Our fates crossed for the first time when I was walking on a busy street. The loud cars left no place for clear thought, especially for the drivers (at least that day), and after the deadly sound of the impact of the two cars crashing into each other woke me from my daydreaming I saw her jumping out of the destroyed vehicle and running, seeking help.
“Somebody revive him, please, someone…” she murmured, as she erratically strolled, bumping into the pedestrians who were witnessing the horrid scene, trying to find something to hold onto. Eventually her arms found my neck, and she held me tight, like a good old friend would do after seeing you for the first time in years; but she was a complete stranger.
When I looked at the car from where the girl jumped out, I saw one of those images that make you wish you had a delete button in your brain. He looked like a milled piece of meat rather than a human being.
The young woman didn’t want to let go off me, and desperately asked me to take her somewhere else before the authorities came. I refused at first, of course, but the despair in her voice turned off every bit of common sense I had left, and I carried her on my arms to my automobile, parked just two blocks away.
“Where should I take you?” I asked, but I got no response. I repeated the question about seven more times, but she was mute, so I ultimately decided to take her to my apartment, even though the most logical thing to do was to drop her off at the nearest hospital. I certainly am not the most rational being in the world.
The girl passed out, but she was apparently intact, without even one little visible scratch. When she woke up, however, I realized she had indeed suffered damage; the loss of her sight.
“Tom?” she whispered, “why is everything black?”.
Tom is my name. I figured it might just be a coincidence, and that maybe it also happened to be the name of the man who was driving the car. I was wrong.
I decided to take care of her for that day, but the girl started to talk to me about things that only I knew, and I freaked out internally, nevertheless, I decided to play along, because it was a very odd, yet extremely interesting situation. She believed we were related somehow, and forced me to let her live with me. I couldn’t say no.
We lived together for eight months, and we bonded exceptionally well. I would go off to work, and she would stay at home and do the chores. In fact, she got used very quickly to her blindness, it gave her peace. I took that away from her.
I took her to the doctor, and they found a treatment that would allow Mandy (that’s how I named her, because she didn’t remember her original name) to recover her vision. I told them to start it right away, I was excited to get her to see the world once again. The treatment proved to be more effective than I, and even the doctors had initially thought, and in only a few weeks Mandy was able to see shapes, then colors, and then faces.
After finishing with the treatment she began to behave abnormally. She would go into a furious state of mind at random times, breaking furniture, deliberately hitting her head against the wall, and attacking me with sharp objects. Then she would calm down and go to sleep. One day I told her that I was going to take her to a shrink, but it wasn’t necessary, because that threat seemed to be enough to make her act ordinarily once and for all.
Christmas time arrived, and Mandy was thrilled. She asked me to take her to a very fancy restaurant that was located in the most urbanized part of the city.
“I will give you your present when we are there, I want to have a special atmosphere surrounding us when you open it,” she said, following up with a radiant smile. I smiled back.
The place was sophisticated as it was expensive, but money wasn’t really a concern. We sat down at a table next to one of the windows, from where we had a spectacular sky view of the city. Mandy looked around, with an uneasy expression, mostly revealed by how her eyebrows were tilted. “I am going to get your present, wait here just one minute,” she said, and proceeded to walk into the restroom.
Several minutes passed, the waitress glanced at me periodically, showing her irritation over me just sitting there without ordering any food.
“She’ll be back any minute, I don’t want to start eating without her,” I said politely.
After an extra half hour my concern increased, but when I was about to go look for her, a man in a blue jacket approached me and gave me a packet. The front of it read, “You opened up my eyes. You opened up the gates to hell. I hope you die, Tom.” The packet also contained two eyeballs, and I knew they belonged to her.
Mandy walked out of the ladies bathroom, with blood gushing from the empty holes that were now on her face, and cut her neck with a pocket knife that I didn’t even know she was carrying. I watched her die, but I didn’t feel sadness, nor fear, despite everything we had gone through together. It was a relief.
My life went back to normal in less than a month. “Are the eyes actually the window to one’s soul?” I inquired myself, as I walked on a crowded street. The sound of a car crash alerted everyone who was passing by. Mandy jumped out of one of the vehicles involved, and hugged a random man. I looked at them.
“No,” I whispered, “they are the windows to hell.”
