another young woman? What do they see in him? He’s hardly young or attractive!’ ‘police would like to trace a car with this number plate…’ ‘I know! Maybe it’s his money, he’s very well paid for running a department, very good for getting young ladies interested!’ ‘…again wearing glasses’ ‘no idea why…’ Kirsty turned to look at the TV, hoping to catch sight of the number plate, but she could not hope to read it: distance and her wobbly vision conspired to make it unreadable to her. She resolved to check the news tonight, and then her attention was diverted to the till. As she walked back to work, the thought struck her that there was a Caroline at the glasses support group, or was she mistaken? Soon she arrived back at work, where colleagues and minions appeared with various and sundry problems, and that question evaporated from her thoughts.

That evening she tried to find the time to watch the news, but she found she had missed the number plate item. Instead there was an item about some country invading somewhere else, and then something about some gang leader called “Hedrah”, neither of which interested her. She climbed wearily up to bed, too weary to tell her diary anything.

About a week later, Amy knocked at Melissa’s half-open bedroom door, and then peeked around the corner. With her cochlear implant, such things were now possible, rather than all that laborious waving in an attempt to gain her attention. Melissa sat on her bed, having been reading a large print book, and looked up at her twin sister. For her, at that distance, it seemed almost as if she were looking at a mirror image of herself. Casually Amy asked ‘Melissa, dear kind little sister, can I ask a big favour of you?’ ‘Yes, of course. What can I do for you?’ ‘Can you babysit Joey for me for an hour or two? I have a client I need to visit. I’m sorry, I can’t get hold of my usual babysitter right now.’ Melissa nodded, then replied, ‘yes, I can do that, after all, you’ve done so much for me.’ Melissa heard her twin sister offer profuse thanks, but could not see her little smile, nor what was tucked behind her right ear.

A few minutes later Amy walked down the road to the bus stop, thinking to herself “so far, so good. Now, the next part.” The fingers of her right hand went up to that ear. She felt a hard plastic thing behind it, and also a funny bit sticking down and into her ear, blocking it. It felt irritating, but in her opinion that was a price well worth paying. She also felt the cable she’d taken from the oddments drawer in the kitchen, which led up to a carefully adapted plastic bottle top held in place with a clip she’d stuck inside it. “The things a partially blind girl could do,” she thought to herself, “and the things such a person had to do too, even though they shouldn’t”.

She got on the bus, rode it into town, then got off and went to the shopping centre where she’d agreed to meet someone she hoped would be her new friend. She waited in the atrium below the clock - it was so large even she could read it, and she thought her sister could too. But recognising people was a different matter: beyond 40 feet it was guesswork for her. Was that him? Of course she had her vision, not Melissa’s, but it was bad enough that she could easily pretend it was the same. She wasn’t totally sure anyway, but made sure that while he approached she looked around at other people as if she no clue he was coming toward her, with a suitably neutral look on her face. He approached frontally - Amy still pretending until it was beyond obvious to her that it was him - and he stopped to address her, saying, ‘hello, Melissa, how’s it going?’ Amy coughed a little, and said in carefully feigned surprise, ‘ohh - it’s you.’ ‘you sound a bit croaky today.’ ‘oh, my throat’s a bit dry, a coffee would help I’m sure. Or perhaps - a kiss?’ She held his shoulders as he did so: when he broke away, he commented, ‘you’re very passionate today.’ ‘Oh, just missing you.’ ‘but I only saw you yesterday!’ ‘A day is a long time to go without affection.’ ‘That it is.’ She snuggled up beside him, and let herself be guided by him just as he did for her twin sister: she found it comforting, but not just because her vision was poor.

Once in the coffee shop, Amy didn’t need help to feign her inability to read the list of things on offer, so he helped her out: it was most kind and helpful, and she told him so. When they sat down, he told her about a project he was working on: there was going to be a charity website for the lipreading class, and he wanted to have case histories put online with pictures. If she didn’t mind, he would take a photo of her. Amy wasn’t sure about that, even if she was being herself, so said so. But he replied ‘I’m sure they’ll all be amazed at how beautiful you are, my wonderful Melissa.’ Amy wasn’t exactly sure how to take that: complements always went down well with her, but was it really her compliment, or Melissa’s? She smiled anyway, and told him, ‘thank you, dear, you’re very kind.’ ‘So what do you think about the photo thing?’ ‘I’ll think about it.’

Meanwhile, Melissa was at home searching for her phone - she wanted to phone Kirsty - but couldn’t find it. Joey fell outside and started crying - so Melissa went to help. She picked him up, and comforted him by saying, ‘ok, mummy’s little double is here, I’ll fix it.’ She needed to rummage around in the oddments drawer in the kitchen for a plaster, pushing aside bits of wire and plastic bottle tops without any thought of what could be done with them.

