text: My fingertips run on the crisp, thin, flaky layer of the croissant; I can smell, will taste like melted chocolate and too much butter. It's fascinating, just as much as it is a shame; how many people miss it. It's beautiful, it's delicate, it's fragile, and yet, most people simply won't take the time to feel it. And maybe I shan't feel superior, because the only reason I do it's because it's the only way I can give it any attention at all. Its exterior is golden-brown and perfectly, masterfully baked; or so they say. I can feel its warm and toasty smell in my nostrils, mixed with the floral notes of lavender. The mauve lavender that's sitting on the marble windowsill by my bed. Or so I'm told. Along with the cream porcelain vases, a high ceiling, and box panelings on these bright walls. Or so I've heard. And it's hard for me to picture it consistently. Faces, colors, shapes. They're dancing, changing because I don't think I can remember them. It's like losing the voice of someone you loved. Losing the wrinkles on their face, forgetting how their laugh used to sound. Crimson, Indigo, Teal. Now, they're all down to meaningless words, words that make me trip, those ones that, if repeated too much, they would start growing spiky and shapeless in my head. I used to be blond, now I'm not sure. I used to look pretty, now I don't know. I used to stare at every imperfection on my face, now I can't stare at all. That day I was running from that car in the meadow, now I can't run from anything but my thoughts. Thank goodness, I possess a voice outside my head, other than my own, to break this loud, unbearable silence. The delicate, protective Margaret, the only soul I've ever spoken to since the accident - my caregiver - speaks once more of how the sun shines uninterrupted on Rosewood Manor, as it always has and always will. At this point, I'm not even sure it's true, but I can't smell the pungent rain, so I can't dispute her. She told me, once again, about the vast, mahogany-paneled library I can't see. And the foyer, with a grand crystal chandelier that I tried but couldn't find. I've always dreamt of living in such a manor, and I honestly never stopped because even though now I do, I can't savor any part of it. It never actually came true. Because I might be living in a castle but all I can feel is the smooth texture of the silk duvet of my bed. And that croaky, loud and annoying crow of the Cuckoo Clock that yells that it's time for Margaret to present me with those violent, acidic, pungent eye drops that I can feel fighting with my clouded eyes. The ones that are supposed to magically give me back my sight, like that's even a thing. And days seem sometimes as if they'll never end as they fade into a confused blur much the same as the whole world around me; that I can only imagine, a collage of confused memories. And I have no clue where I am even though I make her describe it to me every single day. I don't know anything of what's around me, but I could tell you what color is the inside of my carillon. It's turquoise, TuRqUOiSe, TUrqÙöiSê, TūRQÛoÏsë. Whatever that means. And the night breeze on my skin, the heat of the day, and cuckoo screams, hours, seconds, minutes, sounds, smells, tastes. And again, every day - the sound of footsteps behind my closed door, the gentle knock on it, and Margaret's warm, reassuring voice, telling me, once again about the well rehearsed and detailed description of this room. But not that day, that particular morning, there is no knock, no voice, just silence. Just pitch-black, wide-open nothing, and my voice bouncing off those walls. Blinds that never got open, bread that never got toasted and the light kept locked out of here. The ring of an alarm that never got turned off and no voice to guide me out of bed, petrified under these covers seeing, hour after hour, an unmaintained world, a world that was waiting for a hand to be lived. And I could do nothing but wait, unable to do anything remotely independent. Meals left untouched and unused eye drops, and damn tears in my eyes that I know I shouldn't let form while taking the meds, and yet, there they were, running on my face, maybe trying to reach the floor to rush out that door; in vain. My only solace had been her voice; and wasn't that pathetic? That too had left me. I felt truly alone, and for the first time, truly impaired. I finally get the courage to sit on my bed, mostly out of hunger rather than actual bravery. I prepare to jump into the void, for my feet to fall in the never-ending mist surrounding me; except they don't. Their bare soles met with the icy marble floor. I push myself forward trying to map out anything surrounding, me and the comfort of my bed. A shot in the dark. No, more like a hand in the dark. A shaky, uncertain hand dumbly taking its body along. "The blind leads the blind." My