The Blinding of 2032 by Garrett Keith
When Mercury completely disappeared from the night sky, we should have known then it was the first sign foreboding the horrors to come.
Had a meteor struck through and shattered Mercury? Or was the closest planet to our Sun merely knocked off its known orbit?
No one truly panicked until the second sign appeared. Not days following the disappearance of Mercury did the global temperatures begin to rise substantially. Statistics were unnecessary; you could feel the heat in the earth, smell it in the air, taste it in the water.
The world trembled under the sudden migration of urgent human populations on a massive scale. Whole countries were abandoned to heat storms. Temperatures rose dramatically above the levels of sustainable living in many areas. Life could no longer thrive within hundreds of miles of the equator, a universal seismic event pushed the world away from the middle and deep into the Northern and Southern Hemispheres of the Earth.
Experts looked to our obvious source of planet’s heat for answers—the sun. But our sun looked as normal as… well, as normal as our sun should appear to our understanding.
The year was 2032 when the third and final sign came for us. I would remember the day as if it was just yesterday for the rest of my life. It was the twenty ninth of February, a leap year; the day should never have existed in the first place—but too late. Today was the day that I, and the rest of the surviving world, would permanently lose our sight… and so much more.
The world tuned in to hear the emergency news broadcast regarding an update to the planet’s current state of affairs. Recent observations of the night sky found that something unnatural had seized the planet Venus. Almost half of the entire planet’s surface was completely scorched dry, as if God had defended to fire a blowtorch against the unwilling crust of Venus.
The most logical theory suggested a massive solar flare had sprung forth from the sun; a solar flare, as they explained, is a sudden flash of increasing brightness from the sun as some form of plasma or sun particles are ejected into space, typically following a coronal mass ejection to some degree. A giant flare also explained the total disruption of satellites and long-ranged radio frequencies that were originally attributed to the drastic increase in atmospheric heat. Flares copiously emit radio waves capable of such disruptions on Earth.
The good news was the world now knew a reasonable theory why this heat storm had transpired. The bad news was that scientists had no viable clue how to reverse or repair the heat damage, nor stop it increasing further. What we did know was that each solar flare took a few days to reach Earth, so until the sunspots deteriorated, the world was at risk.
Suddenly, the news report on the television cut to nothing—blackness. We assume now that it was a giant solar flare that struck the world then, most likely the same that had scorched past our previous solar system planets. I’ll never forget hearing the screams of four billion souls leave the Earth in a single flash of fire. But in the end, they were the lucky ones. Another billion perished within days following the solar storm, leaving roughly three billion humans wandering the devastated planet.
Despite the huge loss of people, us survivors had bigger issues. Most of us still alive sustained heavy injuries; Burns, fevers, and radiation exposure encompassed our lives now. Most of my family and friends survived, but we still had no answers. Technology ceased to function following the terrible event. Over time we managed to communicate with others and we concluded that we were actually the lucky ones. The damage had wiped Asia completely from the map, Europe was on fire. We must have been one of the furthest locations geographically from the origin of where Earth was struck.
But none of these issues matched the feeling of horror we survivors were left to endure. In the end it didn’t matter whether the heat or radiation were to blame. Every single one of us were stranded to deal with the unknown physical damage dealt to our eyes:
The storm of fire had ultimately blinded the sight of all surviving life on the planet.
— — —
Twenty four months since the blinding, but after fourteen I had stopped counting. What was the point you know? I took my morning stroll from our house to the abandoned mini-mart down the street when it happened—I was struck across the back of the head and knocked unconscious.
I dreamt of the past horrors again. Pain and swelling in my head swam with the past aches of the blinding. I could see the old living room, all of my family and friends staring at the television, as flame engulfed our world.
I don’t know how long I lay there, but when I came to the sun was still in the sky. My head pounded relentlessly, I wanted to fall back to sleep but the pain now refused to let me.
After a while I managed to sit up, brush myself from dirt and debris, and open my eyes.
I opened my eyes… and I could see again! The rush of pure shock and joy was overwhelming—I staggered forward to catch myself against the nearest tree. I immediately jumped backwards in horror, falling to the ground and crawling away from the tree—recoiling at the sight. My seconds of sheer joy were gone; they were now replaced with utter terror. This was more terrifying than the events of the blinding and completely unknown. At that moment, I would have given anything to retreat back into the lonely isolation of blindness.
Everywhere I looked. Every available wall, floor, and surface had been painted with the same message in a brutally red color:
“Don’t Tell Them You Can See.”
Author Written Bio:
Garrett Keith is 28 years old and lives in Folsom, California, with his younger brother. He works as a full-time financial analyst and fills the rest of his time with sports and creative writing. He inspires to put down the spreadsheets for good and pick up a pen in full-time employment someday.
