WRITING PROMPT: You lost your sight along with everyone else on the planet. They called it The Great Blinding. Two years later, without warning, your sight returns. As you look around you realize that every available surface is painted with the same message: “Don’t tell them you can see”

October 14, 1907

My guide was waiting at the base of the stairs, calling up for me. I couldn’t breathe. I was locked in place looking out the window of the house. For at least two hours I stood there gawking at the blurry lines of the window frame, slowly seeing more and more details. Another call from below. Everything was still hazy, the focus was off, but there in the faint glow of the sunrise I could truly see. The light poured down the street, the sky was dark with clouds, but the sun rose and I could see.

My heart raced as the guide began his ascent up the stairs to check on me.

“I’m coming.” I shouted. Too loud, but my mind was racing, modulating my voice was hard. I could hear the waver in my words, my guide would inevitably hear it.

“Harold, are you in distress?”

“No, sorry. You roused me from sleeping is all.”

“Sorry to wake you, sir. It’s a half past 7, shall we begin our walk?”

“Yes, of course.”

I shuffled over to my dresser. The clothes looked pale, tattered. Like we’d been scrubbing them too hard and the dye had faded. I held my shirt close to my eyes and saw it for the first time. It was one that was provided to me after the Great Blindness overcame us all. I had only known its texture, its weight. It was a gentle auburn, like it was originally red but had since been covered in mud and washed with no great care.

I tried to regain my composure before Rupert reached my room in the small house. I’d never seen this room. I’d never seen so many things that were new to me. Now here I stood, fumbling for things I used to reach for instinctively. I closed my eyes. Everything went much smoother for a moment, blissful ignorance I suppose.

Rupert knocked on frame of the door, devoid of an actual door as privacy was trivial now. We had lost so many people in the year following the Great Blindness, this house was given to me by one of the guides. The guides themselves were people that were blind before the cataclysmic night in early 1905. They acted as guides to those of us new to the darkness. As rewards for their service we provided everything we they needed to survive, working in tandem to plant the fields and tend to the animals.

Resources were so scarce, our small town of only a few dozen families was ravished by famine as people could not adjust to their lack of sight. A few passed due to consuming poisonous berries or rotten food, the latter of which made sense to me much more than trusting strange fruit. But as time went on and the stores of food diminished before a particularly harsh winter there had been a rash of passings took place. Whole families decided, or were forced to decide, to take their own lives. Spring came late the next year, what few crops were planted yielded low returns and another rash of passings took place again as hopelessness set upon us.

I was fortunate that I was able to have ingratiated myself in with the farmers of our community. I was previously an architect, so I helped them design tools, repaired their equipment, and generally maintained the elements of our small community that weren’t man or beast. But as I looked out the window one last time I saw the buildings I’d helped design and build, adorned with warnings, “Don’t tell them you can see” and “Tell no one what you see”. Every available surface was covered.

Rupert knocked again. “Having a difficult go of it today, sir?”

I turned around to finally face him, his gaze idling on the floor. His eyes were empty of color. I couldn’t help but gasp. He turned his face to the side to allow his ear to hear me with more clarity. In profile I could now see that his pupils had nearly been completely covered by the whites, no iris, only a faint pinhole of a pupil. My mouth hung open. “I… I don’t know. Yes, of course. Sorry.”

“I understand,” he bemoaned, “Winter is already upon us again. It feels earlier this year, no?”

I closed my eyes. The information was too much to mull through when there was work to do.

“True, we’re in mid-October and yet it feels as though we’re mid-November, perhaps even December weather. The farmer’s must be fretting.”

“They are, I was sent by the Bradfords. They were expecting you and grew worried when you failed to show.”

“I just can’t seem to get my wits about me today, but we can carry on. We must. Shall we?”

I tried to keep my voice steady. Hopefully Rupert would assume that I was having one of my “episodes”. I’d fallen into a great sadness since the blindness descended. My wife was taken by the consumption several years back and my two children had moved to a nearby city not long before the event took place.

I hadn’t been able to get word to them, hope was lost that they’d survived as word from them never arrived. I had bartered deals with two guides who had promised to look for my daughters in the city, if they were able to make it. Only one guide returned, reporting that they were attacked along the way. We were isolated here, insulated from the violence that had pervaded the more populous areas.

As I shuffled through the hallway I ventured another glance at my surroundings. I stopped in my tracks. Even in here the text was splattered across the walls, warning against revealing that my sight had returned after these long, painful two years. Rupert stopped a moment later, tilting his head so I saw his profile again, listening intently.