On the last Wednesday in June, Louise found herself walking around a local park near the college. It was a beautiful day: sun shining, warm, and plenty to look at in terms of young femalehood, which was of great interest to her. Louise thought that she was over Michelle by now: that strange girl with her odd desires gave her a disturbed shiver just thinking about it. But she loved her, but she could not be with her anymore: it was too difficult for someone like her, who had had so much unhappiness with eye patching in the past. She hoped she would have better luck next time: if she were really lucky, perhaps today. The sound of a vehicle coming to a halt behind her some distance away interrupted her reverie and caught her attention. She turned to look: behind some trees way in the distance, she saw an ambulance parked. There was some sort of commotion, so the curious Louise went to look. By the time she got thereabouts, there was quite an audience gathered to see whatever had transpired. She overheard someone say what was going on: apparently some girl had had a fit or something. She was on the point of leaving the crowd to it, when the sufferer was lifted into the back of the ambulance. Louise was quite astonished to see that it was the same girl she’d seen in the Library a few weeks ago, her scruffy ginger hair unmistakable. She wasn’t wearing her glasses, so naturally didn’t know Louise was there. She looked quite confused, exhausted and very unhappy. One of the paramedics held a pair of glasses in her hand - Louise recognized them instantly: they were Cathy’s, but one lens was missing. She presumed the lens had fallen out, and that they had it too.

The crowd quickly dispersed, leaving Louise to watch the Ambulance depart whilst she wondered what to do next. She started off back to the area of the park where she had been: “more girls to look at there than here,” she thought. As she walked past a bush, she caught sight of something glinting on the ground close to it. She went to have a peek, and saw that it was a lens from a pair of glasses: as if she’d never seen one of those before! She wondered if this lens might be the missing one, so cried out to the ambulance for them to stop, but she was well out of earshot to those inside. For a moment Louise wondered what to do, and then decided: she would return the lost lens to the girl. For that, it was an anxious wait for a bus, then a ride to the local hospital. There was a bit of asking around, explaining and also a little pretending she had to do in order to find out where the girl had been taken, which was into one of the casualty cubicles. Louise was allowed in - the nurse telling those inside they had a visitor. The girl was there with what Louise presumed was her mother. The ginger-haired girl turned her strange one-lensed gaze toward Louise and promptly looked disgusted.

Louise told her cheerfully ‘I found your lens - if you want it. By the way, I’m Louise.’ She smiled. The girl did not. Louise proffered the lens to her, but her mother took it from her with a gracious smile. The girl did not thank her, and quickly looked dismissively away, as if Louise was not there. She went back out again, and as she did so, heard the girl’s mother berate her ‘Cathy, that was really rude of you! That girl seemed so nice, and she found your lens too. Did I really bring you up to be quite that ungrateful?’ Louise heard no reply. She walked away, only to hear brisk footsteps behind her, and a woman’s voice calling out, ‘hello, Louise is it?’ It was the woman again, walking toward her briskly, then catching up with her. Louise stopped and waited for her. ‘I’m really sorry, my Cathy can be quite - difficult at times, especially when she’s had one of her turns.’ ‘That’s alright. I understand.’ Her mother nodded, then commented, ‘it’s good to know some people understand. Well, thank you again.’ With that, the two parted.

During the night of the last day in June, Kirsty heard someone cry out desperately whilst dreaming ‘Kirsty! Kirsty! We need you again: the Intendant has declared war on us for what you did for us! Please come to and help us! Only you can save us!’

7. July

Part I

The first Friday in July found Kirsty sitting in a conference room at her place of work, fervently hoping that the meeting she was in would wind up soon. An important client had turned up late, and although they were making every effort to hurry things along, some matters could not be hastened. She kept one eye on the clock as surreptitiously as she possibly could: it crept ever nearer to her hoped-for departure deadline that would give her plenty of time. And then it crept past it. And crept on. She heard herself mutter softly to herself “hurry up”: thankfully nobody heard her. At last the meeting broke up and Kirsty made to scamper to the door. Someone called her on the way out: she had to deal with another client, then one of her staff needed help. At last she was out and walking quickly towards the Subground station, checking her watch nervously. She’d lost a lot of time, and now had not a moment to spare.

Some minutes later she arrived at the station: being as it was lunchtime, it was quite busy. The electronic sign indicating the destination and time to wait for the next train was quite a distance away: which was no problem if your vision was good, but Kirsty’s wasn’t. She wondered what it said: did it say 3 or 8 minutes? She wasn’t entirely sure, and squinting didn’t help resolve the question. She thought to herself over and over “please let it be 3.” She stood and waited for a minute, then the sign changed to 7. She sighed. Someone glanced at her; she ignored them. She thought to herself “well, it wasn’t 8 then, unless it’s gone super fast and it’s now 1 minute”. The sign changed to 6. She hoped the train hadn’t stopped, or that perhaps the display had developed a fault. She was pretty sure it went down to 5, beyond that even her wonky vision and common sense told her it was coming - soon. Temporarily relieved, she got aboard.

Ten minutes later, she was skipping up the destination station steps as fast as she could to the part of the town centre nearest the opticians, feeling a little more relieved; except she still needed to take a short bus ride. There was a large sign and map telling onlookers about some temporary changes to bus stops and routes: but it had fallen down, which ensured that nobody could see it, including Kirsty even if her vision was perfect. She knew what bus stop to wait at under normal circumstances, thus had no reason to look closely at another notice just outside explaining the changes. Being so sure meant that when her eyes fell briefly on this sign, which her vision had transformed into a worthless tangle, to her it was not worth further consideration, let alone inspection. And thus she went to her usual bus stop with every expectation that it was the right one.

