“This royally sucks,” said Ariana out loud to no one in particular, chuckling at the irony of the statement as she dusted the expensive jewelry case in which some kind of crazy expensive crown was being displayed. She didn’t know if it had ever belonged to a king or a queen, but at this point she didn’t really care either. This housekeeping gig had gone on too long, and she had really had it. This job which had started as an extremely lucky break for her had turned into a nightmare, and for such a stupid reason too: her contacts were driving her crazy.
She knew from the beginning that it would be a bit lonely to take care of a mansion in the hills all alone for the winter, especially given that it would be snowed in the whole time, but it really had seemed perfect for her. She could have the time to write her novel uninterrupted, and she would be making more than a decent buck at the same time. Others might be have been too scared to take this chance – after all, “The Shining” was a pretty scary movie - but she wasn’t afraid of ghosts, elevators full of blood, or overrated pulp horror writers from Maine. It was going to be fine. Well, up until the fact that she somehow forgot to bring her stupid glasses along with her. She could have sworn she packed them, but then again she knew she was kind of a clutz sometimes.
It all started with this Craigslist ad that advertised “$75,000/3 months – full-time housekeeping.” Like anyone else with half a brain, she was sure it was a fake, but the listing was pretty well written and seemed legit, so she decided to give it a shot and got an interview after calling. When she got there, it was obvious that she wasn’t the only one trying to get the job. There was a long line of people all waiting to talk to this one middle-aged man. He would call someone in and they would be out within less than a minute. That was the catch; he was really picky about who he would hire, and no one knew what he was actually looking for. When Ariana’s turn came up, he took two minutes mostly just looking at her and not even asking that many questions, and declared that she got the job. “What a weirdo,” she remembered thinking, but really, she was just happy for the windfall.
The first – and basically only – thing that went wrong with the job was that she had stupidly left her glasses at home, and her contacts were just absolutely impossible to deal with. It might have had to do with the dustiness of the whole mansion, but her contacts gave her an incredible stinging sensation from the moment she put them on in the morning up until she went to bed at night. It got to the point where she couldn’t write, watch TV, or read at all, because she would have to deal with excruciating pain or the near-absolute blindness of her uncorrected vision. She was very, very nearsighted, and it was basically out of the question to do anything without her contacts. Even reading and writing just made her neck ache with how close she had to get to the page, and it just made her not want to do it at all.
Even so, she alternated between days of wearing the miserable contacts and days of stumbling around blindly. But it was having an effect on her. Not even two weeks had passed and she was already mindlessly bored and frustrated, and she hadn’t gotten so much as a decent of writing done yet. Today was a contacts day, and so she was cleaning and dusting extra hard, just to keep her mind occupied.
That’s when she noticed the glasses for the first time. Among all the other jewelry, there was a pair of highly ornate, diamond-studded glasses in the display case just behind the crown. They were tortoiseshell – she assumed that for this pair, this term was literal – in a cat’s eye shape. Like everything else in the god-forsaken house, they seemed really expensive. But not just that. She could tell that they were thick. They had the tell-tale sign of high-prescription lenses, although these were definitely very old-fashioned.
She tried to get a closer look – maybe, just maybe they could help her see. But they were locked behind the glass, so she couldn’t know. She gave up, but in the following days she couldn’t keep her mind off of the glasses. She thought of how nice it would be to just be able to see without being in so much pain. She would always come up with excuses for not trying harder to go and get them, though. “What if they’re not my prescription,” she would think, or “I’m sure they’re uncomfortable,” or “If I broke them, I’d be dead.” Even so, she couldn’t get them out of her mind. One night, she dreamt of wearing them in a fancy ballroom setting, confident and sexy, like a blind Cinderella. But still, she forced herself to snap out of it when she woke up, telling herself the solitude must really be getting to her.
On one of her no-contacts days, she was cooking for herself in the kitchen with great difficulty when her mind momentarily wandered to day-dreaming about the glasses. She pictured how much writing she would get done, even imagining her portrait on the sleeve of her hardcover novel, wearing the fancy, old-timey glasses. That’s when her elbow suddenly connected with the handle of the pan on the stove, spilling and burning her forearm quite seriously. She cried and cursed on the floor, completely fed up with the situation and at a loss. She knew she couldn’t stand two more months of this. She grabbed a mallet from the kitchen and headed straight to the room with the jewelry cases and started smashing the one containing her glasses. With a resounding crack, the case opened, and she thought to herself “Now, finally, I’ll be able to see.”
Slipping the glasses on with trepidation, she was taken aback by how heavy they were. She was also a little disappointed that her world didn’t immediately fall into focus. She tried a bit harder to focus, and suddenly the images fused together and came into focus, and she could see. Relieved, she relaxed a bit, only to find that relaxing made her lose focus and see double again. She cursed under her breath, but kept trying and trying until she could hold the images in focus. No matter how annoying it was, it was better than being helplessly blind or in constant pain.
