Writing prompt: A woman wakes up with no eyes.
Even if you’ve never seen the word “phosphene” before you’ve probably experienced the actual phenomenon. When you close your eyes tightly or rub your eyes the impression leaves trails of light, drags of vivid colour and speckled static movement on the inside of your eyelids. Phosphenes are the, “moving visual sensation of stars and patterns” that flit across your suddenly blind field of vision. It’s the sensation of perceiving light without actually seeing it. Phosphenes can be viewed as a sort of metaphorical reassurance, an unlikely example of how light can puncture even the darkest places.
I’ve always seen these trailing images, ever since I was a little girl. My earliest memories of phosphenes go all the way back to pre-kindergarten afternoon naps, where I would watch the warping bends and shifts of neon colours as I fell asleep. At some point I began to create stories about these shifting landscapes, narrating the movement of the shapes as they shimmered and fell. I used to do this with small cracks on the ceiling, deep ruffles in the bedsheets — each a slight variation on the appearance of an object on its own, unknowing and intricately shaped.
But then I had a nightmare.
I had a hideous dream when I was a teenager. Maybe 15 or 16 years old. In my dream I was in an attic so dark it might as well have been a void of absolute, unwavering nothingness. As lightning briefly illuminated the attic, I saw there was a wooden chair — one that would be set around an ordinary kitchen table. It is at this point in the dream that I notice a woman dragging herself towards me across the floor. She is old, her eyes are pools of the same blackness that surrounds us. The scene is made worse by her frenzied barks, she smiles and smiles larger until her lips crack at the seams. She barks, she brays, she screeches, she howls like a feral cat. I walk towards the chair and pick it up, holding it high over my head. I hit the woman with the chair as she laughs and barks, she won’t stop barking. I can see her inky cavern of a toothless mouth as I break her apart, as I break the chair apart into hundreds of pieces.
Then I woke up. I hate this dream, it makes me sick to think about. That was over 20 years ago.
But I’ve been seeing her again, this barking, dragging woman with nothing for eyes. You see, she’s become a phosphene. The only phosphene. And I see her every time I close my eyes, even to blink. I shut them gently, willing them to shield this hellish image from my vision. It isn’t just her I see, it’s her face — we’re connected at the forehead and she’s staring and barking directly into my mouth. When I try to protest she smiles as big as a snake, opening her entire jaw and clamping it over my scream. I can’t blink. I can’t sleep. I can’t close them for a second, because I know she’s there, waiting under my eyelids for me.
The lack of sleep is driving me mad. Barking mad.
You might one day hear a story about a woman who wakes up with no eyes, only tar-coloured holes where they used to be. Let me tell you, she was probably tired. Life is easier for her when she doesn’t have to worry about the possibility of closing them only to hear the sound of rabid barks against the soft pink interior of her eyelids.