Some minutes later a bus, which was not the one she needed, came and went - and then another such came and went. She was getting very, very anxious now, being as she was already over 15 minutes late for her appointment. Eventually someone else came to wait: she was getting suspicious, so asked him where her bus was. He told her ‘I think it’s at a temporary bus shelter - round that corner, I don’t know.’ Kirsty scampered off around said corner, and saw a group of 3 temporary bus stops, then another one considerably further along. She spent a few precious minutes running around checking the first 3 bus stops: some of their timetables were high up, forcing her to get annoyingly close so as to be certain what they said. Despite this, she couldn’t find the right bus stop. She breathed out, hands on hips, trying not to scream with frustration, her headache writhing around inside her head. She then looked the other way, across the crossroads, where she saw another 3 temporary bus stops not far from the junction. She had to make a decision, and quickly, but had no idea which was the right stop. Her bus could not possibly stop at the wrong one: the one-way system thereabouts would prevent that. Quickly she decided to go with the 3 stops, as she thought that would give her a better chance of being right. After more scampering, she made it unscathed across the road, then started quickly exploring the other bus stops, which entailed more breathless hurrying around and hopeful squinting up at bus timetables. Not the first one, not the second. “Please let it be the third, please, please, please, let it be the third,” she thought to herself.

She heard a bus screeching to a halt behind her. She turned, and groaned: she could see, thanks to the big numbers on the front, that it was the bus she urgently needed. But it was at the other bus stop across the crossroads, now the furthest away, the one she’d discounted. Swallowing a scream of dismay, she ran across the road, narrowly avoiding being run down. By the time she reached the other side, it was starting off. She ran down to it, but it moved off faster than she could run, and additionally she had to slow and draw breath to cry out. She staggered to a halt, unable to catch it and whatever cries she could make were rendered useless. For a few moments she leant against the bus shelter, drawing breath, then checked the transport App on her phone: the next bus was 12 minutes away. “What to do?” She wondered. Her head throbbed and she was already 25 minutes late. “Wait, or run?” She wondered, then decided.

She turned and ran. Although she was a young fit woman, rising stress and her constant headache took their toll, and additionally her office attire was not exactly ideally suited for running. She soon kicked off her office shoes, which she put in her bag before continuing, but that alone could not stop the clock ticking, and also trying to get around people didn’t help her either: the pavements were busy, and she had to slow to get past people not running, which was nearly all of of them. Once, she had to squeeze past someone, and heard a rip: She stopped for a moment to look: her best skirt had caught and torn on a bicycle pedal a few inches, ruining it. She shrugged: her vision came first. A few minutes later, she pushed past an older man, coming close to knocking him over. He swore at her, crying out, ‘what’s up, you running from the Spechunter?’ Kirsty could not care. She was reduced to alternating between running then fast walking, getting steadily more desperate and winded. She had completely run out of puff by the time she’d got onto the street where the opticians was, narrowly avoiding colliding with someone else as she rounded the corner nearest to where she needed to be. Forced to walk at normal pace, she felt dreadful: panting, legs hurting from unaccustomed exercise, her dishevelled clothes damp from sweating. And there it was: her goal, the opticians. She didn’t dare look at her watch: she knew she was very, very late, and prayed inwardly that it would be okay.

She made an ungainly sight as she stood before the receptionist’s counter: there was another customer in front of her being dealt with. Whilst this was happening, Kirsty took the opportunity to catch her breath and regain something of her composure, but all this wasted more time that she had long since run out of. Also, there were several people in the waiting area beyond, giving her a horrible pang of worry. The phone rang just as the receptionist finished dealing with the customer, at which he nodded and murmured his thanks to her as she picked up the phone. Kirsty began to speak, but the woman held up her hand to forestall her, then spoke into the phone. Kirsty only heard her side of the conversation, ‘hello, how can we help you?’ ‘He is not here today, he’s off sick,’ ‘no, there’s nobody else here who can see you, we are very busy and have only two opticians on duty. You’ll have to make an appointment.’ There was some discussion of dates during the following week: Kirsty was too tired, and her head swam too much to concentrate on that.

At last the receptionist put phone down, smiled, seemingly oblivious to Kirsty’s dishevelment, then asked cheerfully, ‘can I help?’ ‘My name is Kirsty Johnson. I have… I had an appointment at 1:30.’ She looked at the clock behind Kirsty and made a face, saying, ’you’re very late, you know.’ Kirsty turned to look, and saw that she was nearly an hour late. She did not dare think what that meant as she turned back to face the receptionist, then asked shakily, ‘so - can I still have my appointment?’ ‘No, I’m sorry, you really are too late and we are short staffed today: Dr Azir is off sick, and Dr Smith… We are not sure where she is.’ Kirsty’s face fell into despair. Desperate, she asked hopefully, ‘is there any way you can squeeze me in if I wait?’ She glanced over at the waiting area, and Kirsty’s eyes followed: she didn’t need to say anything. Kirsty asked her quietly, ‘please. I really need new glasses. Please.’ Seeing and hearing her desperation, the receptionist checked her records on the computer, shook her head, then said, ‘unfortunately, your prescription is already such that you need a careful examination; it would be foolish to rush it.’ Kirsty’s shoulders slumped as her heart sank, and her headache chimed in too. She knew this to be the truth: it would be stupid, and so was forced to make another appointment in two weeks time.

