Blink

Just as he closed his eyes, the lights started flashing. 

Blink, Blink, flash, strobe lights so strong he wanted to scream, but then he realised that it didn't hurt anymore. The dim, warm lighting of his room greeted his eyes when he opened them, 'the light of Gondor that was never heeded', he jokingly told himself. The call for help that was never heard let alone sounded. Rolling onto a side, he looked at the square-shaped device that told him how much sleep he was wasting by not facing to slumber. It was measured in hours at first, and then in minutes, and finally, in seconds when the sun kisses the horizon. 

Blink, blink, flash, they were back. A shady club where the music was so bad that you automatically put it on mute in your mind, being there not out of choice but out of obligation. This was the essence of how he felt with his overactive rods and cones, the nerves of his failing optics. What was darkness if darkness gave you no solace? Shaken to the core when it first happened to him, but now accepting it with a quiet resignation, he stared at the ceiling again. Oh sweet, paint-peeled roof over my head, how I will miss you, he thought sombrely. Braille came easy to him, but what was hardest was letting go. A shiver down his spine came well timed, his silent prayers for forgiveness now muted and unspoken as he lay in silent resignation. 

Blink, blink. 

He waited for the flash. It was coming, he knew. He waited long and hard for the flash that accompanied the blinks for the past two months, a doom of minimal proportions with galactic consequences. The darkness waited with him, expectantly, giving him a ledge to stand on while he waited at the abyss. The abyss watched him with a sense of deep, everlasting patience as he waited. 

He moved his hands trying to reach the small button that would summon the only answer to his prayers of mercy; a kindly old nurse whom he would never see again. The button hailed her, and his ears tried to put an image to a black canvas of blindness to no avail. There was only one acquaintance now, someone he spent half his life with, an entity that welcomed him with open arms to a world mired below the one he was just in. 

Hello, darkness my old friend. 

Blink.