The first few days were a struggle. She felt severely nauseous and her nose ached from the weight of the glasses. But she could see, at least. Actually, with the glasses, she sometimes saw things that she didn’t see in the house before. The eyes in the portraits seemed to move and follow her around like in those cheesy old movies, and it would creep her out. She would take them off when the feeling got unbearable and find herself in an even worse, double-vision blur for a few minutes. And so she always went back to wearing them. After about a week, the nausea stopped and it became easier to keep focus; she didn’t take them off after that. But the mansion continued to be unsettling.
She went back to writing, but her heart wasn’t in it anymore. She found herself daydreaming of elaborate gowns and ballroom intrigue, even though the story she was writing had nothing to do with that. Actually, it was about a strong, independent, 21st century woman. It couldn’t be further removed from her daydreams.
One day, while cleaning the master bedroom, she saw the most incredible light blue dress laid out on the bed, just like the one in her ballroom dream. She couldn’t resist putting it on, and seeing herself in the mirror wearing such a beautiful dress with the old-style cat-eye glasses just made her so happy. She looked exactly like she did in her dream, and it was great.
“Miss Clarence,” cried out a man in a posh British accent from outside the room. “The guests are waiting for you.”
“Just a moment, Jeeves,” replied Ariana. She somehow knew his name was Jeeves, as if she were expecting him. After all, it was just like her dream.
“Oh you mustn’t dawdle, milady. The ball is about to begin, after all,” he said fussily, his stringent high-pitched voice adding to the urgency of his statement.
“Yes, yes, I’m ready,” she said, as she walked out of the room in her beautiful ensemble to the summary compliments of Jeeves. Was that make-up she felt on her face? She couldn’t remember putting on make-up.
She walked down towards the crowded ballroom, where guests were mingling casually over drinks, hors-d’oeuvres, and light live music. As she walked down the stairs, the room turned quiet and everyone clapped, showing their appreciation for the beautiful hostess. She mingled with the guests gracefully until she saw the most charming man she had ever seen in her life, who approached her and introduced himself as a prince. They laughed, they danced and they ate with reckless abandon, and she found herself madly in love with him before she knew it. As the night drew to a close, he proposed to her, and a few weeks later, they were wed in front of everyone. They consummated their marriage that night, all night, in a glorious fit of lust and pleasure. Throughout this whole time, the glasses remained firmly in place on her nose. She no longer minded their frankly excessive weight, and the dizziness that had come with wearing them vanished, leaving crystal clear clarity in its place.
Weeks, months, or even years later – she had stopped counting a long time ago – she found herself in a strange room in her house, a half-written manuscript lying on the desk. Curious, she read it. The first few pages contained a relatively standard, vaguely familiar story about a woman’s quest for companionship in a big city. The last pages, though, were some kind of diary about trying on some glasses…
Then suddenly, for a moment, she remembered everything. Jeeves, her husband, the ballroom… they couldn’t exist. She took the glasses off, flung them on the table, and rubbed her eyes. She cried and screamed with the shock of her realization. She thought of her whole life and she realized none of it made any sense, none of it was normal. She must have gone crazy and imagined a whole elaborate parallel life to cope with the situation. Or maybe she was being kept prisoner by that middle-aged man who hired her. What date was it? Did she have to get back to the city?
Just then, as if reacting to her screams, a man walked in and tried to console her. “What happened to your glasses? Did you drop them? Here, let me help you,” the man said to her reassuringly. Terrified, she got on the bed and started waving a pillow around blindly, yelling at him to leave her alone and go away. He kept trying to reassure her in the same calm voice, until finally the voice stopped completely.
She couldn’t see anything. Was he still there? Was it safe? Maybe she had made him go away with her pillow? She waited for a while, got off the bed and went back to the desk with the manuscript and her glasses. She examined them closely, horrified about what might have happened this whole time while she was wearing them. She also couldn’t help but admit that the glasses were beautiful, and just looking at them made her feel all kinds of emotions.
That’s when someone came from behind, overpowered her and shoved the glasses back on her face forcefully, tying a powerful strap behind her head that kept them in place. She fought against it for a while, trying to take the glasses off while keeping her eyes closed the whole time. Eventually, she had to open her eyes and look around.
Her handsome husband was there, holding her in her arms. “What happened, my love?” He asked.
“I guess I just dropped my glasses,” she replied, dizzily.
“Well, be careful next time. Who knows what might happen if you were alone,” he said, with a hint of reproach in his voice.
“I will, I promise,” I replied, hugging him deeply and pushing my head onto his chest. “I’m so happy I’m not alone.”
Endword: I had a little bit of a… different… one for you all today. I hope it’s not too crazy for you, OO readers. I’d just like to say that even though I don’t comment so much (at all) on other people’s work, I really appreciate everything you guys write, and I am truly inspired by you all. Keep writing what makes you happy, and keep listening to your own personal muses. That’s really all that matters, in the end.
https://vision-and-spex.com/her-contacts-were-driving-her-crazy-t825.html