2022 Watty Award Winner ✨
In which a blind girl and a disfigured army vet attempt to find love and belonging in a big bad world.
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Olivia Harris is blind, and that's just the way it is. Naviga...
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SOMETIMES THE NIGHTMARES are so bad that Connor ends up in a crumpled heap on the floor beside his bed, drenched with sweat and shivering.
Like tonight, when he wakes thrashing, shins scraped raw from the carpet, entrenched in the darkness of the night. The sharp crackling of shells whipping through the arid desert, endless dry miles of yellow and grey. And red. So much fucking red. Ringing in his ears, sticky against his skin. The splatter of blood and the bitter sting of fumes choking at his nostrils, splintering his windpipe. Ragged, distressed shouts, the world tearing apart, and then nothing.
On nights like these, nights that occur more often than he'll admit, he squints blearily up at the ceiling, wet tracks of tears staining his cheeks, retching for air, feeling—more than anything else—completely and utterly alone. Alone in the misery, alone in the pain.
All the others, friends, brothers. Gone, ripped to pieces in a spray of fuel and sand. He can almost see their faces, grimy and smeared with grease, if he digs hard enough. Gone. Except for him. For some reason, he's the only one left, and as he lays tremoring into the blackness around him, he wonders why the earth didn't claim him too, and he wonders if it'd be easier that way.
He peels himself off the ground, feels his legs wobble beneath him, feels his arms droop, leaden, at his sides. Too exhausted to crawl into the shower, too nauseous to raid the fridge, too numb to do anything other than collapse back into bed.
In his dreams, there's no end in sight until it all implodes.
Not every night, but many nights. Often enough that it's a routine. Catching a whiff of sleep, then squinting into the hot glare of morning sunlight, scraggling awake to face another day.
Coffee, Vicodin. Everything he eats comes from a packet or a box. Attempting to manoeuvre his uncooperative body through a fitness routine, a quick phone call to assuage his mother's neurotic concerns, a laconic reply to his younger sister's selfie. The day wastes away, and then the nightmares return, and the cycle repeats itself.
Except the last couple days have departed from routine, just a little.
He's been texting the blind girl. Olivia. She has a name, moron. He's been texting Olivia.
He's forgotten how to smile. It tugs instinctively across his lips, stretches at his skin in a way that's unfamiliar, so unfamiliar that he's noticed it. She makes jokes, and he smiles. The sound of his own laughter startles him because of how odd it seems, something so simple yet neglected.
Sometimes, she has puns that don't work over text so she sends him a voice message instead. What do you call a deer with no eyes? No eyed-deer. Her voice is light, tainted with life. It reminds him, for a fleeting moment, that there's more to life than microwave noodles and body aches.