“I’m sorry to rush you, sir, but Mr. Bradford is in great need.”

“I…” I couldn’t say anything. I just started walking again. “Yes, let’s carry on.”

We walked slowly down the stairs, both of us letting a hand drift gently down the bannister. I couldn’t help but think back on my time in this house. Someone came to repair the house and I remember smelling that old familiar scent of paint. I must discover what’s happening.

We started down the lane, hemmed in by the ropes tied to the lampposts of our main street. I kept my eyes shut as we then navigated the deep ruts of paths traveled daily by foot, keeping us heading towards the right house. Maybe out of rote habit, having spent months trying to see again only to give up last year when it seemed inevitable that it was pointless. So many days and nights with my eyes closed. When I knew we were sufficiently outside of town, away from… Maybe prying eyes wasn’t the right phrase? Either way, when we were outside town I finally opened my eyes to see the landscape surrounding our town.

Once again, I stopped dead in my tracks, mouth open as wide as my eyes. There in the sky were huge structures. No, mountains? It had to be a structure, but it filled so much of the sky! The sunlight I saw earlier was about to set on an inverted second horizon just above the natural horizon. A terror struck me as I suddenly felt as if the inky underbelly of this structure would fall at any moment. As the sun moved higher the poles and protuberances on the bottom of this object stretched long across the irregular surface facing us.

Were it not for the haze of the atmosphere I would think this were a model of a city, but it must be far above the planet as the fade of sky blurred the details and washed out the colors, like viewing a large mountain from miles away. A fresh shadow began to fall on me as the sun hid behind the structure. Had this always been there? Was the lack of sunlight, so warm and welcome, caused by this massive object? We had thought it to be the changes in the weather, the clouds blocking the sun, but now I feared that all along there was this massive thing covering the ground in darkness. A shadow so large and so dark that the weather itself gave way.

I had spent so long looking up that Rupert had stopped ahead. “The clouds must be moving in. Did you feel it too?”

I hurried for words where there were none. “I suppose…”

“My friend, you seem so lost in your head today. Are you sure you don’t need to see Doctor Hofstadter?”

I couldn’t seem to compose myself. I saw the faint curve of another object to the west. I whipped my head around to the east, another. Like curved coins covering the earth.

I closed my eyes. “I suppose I should.”

We had a devil of a time returning home. The cold was soaking into us with each mile. Our coats, our furs, had all worn thin over the long, hard winters. With no hunting available we were only able to get a few traps set, but it still only provided a few wayward creatures. It seems the animals were unaffected by the Great Blindness.

When I finally returned home we carefully started a fire in the pit I’d dug that first year. We couldn’t risk having fires indoors any longer and had instead dissembled a gazebo, using the planks for wood. It was the only injury I sustained during the blindness, climbing that damn gazebo to undo the work I’d done on the roof so the smoke could escape but kept the fire from getting wet. I tumbled off the roof and Hofstadter had to be called. Fortunately it was mostly superficial damage, but it was a reminder to work slowly.

I opened my eyes again while we prepared the fire, curious as to how safe we’d been in preparing the space. I felt a shock of pride as I looked into the pit, looking around at the various mis-matched chairs surrounding it. My eyes finally stopped on the wood columns holding aloft the roof of the gazebo. Even here, in this communal space, there was writing in red paint, scribbled in haste it would seem. “Don’t let anyone see you with your eyes open.” “Trust no one.” “They are among us.”

The remaining community gathered around the fire, drawn to it by the sound, yearning for the warmth. I did as the writing said, I kept my eyes closed. Normal discussions sparked up around, talk of the weather, the crops, and our stores for the winter that we knew wasn’t approaching but had already set upon us.

I heard a voice I recognized amongst the crowd, a quiet, rarely hear voice of one of the younger members of the community. Ernest, I believe. My memory for sounds had grown quite acute as the years passed, but I tried to think of what it was that I’d tied to the memory of his voice. What was his role, how could he be of service.

In a flash I remembered, he was the boy that had done the “repairs” that came with the smell of paint! I had to speak to him. I couldn’t risk discovery so as the gathering waned I shuffled over to the chair nearest him. I asked after him and his mother, offering to walk with him on his way home. We lived in the same direction, it made sense, no one would suspect anything. He was roughly my daughters’ age, so conversation came easy as we walked. When we arrived at my place I offered some of my stash of crackers, found in the house, left hidden by some clever resident before the madness.

