sight (a short story)

"You know, someday you're going to hurt yourself doing that." the man said, sitting in his armchair and resting his elbows condescendingly.

"Oh hush." the woman replied. She groped for the tap and turned on the faucet, running the water over the knife's edge until all the blood was gone. "You always talk about it like I've done something so terrible. You know that they'll grow back. Besides" she put the knife on the counter, as clean as it was when it was new and unused. "it was about time for a change anyway." She felt her way from the kitchen to the lounge, where he sat, finding the armchair across from his and sinking into it.

"Yes, I suppose it was. You were complaining too much as it was."

"Complaining! You would complain, if everything all looked the same." She said. "All blue. blue houses, blue skies, blue streets, blue cars, blue people. Always twilight. God, it was unspeakably terrible."

"I remember you rather liked it at first."

"Of course. New is always likable." She twiddled her thumbs. 'But new doesn't last, does it?'

He sighed and took his pipe out of a box on the table. If she knew he was staring at her, he would look away, but situation as it was, he stared unabatedly. Her eyes were still two empty sockets, miniature pitfalls of black tendon and bone, but already tiny pink veins were branching from the depths towards the light, hundreds of fingers extending. Blood, which had been a deluge only minutes before, was now trickling contentedly down her cheeks.

"And what, do you think, you will see this time?"

Despite her hollowed visage, the woman still managed to look hopeful, almost excited, leaning back in her chair. "Oh, I can't say for sure. Maybe it will be a color again. Or a shade. That happens often."

"Red?" He suggested, his eyes lingering on her cheeks.

"I hope not!" She exclaimed. "I have had red once before. The whole world was bleeding;" she self-consciously wiped a small pool from the furrow of her chin. "I would never recover from nightmares. Or I would always think I was ill. Perhaps it will be like when everything was square. Or when everything was glowing with some heavenly light. Or when everything was made of separate little things that all looked the same-"

"Fractals."

"Yes! Fractals. I liked that. A jacket made of thousands of jackets, and all of them made of thousands of jackets. It really made everything fascinating." She wiped her hands, still wet from washing the knife.
Now a tiny, clear membrane was starting to creep like a cloud from under her eyelid.
He puffed on his pipe and crossed his right leg over his left knee. "I still believe it is irresponsible. You can't turn around and cut out your eyes when you don't like what you see." A pile of smoke issued from his mouth. "Would you cut off your tongue if you didn't like the way that things taste?"

"Of course not! That's ridiculous. It's much more than that." she collapsed her thumbs and clenched her fingers together. "I'm sure that you wouldn't understand it if I explained it to you. Though I wish they would hurry up and grow."

"And," he said, smirking a grin she couldn't see. "What will you do if you see things in black? If black covered everything?"

"Black?" She froze, even her eyes paused their slow progression into spheres. "I don't know. Well...I think it would be awful. Absolutely; I would rather go blind than see everything in black."

There was something missing in the smoke-filled air at that moment, a triumphant laugh or some sort of decree of truth, or a sigh of revelation, awe, acceptance, anything...but there was only stillness, broken by the slight shuffling whisper of two eyes recreating themselves into existence. In the kitchen, the knife sat, wet on the counter, silver as if it had never stirred. The man sat and smoked, the woman sat and waited, her mouth open just the slightest, perched on the edge of the sentence she was meaning to say but didn't know the words to. then-

"Aah," she said. He put down his pipe.

"Aah."

"Well?" he asked.

"It's the most beautiful. It's the most beautiful world I've ever seen." she replied softly, her eyes staring up to the ceiling-or perhaps, beyond it. "Yes. The most beautiful, the most wonderful. The most true..."

And the woman sat and stared around her with wide newborn eyes, and the man watched her, smoking his pipe, and in the kitchen, the knife gleamed in the dim twilight.