A few minutes later, she was sitting on a bench just down the road, trying not to sob brokenly. Her eyes closed: trying to ease the headache, which at this point felt like needles thrusting into her head. Her phone rang, so she hurriedly brought it to her ear without looking and said sharply into it, ‘yes!? What do you want?’ It was her father speaking: he told her that he wasn’t far away, out shopping. She made profuse apologies for her tone, tried to tell him what had just transpired, but instead broke into a fit of sobbing, thus he reassured her, telling her he would be there in five minutes.

At that precise moment Emma stood in the doorway of the farmhouse she was now living in, looking out at the scenery beyond as best she could with her inadequate vision. She looked across fields and hedges: she could see that there were wooded areas in patches, but few houses in the area, and none she could have seen from here even with properly corrected vision. She wore a strange combination of men’s and women’s clothes; all far from new, but being as she was helping to clean the place up, that was of small concern. No chain kept her tied to the bed: she was free to come and go, but didn’t want to; maybe something divine was telling her to stay. She heard him chopping in the back room again. She had helped with that task too: processing organic chickens by hand was hard and unpleasant work, with lots of chopping and resultant yucky mess. Every so often he had left her alone, and now she understood why: he was making deliveries and collecting more whole chickens. She had forgiven her captor for his former abuse and apologised for swearing at him at the start of their relationship. She even felt sorry for her captor: it seemed obvious to her that he was a decent man struggling with some serious personal problems. She well knew what it was like to struggle, and to be burdened with difficult memories. It felt good to help someone else, as she did with her glasses group, and it seemed right to her that she had fallen by chance into his life: being as he had for so long failed to meet the sort of partner he clearly longed for.

As she turned and gazed back into the room where so much had gone on, her thoughts turned to her upcoming marriage: her wedding dress still hung on the wall. She walked over in order to inspect it more closely: it was a very attractive wedding dress, clean and if worn at all, she couldn’t tell, and she thought she could get into it. Her hands smoothed their way down her sides to her hips: Yes, it would fit, with a little squeezing in certain places. Then she thought of his wedding gift to her: she had seen them, but not looked through them. They were new glasses with her correct prescription; he had joked that the myodisk rings were the wedding rings. She felt guilty on account that she had no present for him apart from herself, but he had told her reassuringly that he valued her far more than piles of tea towels, toasters and fondue sets. Only a few more weeks and she’d be married, settled down and seeing clearly again; it all seemed absolutely right to her. She got back to work, humming a song as she swept, scrubbed and dusted.

Kirsty sat disconsolately on the bench, trying to maintain some semblance of composure, whilst feeling mentally and physically exhausted. The only thing that kept her going was the thought of her father coming to rescue her. Then he came into her view, striding urgently toward her, waving. In an instant she felt considerably better, then stood up and walked toward him; they embraced, then she started to cry. It took a while for her to stop, with tissues taken by him from her bag and then kindly proffered as she attempted to tell him all that had occurred. He sympathised, and told her ‘I’m not too surprised, life is very complicated these days, I always seem to have so much going on myself: I have to concentrate on what’s most important. I’m sorry I wasn’t here to help you, you should have called me, I could have given you a lift.’ She nodded her thanks, too broken to speak. Then he added, ‘you remind me of when you were a baby, your face all scrunched up crying. You were so cute, I’ll never forget that. Like one of those lettuce patch dolls’ Kirsty started to laugh, which drew curious looks from a couple of passers-by. ‘Comon, lets go get a coffee. You need to relax,’ he suggested.

He took her to the coffee bar at Lacey’s, whereupon they sat chatting. Kirsty soon felt so much better, relaxed, her headache pushed aside for a while. He made a couple of suggestions, ‘why don’t you try “SharpSpex”? You seem to want new glasses quickly, so why not give them a try?’ She looked at him dubiously, and replied, ‘oh, but I’ve heard some bad things about them, that they are like cheapo and can really let you down.’ ‘Well, they’re like that airline - MurphyFly is it? ConorAir? Cheap and cheerful, but they concentrate on the basics.’ Kirsty looked and felt doubtful. His next suggestion caused her to be even more doubtful, ‘why not try wearing an old pair? You might get lucky and find something that helps.’ She spluttered out coffee at that, then said in astonishment, ‘what? You’re joking… No, you’re not.’ He shrugged and said, ‘well, don’t dismiss it. You’d like to be rid of those headaches?’ Kirsty readily admitted to herself that idea had great appeal, but not really by those means. Please, no, it was nuts. Diplomatically, she told him ‘I’ll give it some thought, Dad.’

She moved onto other matters ‘so, what are you up to today? I mean apart from saving me from the lousy public transport and unhelpful optician’s receptionists?’ ‘Oh, I was going to by some new trainers - my old ones got ruined, they are all dirty because I stepped in some deep mud.’ She was avid for shopping: that would help distract her from her now-dormant headache, but more importantly, it meant more time with her father. Firmly Kirsty told him, ‘lets go then, let’s get you another pair.’