We sat down in the living room, which I now realize is in fact a study, full of empty shelves. So many books were burned for warmth that first winter. Tomes we could no longer read served no purpose to us but as kindling. We gathered the blankets and as I looked around in the near absolute darkness I knew we were alone. I leaned in and blew on his eyelashes. Startled he opened his eyes and for the first time in so long we met another’s gaze.

“NO.” He whispered loudly. “You can’t even show me. You can’t trust anyone!” His breath was ragged with fear in no more time than it took for him to open his eyes.

TO BE CONTINUED… maybe

Original Prompt: You fell out of a plane. You survived, but you landed in the middle of a cult’s summoning circle. Now you’ve got this super-crazy group of followers with ties in practically everything who keep calling you god.

The turbulence was sudden, harsh. The scud clouds to the starboard side looked like they were dropping from above at meters a second. Like a tornado was about to form above the rainforest. A fleeting thought of the impossibility, the destruction that could cause. Then my own destruction took my focus back.

“Mayday, mayday. This is November three Charlie Juliet Alpha. We have encountered …”

How the hell was I supposed to make sense of what I was seeing? It was a clear sky just a few minutes before. Routine, just a commute. Red lightning struck through the clouds, the center of the descending funnel shone pink for an instant. The bolt struck almost straight down through the towering trees.

Static on the radio. I’d trained for unplanned descents, but the panic took hold.

“Help! Mayday! I’m … I’m experiencing some kind of weather even-“

The starboard wing rattled hard. The whole plane felt like it jerked to the right. I looked out the window just in time to see a branch clip the wing. There was debris being lifted from the canopy. The door ripped open, the sudden rush of wind robbed the air from my lungs. Having turned to look the headset hurled itself off my ears, the cable whipping my arm as all of it exited the plane.

I jerked the flight controls, there was a snap, it was now slack in my hands. The pedals no longer responded. The instrument panel was alight with warnings.

I don’t want to die.

With that final thought a branch pierced the flapping door, jutting out from the side of my seat. It had shredded through the lower seat belt, I could feel it displace the cushion of the chair beneath me. In another instant the protruding branch was struck, tearing the door from the hinges. The bough, with my door still run through, crashed backwards and parted my wing from the fuselage.

My harness, now only three connections strong, let me loose to the havoc outside. The right shoulder strap scrapping my face as I was pulled, practically separating my ear from my head. Before the pain could even catch up I was behind my plane. What looked like a denuded tree smashed through the cabin where I had just been sitting. The weight stressed the remaining wing, it flung free and fluttered like something much lighter.

More red lightning, but this time further out from the center of the clouds. I was cartwheeling slower and slower. In the distance I could see the blue sky I was promised. The clouds wrapped around me, darkness above, pink occasionally, and then a void that comes with sleep.

The whole world shook with the crack of thunder.

I was laid out, limbs sprawled. The ground was soft, leathery almost. Leaves. Huge leaves.

I opened my eyes slowly, the pain in my arm and pretty much the whole right side of my face suddenly throbbed. I clenched my eyes shut again. Whatever happened I’ll deal with in a moment. I reached, or rather tried to reach, for my head. My arm stopped about half way there when hands quickly grabbed my wrist. Gently? Like you would grab the hand of a child trying to touch something in a museum.

The chanting burst through the cacophony of wind and thunder.

My eyes sprung open. I reached with my other arm to grab the hands holding me down. My vision filled with familiar faces. It was a tribe I’d seen before, the burgundy paint in jagged stripes all over their exposed skin. I was surrounded by a broad circle of chanters, anticipation and fear hidden beneath the pigment.

One tribeswoman gingerly grabbed my reaching arm from over my head. Guiding it back into place away from my body, away from my secured arm, away from freedom. There was no contempt in her expression, just neutral and calm, despite the pandemonium around. I looked at my legs as more hands began to grope for my kicking feet. What looked like the leader was below me, arms raised straight up, eyes to the sky, chanting while the others stopped.

Her head shook for a moment, an exasperated held note quaking through her larynx. The gasp, then a stare. Her jaw tucked in, eyes locked on my torso. I looked down further to my torn clothes and painted chest, a reticle shaped design centered around my sternum.

A purple glow began to emanate from the art. All the hair on my body stood at attention, electricity flooding every sense. I knew the strike was coming, pure instinct.

