Blinded

Blinded
Fransánchez

A big catastrophe arrived on the humanity, has left most of the population suddenly blind. Only few ones escape to this situation. Our form of life and our daily routines disappear, we all are forced to the change. They all must choose a moral and ethical position, while some make use of its superiority situation for its personal interests, others get overturned in the disinterested help the others. The novel is divided in several histories, the same situation lived by different protagonists from its different points of view A computer programmer with low self-esteem. An observer of safety, innate hero. A blind person of birth, seller of coupons, turns out to be vital to adapt and to improve the life of clairvoyants and blind persons. A profession doctor remains a blind woman, but it does not lose the hope. What would be your option? If you do not decide, simply close the eyes.

Fransánchez

Blinded (Saga Blinded Part I, #1)

Blinded

Fransánchez

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Translated by ZionXVI

“Blinded”

Written By Fransánchez

Copyright © 2020 Francisco José Sánchez Contreras

All rights reserved

Distributed by Babelcube, Inc.

www.babelcube.com

Translated by ZionXVI

Cover Design © 2020 Francisco José Sánchez Contreras

“Babelcube Books” and “Babelcube” are trademarks of Babelcube Inc.

Episode 1

The Computer Scientist

He emitted a desperate groan as he felt a sharp pain, opened his eyes and glimpsed someone dressed in white. His eyelids closed again and another painful prick forced him to wake up. The frenzy of staff in white dressing gowns and pajamas throughout the room was unceasing. That tide of activity that swept from one side to the other overtook him, he didn’t know where he was or what was happening, he tried to get up, but his strength failed him, he chose to desist and return to Morpheus’ world.

“What’s your name, what’s your name?” he listened insistently.

“Ra… pha…” he muttered with both eyes closed.

“How many pills did you take? How many pills did you take?” the young woman questioned again in a firm and determined voice.

He found it difficult to keep his eyes open, he just wanted to sleep, and those people were bothering him.

“Let me… I am… sleepy…”

“No way. Wake up!” he ordered the voice.

The pain caused by the heavy pressure on his earlobe opened his eyes, and he angrily searched for the cause of the attack, but his wrists were bound to the stretcher.

“Calm down, cooperate, it’s for your own good.”

He understood that he was in the hospital, in the emergency room, he was very sleepy, but alive. The last thing he remembered was the titanic effort he made to press the red emergency key on his state-of-the-art mobile phone.

Suddenly he was more lucid and alert; the intravenous injection given by the nurse on the young doctor’s orders had had an immediate effect. The doctor, already in a softer tone, began to interrogate him for his medical history. She asked him if he had any allergies, if he had any illnesses, if he was taking any treatment, his family history. Rapha answered docilely while he was fascinated by the beauty of the doctor; “Alice”, he could read off the identification card that was hanging from her unbuttoned gown.

For the first time in his life, he felt relaxed, calm and at ease with a woman, except for his mother of course. He entertained himself by watching Alice, her swaying around the room, writing on the computer, whispering orders to the nurses in a velvety northern accent:

“Activated charcoal stomach pump, then psychiatric consultation.”

Rapha remained fascinated, Alice was tall and slender, brunette with tied long hair in a ponytail, blue eyes and full lips. Her swollen breasts were trying to escape from the generous neckline, wasp waist, behind the medical scrubs you could guess a tight ass.

“Yes, my shift today is twenty-four hours, I leave at eight in the morning,” he heard her say to a fellow worker.

After the typical sermon about the goodness of life and the stupidity of suicide, she encouraged him to look for solutions to his problems. Alice said goodbye very politely and wiggling her way through the critical care room to the hallway to her office. She had to continue attending to the long line of patients who were still waiting for medical attention in the waiting room. Rapha watched her in a daze as she walked away.

After finishing vomiting, he was transferred to the psychiatric area. First thing in the morning he had no choice but to have a long and sincere talk with the specialist.

Rapha was a chubby kid, even in his own in style, not good at sports and all the games that required physical effort. Given his peculiar appearance, he often had problems at school and in his small hometown, famous for its iron bridge, which is located in the Alpujarra Mountains of Granada.

He was always the focus of ridicule and scorn from his classmates, who made fun of him. This caused him a great social isolation, becoming a reserved person. In his childhood he only found refuge in novels, comic books and history encyclopedias, becoming an avid devourer of literature of all genres.

