Flash Fiction: Seeing

Image property of Alessandro Pautasso. Check out his work at his website.

Seeing

I was running so fast that I didn’t notice the neighbor’s dog was laying at the top of the last set of stairs going out of my apartment building. He didn’t move when I stepped down causing me to go ass over teacups. I went end over end until I got to the bottom and cracked my head off the concrete floor.

It has been three weeks since I woke up blind in the hospital after my fall. Well, the doctors call it blind, and it’s true that I can’t see how I used to, but my life has actually become more interesting sense the fall. It is so strange, but now when I hear words I do not just hear them. When I hear a word I taste it, smell it, feel it, and see it, but it is not the normal kind of seeing. I see the word in shades, splashes, and flecks of color. I hear the word bicycle and brilliant slashes of green and yellow flood my mind, along with the taste of grass and fresh air. Someone mentions an apple and I can taste it as if I had just bit into one. The word warm makes me feel, well, warm! The doctors call it Synesthesia, but I call it seeing, although, it doesn’t always make sense. 

My brother was walking me up to my apartment one day when I heard the neighbor kid say ice cream and I tasted sausage and garlic.  My father came over to the my apartment to check up on me and when he said that I should move back home with him and my mother, the word “move” felt like icicles running down my legs. The day that my girlfriend said the word “blind” and the phrase “doesn’t matter,” I tasted at first chalk and vinegar, and then sweet plums, and my vision went from a mass of dark blues and grays to violent violets and reds.

Sometimes the feelings change, but after three weeks the only way I can describe how all my senses react to the word “dog” is absolute and profound happiness, with a hint of sunshine on skin, and the taste of raspberry sorbet.