throat pushes those sounds that lay on those walls and furniture, that send me back, based on how much echo they carry with them, how far away the next obstacle will be. Thud. Damn, I didn't sense that. My knees, shaky on the floor, my hands pressed against the smooth, patinated wood of the desk that creaks slightly under my weight as I get back on my feet. Dust on my fingers, now in my nostril- I cough as my dusty hand follows that buttery smell stretching to reach it, the cold, forgotten croissant. I drop my hand on it, I feel it for an instant under my palm before I hear its thud on the carpet. Usually, my mom would've yelled at me for taking it up and eating it - but I'm starving, and I'm sure she wouldn't mind this once. I feel the dust of the carpet, now on the croissant's flaky skin, entering my mouth. I cough again. I'm miserable. Eating dust in the wide-open nothing. Sobbing, letting every little drop of the medicine that my eyes managed to keep, on my cheeks- along with the tears. And so it went for days to come. Margaret's absence started hanging like a heavy feeling in my chest, and the odds that she was gone for a family vacation really started to wear off. They went on with other sounds and the waiting for echoes, bumps into furniture and bruises and cold meals. Updating the mental image of the space around me, which seems to be somewhat inaccurate now that I touch it, smell it, feel it. It's back to when I was a kid. Swallowed in soft blankets, certainly less soft in the darkness of my room, in the solitude of my room, at witching hour. My little bored mind and my eyes still lit and alive making monsters emerge from the dark. To transform the pitch-black into my worst nightmare, just for the fun of it. But now it wasn't the same. The black that surrounded me wasn't just darkness and day after day, the shapes and shadows that I began to see were not echoes of a mind with too much imagination. They were real. I was seeing them. And it felt like they could see me. Not the mental map of my room, not a dream, they were there, before my eyes. I squinted, as if testing the gears of a machine that had just been put back into operation. After years, what felt like decades, even. It was back working. I was back working. As the fog around me began to dissolve, leaving a forgotten space for light to filter against my over-sensitive retina which began to tear at the first shining beam bouncing off the back of my eyeball. It wasn't much, but I could see the beautifully confusing and almost indecipherable reality around me. It was there. Maybe it was working; the drops were having their effect. I hold out my hand to feel the smooth, cold bottle come from my palm, then my index finger and thumb on the rubbery dropper, trying to get at least one of the twenty drops that are ending up on the carpet to fall into at least one of my eyes. Oh, but when they do, it can't go unnoticed. Because it hurts, it burns. Crack. The fog runs, smoke again filling my pupils, my, once again, gray, clouded, dead pupils behind an equally coffin-like stare. My eyes fighting the drops, the tears trying to chase them away, my hands clumsily doing the same and my squeaks, my sobs as the world around me turns black again. No. It was impossible. There was no way in any logical corner where the drops given to me by Margaret could- It couldn't be. Yet it began to creep up from the back of my mind, a slow but steady whisper. Could they perhaps be the cause of my blindness rather than the cure for it? Stop. It was Margaret. Her absence was driving me crazy. Or maybe it was setting me free. So I stopped taking them and waited for the shapes in the back of my mind to make sense again. I should have paid attention to what I wished for. Think twice. I'm like balancing on breaking branches as the world around me shows its truth, day after day. I wasn't broken anymore, I wasn't impaired and yet, I felt more helpless than ever. The reins of my life slip from my hands, how sweet ignorance was. I would like to turn a blind eye. Turn them both blind again, because the room I'm now looking at not only doesn't match its description. It's a terrible, pale, mediocre lie. My chest throbs with each breath, faster than the previous one; as I look at the claustrophobic, filthy, dark cell I thought for a castle in the last few months. My castle, my dream. I tripped and fell from heaven to the room I dreamt to see. Except it's not. The dried lavender that's sitting on the dusty, wooden windowsill right by my bed. Now I can see. Along with the cream shattered plates, a low ceiling, and stains on these dark walls. Now it's crystal clear. Her words shaped my world and wasn't that quite convenient? No. It can't- all this time...there is also perhaps the slightest possibility that she had been my sweet, quiet, caring...kidnapper? Crack.