Flash Cards for the Blind

by Kurt Newton

These are not your average 4x6s. Instead of an equation on one side, a solution on the other, these thin rectangles are virtually featureless. They look more like opaque panes of glass...without the sharp edges, of course. That would be cruel.

(You fidget slightly. I know the feeling. Trust is a difficult commodity nowadays...rare in its purest form.)

"Then how do they work?"

(Your eyes stare past me. Though blind, they appear eager, open to new experiences.)

Well, they work the way a window works, only instead of using the sensory organ designed for sight, it uses something much more intimate: touch. It is the reason I am wearing these specially designed gloves. Just the slightest skin-to-surface contact induces a chemical transference that affects the region of the brain responsible for perception. Touching is seeing.

"What will I see?"

(A smile graces the corner of your mouth. It informs me I have chosen well.)

Ah, that's the beauty. It is entirely up to you. The mystics say if you stare at your reflection long enough your true essence will eventually reveal itself. Perhaps you will see your own death. Perhaps you will witness the torture of the innocent, or the savagery of nature, or the oppressive immensity of the universe. Perhaps you will be whisked away to a place unknown, a place forbidden, a place where your darkest fears dwell. A place where truth lies bound and screaming.

(You swallow your last naïve notion. Your fingers tremble as I place the first card in your hands.)

"And my blindness will be cured by doing this?"

Yes. But you will wish it hadn't.

__________

Kurt Newton lives as a recluse in the woods of northeast Connecticut. He has been spotted on his plot of land harvesting grubs from rotted logs, setting tripwires for small animals and drinking from fresh water streams. He uses wood pulp and dried viscera to make the paper on which he writes his stories. He drives a black Ford Focus.

Second Sight

It ran like an unending torrent of hot molasses, like the seaweed green vomit extruding from little Regan's mouth in the Exorcist. Blood. So much of it. Too much of it, pouring from the old man's eyes.

"I can see… I can see…"

It was all the old man had been saying since he was brought in to the emergency room.

"Where was he found again?" said Doctor Marks, plastic face shield securely in place.

Nurse Penny pulled her eyes away from the twin rivers of blood long enough to comment. "In an alley behind St. Joseph's church. A nun heard him howling and called 911."

"Bet she thought it was stigmata." The doctor shined his penlight in the old man's eyes and flicked it to the side. "There doesn't seem to be any damage to the eyes themselves. The source of the bleeding appears to be anterior."

"But, Doctor, if his brain were hemorrhaging, wouldn't it be exiting his ears, nose or mouth. Why just the eyes?"

"Some hemorrhaging can be more localized. It's rare with the brain, however." The doctor continued to hover over the old man, shining his penlight. "Strange…"

As Doctor Marks moved in for a closer inspection, the old man's body convulsed. Veined hands with gnarled fingers reached up for the light. "I can see… I can see…" the old man cried, his voice hoarse, his neck strained. The old man then collapsed, his breathing and the flow of his blood slowing to a stop.

"Should we call it? Doctor?"

Doctor Marks had turned away to avoid the old man's death-throe spasm. He turned back to Nurse Penny and the now deceased patient. "I'm sorry, nurse. Yes…time of death --" Doctor Marks squinted at the clock on the wall. His vision momentarily blurred. "Four fourteen p.m."
He removed the face shield, snapped off his gloves and untied his gown, and tossed them into the trash. "Nurse, I'll be in the private lounge if anyone needs me."

For Doctor Marks, it felt like a headache was coming on. The hallway light hurt his eyes. The lounge was dark and empty. He went straight to the couch and stretched out.

Funny how, even though it was dark, he could see a strange illumination. The outline of the room glowed like a polarized picture. What was dark was light, and what was light--like the thin line underneath the room's entrance--was dark. Even with his eyes shut, he saw light, tiny streamers, as if he were looking into a microscope at the blood vessels in his eyelids. He got to his feet and walked to the bathroom, unsure of what was happening.