He reached his adolescence suffering from extreme shyness. The only advantage was that he had a lot of free time to devote to study and to one of his favorite hobbies, computers.

Genetically he was more like his father than his mother, so he inherited his short, greasy hair and short height.

His move to the city and entry into the university environment did not change his life much. He already had premature alopecia and great myopia, adorned with thick, unstylish, high-prescription glasses that made his morphology stand out even more.

He graduated with excellent grades, which allowed him to easily look for his professional future as a programmer. He found it in Almería, a city in the southeast, on the Mediterranean coast. But too far away from the only stable and loving relationship of his whole life, his little family. He adapted his work to his lifestyle, became his own boss. His profession was carried out at home, with no schedule. He was presented with the development of an application or the design of a web page, he only had to concentrate, immerse himself in the task and dedicate all his time to it. He found that he worked better at night, his Internet connections were clearer, his computer was much faster, and his web pages went up more quickly. So, he changed his life habits, sleeping more in the morning and working on his projects in the afternoons and evenings.

One day he found himself in his forties, with no friends, no partner, no family, no relationships, just alone and bitter. Given the circumstances of his life, he always had a depressive personality that he solved with medication and many hours of work.

He liked sex a lot, like almost everyone else, although he had never had any relationships, he was a virgin and incapable of even talking about banal things with any woman. He was so nervous that he could hardly speak, causing a ridiculous stutter. On one occasion, newly arrived in the city, he tried to hire the professional services of a prostitute. When he went up to the room in the boarding house, while the girl was undressing, he felt so nervous that a bitter taste in his mouth made him retch, which he could not suppress, without warning and without being able to avoid it, he threw up on the prostitute. The girl, who had already been paid in advance, was furious and found the perfect excuse to finish her work and send him off with a shout:

“But that fatso will be disgusting! As my name is Susan, don’t ever look for me again! Pig! Get the hell out!”

After the colossal brawl, Rapha, very ashamed, hurriedly fled from there in a pitiful state of anxiety. After this disastrous experience, his sexuality continued to be reduced to his collection of porn films and his very dear and faithful friend “masturbation”. His life circumstances provoked a strong rejection to society, a resentment and a deep general hatred.

That fateful dawn, things were going terribly wrong. He was stuck, as if thick, he was not doing well at all. He decided to take a break, watch some TV. There was nothing interesting, lots of quiz shows, those very easy to answer, hooks to get money out of people over the phone. He found in a local TV channel a great and beautiful girl, with impressive curves. She was doing a strip tease to soft music, after five minutes he had an erection and after another five minutes the man was cleaning his semen with a handkerchief.

The unfortunate senior continued feeling bad, she went to the medicine cabinet to take her usual antidepressant pill but in a fit of tears he took the whole bottle. He lay down to wait on the couch, while watching on TV what he missed most, the soft and velvety human contact of a woman. Rapha found it increasingly difficult to hold the eyelids, they insisted on closing, he couldn’t cope with them. He didn’t know why, moved by an unconscious spring, perhaps the instinct of survival, he stretched out his arm trying to grab the mobile phone from the table, the cable that kept it plugged in to charge the battery prevented him from doing so and it fell to the floor on the other side. Rapha got up to pick it up, his legs no longer supported him and he also fell to the floor. After crawling, he managed to reach it, it was off, he turned it on with difficulty. He could not fix his eyes to mark the pin, he pressed the red emergency button and when he heard the voice of the operator, he only managed to sigh “help” before losing consciousness…

Rapha left the hospital convinced of the idiocy he had committed; the washing of the stomach had been an experience he did not want to repeat ever again. He had had a hard time convincing the psychiatrist that the autolytic crisis had ceased and that he would take things differently, facing the problems of his life.

He arrived home, but an unpleasant surprise awaited him, the door was smashed in, only kept closed by local police stickers that read “Do not cross”. The interior was a bit messy, he was too tired to tidy up, he wanted to sleep, so he left the mess for later and blocked the door with a simple chair. He went to bed leaving his bedroom in the dark, with the blinds completely down and the opaque curtain extended, as was his custom. As he entered the dream, he couldn’t help thinking of Alice who had made a deep impression on him, he knew she was unreachable, she would never notice a guy like him. He fell asleep whilst fantasizing how he could get that woman’s attention.