He got to his feet and followed his daughter to the shoe department. There were several makes and styles: Kirsty helped him choose, persuading him to buy an expensive pair rather than cheaper ones. She advised him, ‘they’ll be far more comfortable; and you do know that you get what you pay for, as they say?’ He nodded, readily accepting her argument. Then she told him firmly, ‘and Dad, I’m buying you these.’ She held up her hand as he looked up and opened his mouth to object. She gave him a glare that was both hard and deeply loving, then said, ‘you do so much for me, Dad, and I love you so much because you found me again and care for me so much. I want to give you a hug forever, but I can’t always be there to do that, so PLEASE accept these trainers, and when you wear them, think of me and how much I love you?’ He was obviously deeply moved by her appeal, so nodded, smiling up at his lovely, wonderful bespectacled daughter, then answered graciously, ‘being as it’s you, okay.’ She smiled. And thus her father became the proud owner of a pair of “Ricky” brand trainers, with an unmistakable red “R” on the heels that, unbeknown to either of them, would glow in the dark. They were very last pair in the shop: the assistant told them they wouldn’t get more stock like this, being as the manufacturer had decided on a completely new design and logo. Kirsty told him, ‘you see? Even your trainers are unique, just right for a unique Dad.’

On the way out of the shop, they stopped to browse around a little more. Kirsty found him in the kitchen equipment section, looking at cutlery and then kitchen knives. He took one out of a block, 8 inches long and quite obviously razor sharp, inspected it and deftly slid it back in. He met her wondering gaze, ‘oh, but didn’t you mention that Vicky was always having to sharpen your kitchen knives?’ ‘Umm, yes, but - oh, I think we can manage with what we have now.’ She gave him another mock hard glare, and told him with matronly sternness, ‘you are NOT buying me those, whether I need them or no.’ He pretended to cringe under her withering gaze, holding up his hands in mock surrender. With that, he took her back to her office, where she spent some time apologizing for her absence and catching up on work, buoyed by warm feelings engendered by her father.

Part II

The following Monday, Louise was walking from the bus stop, thinking about that lovely bespectacled girl she’d seen on the bus, wishing she’d looked at her more; she had the most interesting glasses, lovely and thick at the edges. In her opinion, thick glasses were the best. As she thought this, there was a cry which broke her line of thought: she then saw and heard a young lad laughing, but really she had little interest as to why he was laughing. Then, thanks to her own strong glasses, she saw the cause of this small commotion as she drew closer: a familiar figure sprawled on the ground. She hurried over and told the boy to go get lost, being as it wasn’t remotely funny in her opinion. He was bigger than her, but Louise was determined and had something of Emma’s spark she could draw upon if necessary, especially when her natural kindness didn’t work, thus causing him to slope off. Louise then turned to the girl, who had by that time sat up. She’d tripped and fallen, scraping her leg and banging her head, which had caused a small cut on head with a little blood seeping from it. The girl looked a little confused whilst Louise started to help her, by means of holding a tissue against the cut, with the hope of stopping the bleeding.

The girl then focused her attention on whoever it was helping her, then abruptly realised exactly who it was. Sharply she said, ‘you again!’ And promptly started to pull away. Louise grabbed her shoulder, looked into her eyes and almost as sharply told her, ‘yes, me again! I’m the one who’s trying to help you; not standing watching, walking on by or laughing at you.’ The girl pulled away, refusing to meet Louise’s gaze, only speaking when Louise asked if she felt dizzy or sick, and then only uttering a curt ‘no’ each time.

Louise carefully helped her up, and asked without response whether she felt alright. The girl did not thank her or even bother to look at her, which hurt Louise; but after all, she had been hurt before and survived the experience. Louise shrugged, then watched the girl walk off toward the college library. That was where Louise was also headed, so she started off walking there too. After a few minutes, the girl stopped, pivoted, then walked back a few steps to confront Louise. Sharply she demanded, ‘are you following me?’ Louise now felt quite upset, beginning to wonder if helping this ungrateful girl was worth the trouble. But she carried on trying, saying, ‘does it really bother you so much if I am going the same way as you? Couldn’t you just be a tiny bit - friendly?’ The girl gave Louise a hard, uncompromising look, and said firmly, ‘being friendly is unimportant.’ Louise gave her a reproachful look. The girl sighed, and then said, with an air of resignation, ‘oh, follow me, then.’ Louise followed her a few yards behind, wondering what the girl was thinking, and also wondering why she cared what the girl thought. But then, she was Louise, and for her, caring was natural.

Louise followed the girl into the library, passing along the aisles of desks in the study area. The girl stopped and sat at an empty desk, spared a glance at Louise, who then sat down opposite her. The girl met her eyes for a moment. Louise thought she saw just the faintest twitch of a smile. Or perhaps that was just her imagination: she had quite an imagination when it came to girls, especially those who were bespectacled. She spent the next hour or so studying her books and doing written work, occasionally taking a peek at her new rather grumpy acquaintance, who was busily writing out all sorts of mathematical symbols, of which none made the slightest sense to her. Louise wondered how anyone could do that, but then perhaps this girl wasn’t quite human, in her opinion. She swallowed a chuckle at that thought, which thankfully escaped everyone else’s notice. Then the girl got up without a word, glanced at Louise and disappeared. She was gone nearly 10 minutes, then reappeared carrying a cardboard coffee holder with two cups in. She plonked one in front of Louise, saying, ‘here is a - somewhat important coffee.’ ‘thank you very much,’ replied Louise with a gracious smile. The girl didn’t smile, but did nod in acceptance of Louise’s gratitude. She sat opposite her again, and sat sipping at her coffee, watching Louise intently, the steam playing across the flat fronts of her glasses when she exhaled into it in order to cool it. Louise pretended not to notice this while she wrote, again wondering what she was thinking. Quadratic equations? Or - maybe something else more agreeable to her?