He flicked on the light and an explosion of stars filled his vision. The image in the mirror was hideous, nothing but veins and corpuscles and filarial wisps of moving fluid. In his eyes were twin upside-down crosses, death signs, burned into his retinas.

He wanted to scream but instead his mind replayed the incident with the emergency room patient--only from the old man's point of view. He saw himself hovering over him, the penlight shining like a beacon into his eyes. Then came the sudden convulsion, and a single drop of blood rose upward, arcing in slow motion in an unnatural trajectory, above the face shield, landing in his eye.

A sudden hunger gnawed at the doctor's gut and he doubled over in pain.

He shut off the light off and stumbled out of the lounge into the hallway. He needed to get back to the emergency room. Along the way he was assaulted by all manner of hideous replicas of human transformation: goblin, devil and demon faces; some asked if he was all right.
But nothing was all right, nothing would ever be right again, unless…

He burst into the emergency room, avoiding the stares of ghastly maintenance men and grotesque nurses, and lurched over to where the old man had died. A plastic basin sat on the floor, the old man's blood still in it. He picked up the basin. In the blood he saw creatures swirling, amoeba-like, the substance of life. Before anyone could stop him he tipped the basin to his lips and gulped the thick liquid. The room spun and he collapsed.

___
Some time later Doctor Marks awoke. Nurse Penny leaned over him. "Doctor, how are you feeling?"

He stared at her. She was the most beautiful creature on the planet. He took a deep breath. The air was sweet.

"I can see," he said. "I can see."

__________

Kurt Newton lives as a recluse in the woods of northeast Connecticut. He has been spotted on his plot of land harvesting grubs from rotted logs, setting tripwires for small animals and drinking from fresh water streams. He uses wood pulp and dried viscera to make the paper on which he writes his stories. He drives a black Ford Focus.

Mr. Lucky

by Kurt Newton

H. Michael Casper (H to his friends) was always in the right place at the right time. Lottery tickets purchased on a whim…would win. Raffles, radio contests--you name it. Always the thousandth guest or the millionth customer. Even those lucky coins at the supermarket checkout line. One year, he had so many of the brightly colored tokens he decorated his Christmas tree with them (which he won as a door prize at the office Christmas party). Luck was on his side. Luck was his lady every night. Until, a package arrived on his doorstep.

The package had no return address. Inside the package was a doll, a small wishnik doll to be precise. With lucky horseshoes on the soles of each foot. It was a good luck doll.

Someone's idea of a joke, H thought, placing the doll on the fireplace mantle. A little more luck couldn't hurt.

Or could it?

The doll stared at him with wild hair and wide grin, as if to say luck was crazy, luck was insane. It appeared as if the doll wanted to wink, but was prevented from doing so by its rigid construction. H thought nothing of it.

Within a week H had wrecked his car, was laid off from his job of twenty years, and had developed a rash that just wouldn't go away. There was also the flooded basement, the three broken mirrors, and his television was struck by lightning. Not only had his luck dried up, it appeared to have turned black and was oozing bad juju.

Meanwhile, the wishnik sat atop the fireplace mantle, its eyes feral-looking, its grin nearly touching its ears. H did what any right-thinking person would have done. He built a fire and threw the wishnik into the flames.

He watched it burn.

Hair ignited, rubber melted, but the grin, shaped like a lucky horseshoe, seemed to stay put as the flames grew, flaring up in orange tendrils like strands of wild hair, and flaring out like a yellow tongue, extending beyond the hearth, licking a stack of nearby newspapers and setting them on fire.

H ran, but the flames appeared to have a life of their own and beat him to each exit, zigzagging in continuous Ws along the walls and across the ceiling. The flames were accompanied by a hideous insane laughter, as if luck itself were mocking his very existence.

Which seemed to be at an end, thought H, as the smoke overcame him and he collapsed on the living room floor…

…only to wake up in a hospital room five days later, wrapped from head to toe in gauze, with over ninety percent of his body burned. A nurse leaned over him.

