Free Write Friday – Temporary Blindness
It’s been a long time since I’ve responded to Kellie Elmore’s Free Write Friday, but the following prompt brought up vivid images.
You find yourself in the lower level of an old ship. A calendar on the wall says 1682. There is a small window, and the view is nothing but open sea and a setting sun. There is a staircase and you can see daylight at the top…
Temporary Blindness
I felt a sharp sting in my back and opened my eyes. But I could not see. I felt the presence of people around me and the heavy smell of sweat, body waste, and thrown up food suffocated my nose. I could not see but my eyes were open. My breath was thick as mud. Then I felt a cold weight on top of me. It was a body. Slowly I slid from under it. I still could not see.
I lifted my hands from the sticky floor and pulled myself up to sit. Then I saw a needle of light and turned toward it. I could see. Through a small round window, the blazing red sun set over the wide empty sea. I could see. But what I saw I did not want to see. Men, women, children chained against walls. Some were bleeding, some were crying, some were sleeping or dead. A blanket of sadness and fear wrapped everyone. And then, I turned and looked up and saw the last light of the day hovering above a staircase.
Then I remembered every thing. I closed my eyes but could not stop the tears.
Skywalker Storyteller Works 
Gosh – that’s powerful and quite brilliant. Very well done indeed. You have really made me think.
Thanks, Suzanne. Yes, it always makes me think too.
An evocative, powerful story of the horrors and incomprehensible cruelty of kidnapping people from their homelands, the beginning of centuries of even greater brutality.
Thanks, Carol. It’s odd how some prompts seem to channel images through me. There was nothing else I could write for that prompt.
Wow! Excellent!
Thanks.
I second Roberta’s comment: WOW!
Beautiful written.
A nightmare all too real then and now. Wonderfully written. Captures the experience beautifully.
Thank you.
The way, Sky, you kept the tale in the hold of the ship, to only paint glimpses to the outside world, and use it in a way to colour what’s within, via the about, the immediate, the hope of remembering something different, but reality takes hold, rare moments within a mind’s, a body’s need to escape the present. Simply just, WoW, totally brilliant scribing, penning to each line to wake the reader inside the exact moment.
Thanks SO much Sean. Glad to know it had the same affect on the reader as it did me in the writing.
Brilliant penning! Poignant and emotional.
I was so very happy to have you back with us! Lots of alumni joining in this week! I am all smiles!!!! Thank you!!!!!!!
You’re welcome.