Blinded - Fransánchez

Fransánchez

Blinded (Saga Blinded Part I, #1)

Blinded

Written By Fransánchez

Copyright © 2020 Francisco José Sánchez Contreras

All rights reserved

Distributed by Babelcube, Inc.

www.babelcube.com

Translated by ZionXVI

Cover Design © 2020 Francisco José Sánchez Contreras

Babelcube Books and Babelcube are trademarks of Babelcube Inc.

Episode 1

The Computer Scientist

He emitted a desperate groan as he felt a sharp pain, opened his eyes and glimpsed someone dressed in white. His eyelids closed again and another painful prick forced him to wake up. The frenzy of staff in white dressing gowns and pajamas throughout the room was unceasing. That tide of activity that swept from one side to the other overtook him, he didnt know where he was or what was happening, he tried to get up, but his strength failed him, he chose to desist and return to Morpheus world.

Whats your name, whats your name? he listened insistently.

Ra pha he muttered with both eyes closed.

How many pills did you take? How many pills did you take? the young woman questioned again in a firm and determined voice.

He found it difficult to keep his eyes open, he just wanted to sleep, and those people were bothering him.

Let me I am sleepy

No way. Wake up! he ordered the voice.

The pain caused by the heavy pressure on his earlobe opened his eyes, and he angrily searched for the cause of the attack, but his wrists were bound to the stretcher.

Calm down, cooperate, its for your own good.

He understood that he was in the hospital, in the emergency room, he was very sleepy, but alive. The last thing he remembered was the titanic effort he made to press the red emergency key on his state-of-the-art mobile phone.

Suddenly he was more lucid and alert; the intravenous injection given by the nurse on the young doctors orders had had an immediate effect. The doctor, already in a softer tone, began to interrogate him for his medical history. She asked him if he had any allergies, if he had any illnesses, if he was taking any treatment, his family history. Rapha answered docilely while he was fascinated by the beauty of the doctor; Alice, he could read off the identification card that was hanging from her unbuttoned gown.

For the first time in his life, he felt relaxed, calm and at ease with a woman, except for his mother of course. He entertained himself by watching Alice, her swaying around the room, writing on the computer, whispering orders to the nurses in a velvety northern accent:

Activated charcoal stomach pump, then psychiatric consultation.

Rapha remained fascinated, Alice was tall and slender, brunette with tied long hair in a ponytail, blue eyes and full lips. Her swollen breasts were trying to escape from the generous neckline, wasp waist, behind the medical scrubs you could guess a tight ass.

Yes, my shift today is twenty-four hours, I leave at eight in the morning, he heard her say to a fellow worker.

After the typical sermon about the goodness of life and the stupidity of suicide, she encouraged him to look for solutions to his problems. Alice said goodbye very politely and wiggling her way through the critical care room to the hallway to her office. She had to continue attending to the long line of patients who were still waiting for medical attention in the waiting room. Rapha watched her in a daze as she walked away.

After finishing vomiting, he was transferred to the psychiatric area. First thing in the morning he had no choice but to have a long and sincere talk with the specialist.

Rapha was a chubby kid, even in his own in style, not good at sports and all the games that required physical effort. Given his peculiar appearance, he often had problems at school and in his small hometown, famous for its iron bridge, which is located in the Alpujarra Mountains of Granada.

He was always the focus of ridicule and scorn from his classmates, who made fun of him. This caused him a great social isolation, becoming a reserved person. In his childhood he only found refuge in novels, comic books and history encyclopedias, becoming an avid devourer of literature of all genres.

He reached his adolescence suffering from extreme shyness. The only advantage was that he had a lot of free time to devote to study and to one of his favorite hobbies, computers.

Genetically he was more like his father than his mother, so he inherited his short, greasy hair and short height.

His move to the city and entry into the university environment did not change his life much. He already had premature alopecia and great myopia, adorned with thick, unstylish, high-prescription glasses that made his morphology stand out even more.

He graduated with excellent grades, which allowed him to easily look for his professional future as a programmer. He found it in Almería, a city in the southeast, on the Mediterranean coast. But too far away from the only stable and loving relationship of his whole life, his little family. He adapted his work to his lifestyle, became his own boss. His profession was carried out at home, with no schedule. He was presented with the development of an application or the design of a web page, he only had to concentrate, immerse himself in the task and dedicate all his time to it. He found that he worked better at night, his Internet connections were clearer, his computer was much faster, and his web pages went up more quickly. So, he changed his life habits, sleeping more in the morning and working on his projects in the afternoons and evenings.

One day he found himself in his forties, with no friends, no partner, no family, no relationships, just alone and bitter. Given the circumstances of his life, he always had a depressive personality that he solved with medication and many hours of work.

He liked sex a lot, like almost everyone else, although he had never had any relationships, he was a virgin and incapable of even talking about banal things with any woman. He was so nervous that he could hardly speak, causing a ridiculous stutter. On one occasion, newly arrived in the city, he tried to hire the professional services of a prostitute. When he went up to the room in the boarding house, while the girl was undressing, he felt so nervous that a bitter taste in his mouth made him retch, which he could not suppress, without warning and without being able to avoid it, he threw up on the prostitute. The girl, who had already been paid in advance, was furious and found the perfect excuse to finish her work and send him off with a shout:

But that fatso will be disgusting! As my name is Susan, dont ever look for me again! Pig! Get the hell out!