“You're a lucky man,” she said.

H nodded, thankful to be alive. There were several bouquets of flowers in the room, along with Get Well Soon balloons hovering near the ceiling.

“Someone left this here for you. Isn't it cute?”

The nurse held up a wishnik doll and waggled it back and forth. Its yellowish hair danced like flames, its eyes appeared to glow red.

The nurse needed to call the doctor because H just wouldn't stop screaming.

__________

Kurt Newton tries to let the story dictate how long it wants to be. Sometimes that means a very short story, sometimes it means a novel. One thing for sure is he's written a lot of them--both large and small. News about his latest can be found at http://kurt-newton.livejournal.com.

Hector's Last Stand

by Kurt Newton

Hector thought the first one was a dandelion, but it appeared to swivel its head and stare at him before going under the mower's blades. Hector turned to look.

Just a splash of wet on the green grass. Hector didn't know what to make of it.

When he turned back around, a newly planted sapling was dead ahead. He wheeled the zero-turn-radius mower sharply and narrowly avoided disaster. He glanced up at the office windows to make sure no one was looking.

The back of the research facility loomed above him like a concrete fortress. He wasn't sure what went on inside the building, but the people who walked through the front entrance looked like doctors.

Another of the dandelions appeared up ahead. Hector aimed directly for it. This time, the dandelion not only turned its head, it blinked! Hector got a good look at it before it disappeared beneath the mower's carriage. It was no dandelion. It was a human eye sitting atop a fleshy-looking stalk!

"Ay, Dios mio!" Hector gasped.

He scanned the thick mote of grass that stretched between the building and the outlying woods. It was flat except for a slight rise in the middle where a large underground pipe deposited wastewater into a woodland stream. Along the rise stood a small army of the bug-eyed blooms.

"Pequenos diablos!" Hector revved the mower's engine.

He cut across the lawn, not caring how it looked. They would thank him later, referring to the doctors inside the building. Obviously something had leaked out into the wastewater. Hector couldn't remember what his boss had told him about the work they performed there. All he knew was it was top-secret government-type work. Stuff scary movies were made of.

But Hector wasn't scared. He hit the clot of fleshy flora at full speed. A viscous spray hit him in the face; some entered his eyes.

He blinked, momentarily blinded. When he opened his eyes again his vision was slightly clouded, but he could still see. And what he saw frightened him.

Every few feet a yellow-eyed, swivel-necked sprout sprung up out of the grass. Each hooded orb was ringed with petal-like black lashes. Wherever Hector looked the eyes turned and stared back at him. Blinking. Watching.

Hector cut across the grass in a deadly game of connect-the-dots, mowing them under, leaving a trail of gooey mulch in his wake. But he couldn't mow them down fast enough. They popped up two and three in places where one had been just moments before.

And if that wasn't bad enough, he was now having vision problems. One moment he was on the mower, the next he was at ground level watching the mower hurtle toward him. And there were voices in his ears, a multitude of whispers speaking as one, entreating him to not be afraid, to join them, to lay down his arms…and legs…and torso…and be free…

Hector shrieked.

It wasn't due to the startling vision he'd just experienced; it was something much worse. The mower's gas gauge needle had dipped below E. Somebody must have tampered with the fuel line.

Men in white lab coats now lined the windows of the facility like department store manikins. Some held clipboards. Others held movie cameras.

Hector gazed across the growing sea of yellow. Don't worry, they whispered, they will be next.

The mower sputtered and stalled, and rolled to a halt.

Hector felt the world tip, and his life passed before him in the blink of an eye.

__________

Kurt Newton tries to let the story dictate how long it wants to be. Sometimes that means a very short story, sometimes it means a novel. One thing for sure is he's written a lot of them -- both large and small. News about his latest can be found at http://kurt-newton.livejournal.com.