The girl addressed her ‘I think you are curious about what I am doing. I can tell: your writing slows just after peeking at me. You’re wondering about me, and what I’m doing.’ Louise stopped, put down her pen and met her gaze. It was a wonderful sight: a smile would have made it perfect, but the rest of her face was placid. She admitted to the girl ‘I am wondering a lot of things. I don’t understand you at all.’ For a moment, something resembling the beginnings of a smile played across the girl’s face. She then said, ‘well, come and sit next to me and I’ll show you.’

Louise did as she asked, then the girl started talking calmly and softly to Louise, showing her all sorts of complex mathematical equations and solutions. Louise did her best to keep up, but was soon completely lost, even with things being carefully explained. The girl stopped and looked at her, and told her, ‘you don’t do maths, do you?’ Louise shook her head. The girl continued, ‘but you do kindness, and far better than me. Kind Louise. That is an apt name for you.’ ‘Just Louise will do for me.’ There was awkward pause. Then the girl said, ‘just Cathy will do for you and me, too.’

She met Louise’s eyes for a moment: Louise could sense her awkwardness, then Cathy looked down at her books, saying, ‘here, I have something interesting to show you - well, I think it’s interesting.’ She flicked through another notebook to a particular page, then showed her what was on it: another complex equation. At the bottom it said, ‘prescription = x.‘ Cathy helped her begin to make some sense of it all. Apparently, as she explained, you could take a picture of bespectacled person, then deduce their glasses prescription from just that. Louise didn’t understand the complexities of it, but sat there amazed by her new friend. With a small note of pride in her voice, Cathy told her, ‘this is my 14th theorem’. Louise admitted ‘I don’t have any theorems, sorry. But, that’s amazing!’ ‘Ahh, no, not really, I’ve done much more complicated stuff than this.’ Louise touched her arm and said, ‘well, I think it’s amazing.’ Cathy met her gaze, favoured her with a proper smile, then said, ‘you’re so kind to me.’ ‘kindness is important.’ Cathy nodded. There was a pause, then Louise asked, ‘could I be… Your important friend?’ Cathy nodded again, then said, ‘logic suggests that would be a very good thing.’ Louise laughed out loud at that. Someone told her to “shh!” Then Cathy looked slyly at her, and commented ‘I estimate that there is a 83% chance that you really like girls who wear glasses.’ ‘Oh, it’s more like 100%!’ Cathy smiled again, and told her, ‘in that case, you’ve got yourself a very important friend. 100% important, in fact.’

‘Hello Diary, it’s Louise again, I met Cathy again today - you know, that girl I was talking about the other day? I’ve been thinking about her, she’s a unique person and I really want to be with her, despite the fact that we have little in common. She’s a strange girl, lovely to look at and I can see she’s a decent and loving person, but she hides it behind a facade of aloof coldness, I wonder why? Did she suffer some trauma when she was younger? Or is it her seizures? Oh, I know that’s a terrible thing and she doesn’t seem very willing to talk about that. Then there’s her glasses: they are stronger than mine, all thick, curvy, glinting and shiny, but I think she needs Myodisks like Emma. Emma looks so cool in them, I think I will suggest them to her. I will also have to take her clothes shopping. Underneath those quirky clothes she wears there’s a superhottie lurking, I can’t wait to see it - the thought makes me feel “ooooh!”’

During the Wednesday evening after this, Kirsty was looking for her old glasses, reluctantly taking on board her father’s suggestion. She thought “who knows, there might be something useable here”. Looking under her bed, she found some dusty boxes full of half-forgotten items from her teens. She really didn’t think they were in there, and that supposition was proved correct. Then she tried her wardrobe, then the forgotten recesses of the built-in cupboard in the corner. There were old teen magazines, old jewellery, out of fashion clothes folded semi-neatly and then stuffed in bags. She really needed to go through all that old stuff, sort out the good from the bad: some charity shop was going to be very happy, but not today. Kirsty did not feel very happy to see them either: some of those memories raised by the sight of these items were not pleasant. In a way, she hoped she would not find the glasses from her teenage years: alas, it was necessary to continue her search. But, despite her determined rummaging, she could not find any glasses, nor even their cases. She did find a couple of prescription slips stuck in the bottom of one box, which indicated to her that there quite probably had been glasses in there at some point, but there was no further sign of any old glasses to be found. She was perplexed by this, as she didn’t remember throwing them all out. It made no sense, but she had to get out of the cupboard quickly: the dust made her sneeze, and that set off her lurking headache into full fury. She then went to lie down on her bed with the hope of getting some relief.

Part III

Kirsty walked into the Opticians first thing Monday morning of the next week, expecting business as usual. She’d left work early in an attempt to avoid the transport difficulties she’d encountered last time, and had thus arrived in plenty of time. Perversely, her headache seemed to have vanished, but she knew her unpleasant “friend” would be back. She walked up the empty reception desk and immediately sensed there was something wrong. Silently she hoped that the staff sickness problem was resolved. But, there was nobody at the desk, and nobody waiting to be seen. Her hopes began to rise a little, being as she hoped that the lack of a queue implied she wouldn’t have to wait.

