Blind Reunion

”It’s less frightening for her this way.”

The class of 2020 stood around the blindfolded, earmuffed girl in cautious fascination. Nobody recognized her, much less the lady above their age who held onto their supposed former classmate’s thin scarf as if it were a leash.

“And who is “her?” Katherine Brown was a junior accountant now, but she’d been popular enough to know just about everyone back in school.

“It doesn’t really matter, and you won’t recognize her. She can hear my voice, but not yours.” The woman tapped a mic clipped to her shirt. The earmuffs were actually headphones, it seemed. “Still, please be kind to her. It took a lot of persuading to get her out here.”

“Is there anyone we knew who wouldn’t have been embarrassed being put in a blindfold and walked around like a dog?” One time, Austin Bennet had in fact found a lot of enjoyment picking on this particular girl. But her tamer’s words were accurate, and he had no idea who he was looking at. This was a far different set of traits to make fun of, in the first place.

“Not any girls.” Allison smirked. “At least I hope.” While Katherine and the other preps were acting confused or disgusted, she was getting a real rise out of all this. “So who are you exactly?”

“I’m her partner.” The woman sensed a bit of tension in the younger girl and lightly stroked her head. “My name is Lauren, I’m an influencer and I sew.” She rubbed a finger on her subject’s blindfold, as if to brag. A few of the boys left.

“So she asked you to do this?”

“Can you take the blindfold off for a sec? I wanna see her face.”

”Does she speak?”

“You’re dating?”

“I wonder which part of this is a sex thing.”

“You’re fucking with us, I never met her.”

“Yeah, no way she went here.”

“How’d you two even get in here anyway?”

“Maybe it’s a prank?”

As if no time had passed, the children surrounded her impatiently. Worrying the hounding would pick up on the mic, Lauren led her girl out of the surely nostalgic room, stopping her in the smooth-floored hallways of the school.

“How are you feeling?”

“…I guess I’m fine?” She croaked like a clogged drain, struggling to speak after so much silence. The headphones were as effective as they could be. For all she knew, she might have not even been at her school, just trailing through a colorless void with nothing but the calming voice and presence of the only person she really let in. This might have been a more accurate sight than viewing her surroundings full of memories and other people. To her, there was only Lauren.

“And do you still want to do this?”

She grumbled. The blindfold, the lead, the headphones… all of it was merely necessary for their plans, but she really had grown accustomed to them. “…What’d they say?”

“No one recognized you.”

“Do you… do you think that will change?”

“No, sweetie.” She lightly reprimanded her, grasping her knuckles and speaking in a tone that emphasized her partner’s perceived foolishness. “You didn’t just change, you were born. You're not the person they knew. You didn’t exist until after your time in this school was already over.”

“It still feels like my eyes.” She slipped her finger under the tight blinder. “It always has. I can’t even see them myself, when I look in the mirror.”

“You know they’re there, though. You know I made you beautiful.”

“I just wish I could see it too.”

Lauren embraced the broken doll.

“After today… maybe you will. You just need more exposure. For more people to witness how pretty you are.”

“And… did you pick out who?”

“Yes, I found the one. Do you remember Austin?”

She burrowed into her thoughts, having to dig multiple holes in the backyard of her brain before the corpse finally appeared. She signaled with a desolate nod.

“And you wanna show him how far you’ve come, right?”

Another nod, this time paired with a determined frown.

“Listen to my voice then. Forget everything else.”

Her heart rate exceeded her breath as Lauren left her there in the darkness, hearing her heels clack far away as she was abandoned to be stranded at the lightless bottom of the sea. She thought to follow the sound, but the owner called out:

“Stay.”

The class kept chatting away, for awhile. To be fair, they thought, it was no surprise they didn’t recognize the masked fetishist. No one kept up all that well when their school career was capped off with a pandemic. Maybe that girl was just a bit on the forgettable side as a kid. All they cared about now was having a fun story to tell their real friends over at college, someone to feel better than. These people had failed, struggled, made more mistakes than they knew how to accept- but hey, at least they weren’t a freak. At least they turned out okay.