It sounded like the sky cracked open, a sharp pause in the gale above, then just the sound of the lumber falling through the trees. The air hit first, like all the pressure of the weather above was being blown away, blown down, channeled. The hands holding my limbs were no longer required, I was pinned by the force of a localized, personalized maelstrom. The funnel above me filled with pink light, then the white of the bolt landed, square in my chest.

Now the whole world was red.

No more wind. No more clouds. The clamor of detritus falling through the trees, breaking more limbs as it fell. I couldn’t bear to open my eyes anymore. I was afraid. I was afraid because I could no longer feel pain. I knew my arm was lacerated. I knew my face was damaged. Or at least I think there’s injuries, but for a glorious moment I couldn’t feel anything. All the humidity, so omnipresent in the forest usually, was gone. Nothing. I could only assume I was in shock.

The moment hung. I tried to force myself to taken inventory.

The chanting started again. Hold on, I thought. The chanting stopped.

I opened my eyes. The hole in the flora above me was significant. Almost like a tidy conic shape had been extruded from the thick layers of boles, limbs, and assorted foliage. There was that blue sky I was promised, pooled above me.

I couldn’t feel the leaves on my back. Instead it felt like I was suspended in water, gently drifting on the current of cool air. Another moment of peace.

The crash of something large landing nearby. Screams. I looked at the tribe, gathered around me, the nearest still staring.

A trunk swung into view through the torn trees, exposed roots towering above the crowd. The upside down tree was falling in slow motion. The people were in slow motion. My people. I raised my wounded arm, as much in yearning to stop the fall as to warn of the danger. But then it stopped. It stopped the moment I reached out. I felt something new.

The air, usually thick with sound and moisture, felt dense for an entirely different reason.

The people around me slowed further. The woman in ceremonial garb at my feet was spinning toward the falling debris. I could see the leaves of her headwear rippling slowly as she turned to see the danger. I could see her jowls waving too. Her pores. Her molecules. Her skull. Her brain and the lightning within.

Everything came to a complete stop. I looked around, all the faces no longer fixated on me, gazing at the, well, I assume the noise. I couldn’t hear anything now.

I tried to sit up. I didn’t just feel like I was floating, I was literally floating on air. It felt like moving through thick water, but while I explored the feeling of floating, something instinctual came to mind. I could sense a new awareness of my body, like when you wake from dozing off and you sense your balance come back in a rush. I could move through the air.

I drifted toward the falling trunk, suspended in motion. The tribe below, frozen, those closest wearing faces filled with abject horror at their impending doom. I knew what it felt like to don that expression. I reached for the roots, I could see all the veins and dirt, all the terrified insects and their soft organs. There was something so familiar about it all. When I touched the closest outstretched root it felt like cotton candy. Light, malleable, giving way without resistance.

I felt the entire trunk and everything on it and in it, just from touching one part of the whole.

Every atom of the trunk was in my command.

Butterflies. Birds. Beetles.

Fly.

The trunk disintegrated in a flash red lightning. Time jolted back to full speed. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of airborne creatures burst out of the shape of the trunk. An explosion of crimson and wings.

I felt the other falling wreckage, I could sense it all. I could change it all. The forest filled with a crackling current as a million new beings entered the chaos of life. Crashes and thuds replaced with chirps and whistles.

I shed my remaining clothes, bronze skin glistening in the sunlight. I brought my hands in front of me, the cut on my forearm long since healed, the purple glow now localized to my palms.

The chanting began again, with an earnestness absent before. I looked down on my people. A million tongues filled my mind, I heard their voices and understood.

“I have returned to claim my land.” Foreign words spilled from me. The chorus grew louder. I launched into the air, the canopy sealing itself shut as I flew. Broken branches lifted by vines, teetering trunks erect again, the roof of life restored.

I set my eyes on the plumes of smoke in the distance. Not the wreckage of my plane, no, this was more intentional. My land, my people, they were under attack. But I am here now, they have no need to hold onto that fear.

Further Explanation: I chose to be a little loose with “cult” and “ties in practically everything”, hence moving towards a more indigenous representation as outsiders would see the tribe as a cult. The “ties in practically everything” was taken literally, as with the “keep calling you god” part. Mostly the story just … fell into place as I was writing. Ba dum tsh. Anyway, not as true as I usually try to be to the prompt, but I don’t really care because I like what I wrote.

Inspiration Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/comments/q795rv/wp_you_fell_out_of_a_plane_you_survived_but_you/