Then she heard muffled talking from the small room behind reception. ‘Ahh, isn’t it terrible, the police are saying it’s that awful Spechunter: he’s come down here from up north, and is now murdering women wearing glasses around here. And they are pretty sure that’s what happened to Dr Smith: they really need to catch him, but it looks as if they haven’t a clue.’ Kirsty’s jaw dropped, along with her hopes of seeing someone that day. She coughed hopefully, and in response the receptionist came out into view. She looked drawn and pale, but tried to put on an efficient demeanour, then addressed Kirsty, ‘hello, can I help?’ ‘Yes, the name’s Kirsty Johnson, I have an appointment today with, erm, Dr Smith.’ There was a short, awkward silence, then the receptionist said evenly ‘Dr Smith was found dead yesterday, I’m sorry to say.’ ‘Oh…’ ‘All optician appointments today have been cancelled; there is only a nurse here to dispense any glasses that have arrived for people who really need them, but other than that, there’s nothing happening today here. We’ll be shutting at midday.’ Kirsty felt that she really needed new glasses, but kept that to herself. She asked, ‘so, what about re-booking my appointment?’ ‘I’m afraid the appointment schedule has been… Disrupted quite badly due to recent events. We’ll ring you when something becomes available.’ ‘When would that be?’ ‘At this point, it’s impossible to say. I’ll put a marker on your file to call you when we know.’ Kirsty felt stunned by that news. And she was still needing an eye examination and presumably new glasses. A hint of her usual headache made itself known to her, a precursor to the all but inevitable storm. She felt she had little choice: she couldn’t go on like this. She drew her phone from her bag and found her contacts list, searched downward to “S” and found the number she’d entered a few days ago, namely the one for SharpSpex. Her finger hovered over the “dial” button uncertainly for a moment: she’d heard so many things about this chain, and not always good. “Fingers crossed, here goes,” she thought to herself, then pressed the dial button, and quickly a chirpy young female voice answered.

Late that evening Kirsty tapped away at her laptop diary thus: ‘I’ve had my eyetest! Yes! Yes! There was no problem getting an appointment, the optician was brilliant and very thorough. I have chosen a pair of black plastic frames with wide side pieces, ooh sooo sexy. They did tell me however that my new glasses won’t be ready in an hour, it would be up to a week. The receptionist was very helpful and promised to make it urgent. Wow, I’m super impressed and wondering why I didn’t try these people before. Oh, clear comfortable vision, that’s all a glasses wearer really wants, and it’s coming my way at last. Yippie!’

Near morning two days later, Louise lay dreaming, tossing, turning and muttering to herself, seeing her beloved girlfriend’s face and then gently, carefully taking the glasses from her face. Michelle’s eyes went from being much magnified and somewhat distorted, with around plus 11 of correction in each eye, to their natural state - Louise had seen this transformation before many times. She also knew Michelle couldn’t see very well: her eyes adopted a seemingly dreamy look, blinking and staring into the distance, strangely small: then she looked at Louise. She squinted more in hope than in any real expectation of determining Louise’s expression. Kindly, Louise said to her, ‘honeybun, don’t squint at me like that, you’ll strain your eyes. Look into the distance, it’s easier for you.’ Michelle nodded slightly, but attempted no speech. ‘Okay, here I come with the base - shut your eyes…’ After that, Louise got into the more artistic side of the procedure, applying some slightly dark-toned eyeshadow and liner, then curling her eyelashes, all with the same loving care. But, it was also for herself, because she knew what was coming: Michelle would have her glasses back on and her eyes would thus inflate to their normal size. She really liked Michelle’s large, emphatic eyes; the way they filled her frames rather than shrinking as hers did. Although, there was much to be said for myopes and their glasses too: there was something about those little eyes trapped behind flat reflective walls of plastic that she found just as alluring. She told Michelle, ‘here come your glasses…’ Louise picked them up, and held them up to look through them. She saw nothing but a blur beyond a few inches through them, but was really just checking them for dirt. Gently she pushed aside Michelle’s hair and settled them onto her girlfriend’s face - and Michelle was once more transformed into a hot girl who could see, with beautiful big eyes which came to true life only when properly corrected. Louise felt a thrill as she took in what she saw. Then Michelle opened her mouth and yelled at Louise, ‘you killed me!!!’ Louise started into wakefulness, then fell back asleep.

Some time later, Louise woke and went downstairs: Kirsty was already up and watching TV. She told Louise uncomfortably, ’there’s been another murder, look it’s freaky girl you used to hang out with.’ Louise looked at the screen and saw a picture of Michelle: she remembered vividly her strange hyperopic girlfriend and also a few fragments of her dream. She looked sharply at Kirsty and said, with a note of anger in her voice, ‘she was my best friend. Don’t call her freaky, I loved her.’ Kirsty stared at her, for the moment wondering why she had said that, but Louise left and scampered upstairs before she could say anything else, leaving Kirsty momentarily bemused until she turned her attention back to the TV. Louise sat on her bed, clenching the lens that Michelle had given her, a few tears running down her cheeks: she felt so guilty, wondering if she had done the right thing in breaking up. It was far too late to change that now. It was time to move on, but she never wanted that to happen like this.