Austin claimed (more so announced) he just needed to piss, but nothing would be leaving his body at all. He still left for a relief, that part was true- around a corner where he thought no one could see, the boy scratched his itch. He could almost feel relaxed in that second, stargazing out a window that only showed him another part of the building and hardly any sky. He hadn’t had it easy. Life had become about keeping up appearances, more so than he ever bothered to do in his youth. It frustrated him, not being able to speak his mind, not being able to cut through the own fog in his head with humor, whoever else’s expense it might have came at.

If asked, he would have felt sympathy for the girl. He would have shown her at least the same kindness he put up for his teachers who controlled his path in life, his family who he was working hard to reassure.

Thanks to the shadow watching him shoot up from another window across the school, he didn’t get the chance.

“Good, one more corner baby. Turn right and stop.”

Austin freezed a little, but secured his paraphernalia of choice and laughed when he noticed he’d encounter the only person in the school who couldn’t hear or see what he was doing.

“He’s in front of you right now. If you want to say something to him I’ll give you six seconds. Any longer and I’ll take it as a no.”

“…”

The chuckle became a bit disconcerted when he noticed the supposed classmate’s unmoving presence.

“Hey, uh… can you really not hear me?”

“…”

“I think I know who you are.”

The futility of speaking was lost on everyone but him as he received nothing back. The woman waited for the silence to pass. It wasn’t that she had nothing to say to Austin, she’d been imagining this for a long time- but part of her was growing increasingly frightened at the thought of bearing her new self to such an old enemy. Not to mention the question of whether he deserved it or not. But like an air gunner, she only saw the battlefield in stark black and white, and her commanding officer’s words erased any hesitation.

“He’s all yours. Take it off.”

Austin shuddered as she raised her hand and the blindfold quickly dropped to the ground. The inside was stained black.

“U-um.” The boy stepped back into the corner, his back literally up against a wall. Reality started to break down, as no longer how longer he stared he couldn’t make out what it was. ”H-hey- you know, um… it’s okay, I-I have- I’ve got no problem with you, that’s pretty cool that- that you… I…”

It was no use. At first he didn’t notice and then he thought it was the fire alarm. Then the ringing between his ears went from a rhythm to a single escalating note. Louder. Louder.

“Y-you’re cool, don’t- don’t worry about me, you should… go bother someone else, uh… haha… I’m sure um… plenty of the… guys would- like you…” He tried to maintain his smile, but he was holding his teeth together so tight it felt like they might shatter into his mouth. His knee fell on the ground as the gunshots turned to nuclear warheads.

“Haha, good job love. He’s kneeling now. Sure you don’t have anything to say? It’ll happen soon, so get ready to run. I hope your ears are on.”

“P-please please stop, you were a good kid…” The laughing was mixed so thoroughly with the crying he forgot which he was doing. He was so scared, looking at those black trees that seemed to pulsate out of her face. She wasn’t smiling. She must not have been enjoying it, whatever she was doing. “Y-you’re a good kid right?”

“Don’t stop now. Get closer.”

He wailed as the image of evil encroached on his fetal position. Like a washing machine losing balance the nukes turned to supernovas.

“RIGHT?”

From across the building, Lauren covered her ears.

The shotgun sound of a head turned outside in and back out again flooded the surrounding areas clear out to the football field. Crows took off at the bus stop as the bone shrapnel came through the glass and the hallway was dyed a murky brownish red for a good few yards.

“G-good job honey! Blindfold on.”

She listened. It hurt a little to push them back down, the probing beauties extending from her skull. It felt like thorns. They writhed under the cloth’s weight, almost murmuring intelligently.

“You were absolutely jaw-dropping, I’m sure he thought so too.” She chuckled. Bits of him were on the grass outside. “Do you feel any prettier now? Jump if yes.”

She leapt on command and slipped on all the blood with a high-pitched squeak as her shoes left the floor, falling on the seat of her pants and getting them dyed a new shade of dark crimson. Lauren laughed.

“Good, good. I told you it wasn’t just me.”