Kirsty got on the phone to SharpSpex during the Friday morning of that week: she wanted her new glasses. The receptionist offered profuse apologies and told her they’d come in that morning - which Kirsty wasn’t entirely convinced by - and she could come to collect them whenever she wished, which gave Kirsty some moderate relief. During the afternoon, she went expectantly to the branch where she’d had the eye test a week ago. The place was strangely empty of customers, she noted as she sat there looking around whilst waiting. There were notices up on the wall about eye care guidance, which Kirsty struggled to read. She really hoped that her condition would be resolved today, taking with it the headaches and fuzziness that she’d been afflicted with.

Then after a few minutes a nurse appeared, offered a cheery greeting, then guided her over to the area where glasses were actually dispensed. Kirsty was by now really getting quite excited, hoping that her nightmare with the wrong glasses would be soon over. She sat down and then watched as the nurse opened a drawer: there were several stiff-looking brown cardboard boxes, each somewhat larger than a pair of glasses, all labelled: she picked out the one with Kirsty’s name on and opened it. Wrapped in some bubble wrap was a lovely new pair of glasses, the frames exactly as Kirsty had ordered, the lenses bright and shiny, light glinting from the illumination above. And of course, very thick at the sides: she was well used to that little feature of the glasses she wore these days. Kirsty took off her old glasses, then allowed the nurse to put her new glasses on her face. She blinked, then blinked again. The nurse told her, ’have a look around, does everything look ok?’ Kirsty was far from sure: looking around, things looked distorted, and her eyes seemed to pull awkwardly. The more she looked through them, the worse they felt. The nurse, seeing her concerned expression, said kindly, ‘give yourself a little while to get used to them.’ Her headache, far from being soothed and vanishing as she’d expected, went from quiescent to horrific, then beyond alarmingly quickly, and then worse than anything she’d experienced in the last few months. She shut her eyes, her hopes sinking. She told the nurse unhappily, ‘sorry, I think there’s something wrong. These are giving me a really bad headache.’ She took them off and replaced her old glasses. Her headache slowly retreated from being utterly awful to just horrible. She said, ‘there’s something wrong with them, can you please check?’ Kirsty’s distress was obvious to the nurse, so she took them and the order slip, then checked them against the computer records. She had a little discussion with the receptionist, who shrugged, then she checked again. Her mouth tightened and she gave a little sigh, then looked over to Kirsty. ‘There’s been a mistake somewhere, the astigmatism angle is wrong in both lenses. Oh, I am really sorry.’ Kirsty had to clench her mouth shut tightly in order to prevent herself jumping up and screaming in frustration and anger.

That evening Kirsty was tapping away hard and vigorously at her computer, telling her diary ‘Ohhh, I am so angry with those SharpSpex people: they really screwed up my new glasses. Of course they were really apologetic, but sorry doesn’t help me see or get rid of my headaches. Grrr… I wish Emma were here, she’d tear them limb from limb and jump on the pieces for that. They couldn’t regrind them to fit the frames either, they said they couldn’t handle lenses that thick and they needed to be redone from scratch, and would put them at the front of the queue. If this is the way they operate then soon they won’t have a queue to worry about. Now I can understand the horror stories I’ve read about online. There was me innocently thinking it wouldn’t happen to me. I was wrong. They promised me they would be done at the latest by Tuesday next week. I’m not convinced, knowing my luck with getting new glasses, I can only expect the worst. I’d better warn Amy and Melissa to keep well away from these people, I can imagine how badly they would mess up dealing with their vision and would not like to see them let down like I was. Talking of that pair, Melissa told me that Amy has been keeping herself very busy with new clients, leaving her to do lots of babysitting, which she tells me she enjoys. But I was wondering, wasn’t the whole point of them living together was to keep Amy company? Perhaps, though, it’s best for her to throw herself into her work: dwelling on failed relationships is really hard.’

The following Monday Kirsty waited and hoped for good news via a phone call from SharpSpex. There was none. Then Tuesday came, and mostly went with no such phone call, so Kirsty phoned them instead. The receptionist told her they would be in tomorrow, and also that she would ring as soon as they came in. Wednesday arrived, and Kirsty had to ring again - she had to wait for the phone to be answered: again she was promised tomorrow. Kirsty swore at her, which made her feel better, but didn’t really help with getting her new glasses. Thursday then came: Kirsty rang fairly early in the morning, but the phone just rang and rang without being answered. She then tried again at lunchtime, with no better result, then one more time just before going home, whereupon she heard an ominous “number unobtainable” message. Kirsty had by now suspected she would hear something like that, but to actually hear it really frustrated her. During the Friday afternoon, she went to the shop to see what was going on, rather than wasting her time with further seemingly futile attempts to ascertain the situation via the phone.

She discovered that the shop shutters were down, and on the door was a sign which read “this branch of SharpSpex has now ceased trading”. Kirsty let loose a howl, which caused some passers-by to stare at her in curiosity. It took her a few minutes to calm down, then she decided to try her usual opticians, Davis and Taylor: at least they didn’t go out of business. After some minutes, she had secured an appointment there instead. She walked back the bus stop, still struggling to control her frustration. She thought to herself, ‘at this rate, I’ll be out-angrying Emma!’ That made her laugh out loud, which caused more puzzled looks from passers-by.

End of section 1

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