After the colossal brawl, Rapha, very ashamed, hurriedly fled from there in a pitiful state of anxiety. After this disastrous experience, his sexuality continued to be reduced to his collection of porn films and his very dear and faithful friend masturbation. His life circumstances provoked a strong rejection to society, a resentment and a deep general hatred.

That fateful dawn, things were going terribly wrong. He was stuck, as if thick, he was not doing well at all. He decided to take a break, watch some TV. There was nothing interesting, lots of quiz shows, those very easy to answer, hooks to get money out of people over the phone. He found in a local TV channel a great and beautiful girl, with impressive curves. She was doing a strip tease to soft music, after five minutes he had an erection and after another five minutes the man was cleaning his semen with a handkerchief.

The unfortunate senior continued feeling bad, she went to the medicine cabinet to take her usual antidepressant pill but in a fit of tears he took the whole bottle. He lay down to wait on the couch, while watching on TV what he missed most, the soft and velvety human contact of a woman. Rapha found it increasingly difficult to hold the eyelids, they insisted on closing, he couldnt cope with them. He didnt know why, moved by an unconscious spring, perhaps the instinct of survival, he stretched out his arm trying to grab the mobile phone from the table, the cable that kept it plugged in to charge the battery prevented him from doing so and it fell to the floor on the other side. Rapha got up to pick it up, his legs no longer supported him and he also fell to the floor. After crawling, he managed to reach it, it was off, he turned it on with difficulty. He could not fix his eyes to mark the pin, he pressed the red emergency button and when he heard the voice of the operator, he only managed to sigh help before losing consciousness

Rapha left the hospital convinced of the idiocy he had committed; the washing of the stomach had been an experience he did not want to repeat ever again. He had had a hard time convincing the psychiatrist that the autolytic crisis had ceased and that he would take things differently, facing the problems of his life.

He arrived home, but an unpleasant surprise awaited him, the door was smashed in, only kept closed by local police stickers that read Do not cross. The interior was a bit messy, he was too tired to tidy up, he wanted to sleep, so he left the mess for later and blocked the door with a simple chair. He went to bed leaving his bedroom in the dark, with the blinds completely down and the opaque curtain extended, as was his custom. As he entered the dream, he couldnt help thinking of Alice who had made a deep impression on him, he knew she was unreachable, she would never notice a guy like him. He fell asleep whilst fantasizing how he could get that womans attention.

He rested for several hours, although, despite being in a deep sleep, distant voices woke him up. He was drenched in sweat, hearing voices again, but this time closer. He opened the bedroom door and the voice was louder, he couldnt understand whats being said, but yes, it was here in his flat, he deduced that someone had snuck into the house taking advantage of the broken door.

A burglar! he thought worriedly.

He had some computer equipment worth more than fifteen thousand euros, he was going to find out about the crook, he took a heavy lamp from the bedside table and went quietly to the kitchen where the noise was coming from. He entered and found the individual on his back, as he was not that brave, he wanted to avoid a confrontation, he didnt hesitate and gave him a strong blow on the head. The delinquent fell to the floor unconscious and a trickle of blood that flowed from his head, quickly invaded the kitchen floor. The sight of so much blood frightened him.

Ive killed him, he thought.

He knelt down and turned the body over, leaving it on its back.

Shit, its the neighbor!

I didnt even know his name; I only knew him from "hello" and goodbye in the corridor. He took the thiefs pulse and didnt find it, he wasnt breathing, and he was indeed dead.

He panicked and a thousand thoughts sprang to mind: the police, the arrest, the trial, the prison

Keep calm, Rapha, he thought aloud.

He could claim it was self-defense, that he was under the influence of strong medication, plus what the hell was he doing to the neighbor in his house, snooping around? But what if he wasnt dead, he wasnt a doctor. The best thing was to ask for help, so he picked up his cell phone and dialed 112, the line was busy. He tried again with 061, the line was busy, then he dialed 092, this one did give a call, although they didnt take it.

What a shameful country, he thought.

He tried 091, a recording told him to call back after a few minutes. He decided to focus on 112 and dialed again, busy, he was pressing redial for a few minutes and nothing.

The man looked more closely at the neighbor, and from the pool of blood that had run through the kitchen and the increasing paleness of his face, he knew for sure that he had died. He decided to go down to the street to ask for help, and as soon as he left the doorway he ran into a man.

Help me, he said.

His interlocutor replied in a bad mood:

What, are you blind too? Another one with the little joke? Well, fuck you!

And he walked away, tapping away from the sidewalk with his long white cane.

Rapha didnt understand anything, suddenly he noticed a strange commotion and when he paid attention, he noticed the landscape, it was dantesque. A multitude of vehicles had collided with each other, others had merged by great impacts, unrecognizable, some were smoking, others were burning, and others were embedded in the shops and commercial premises. A car from a well-known French manufacturer hung dangerously from the slope of an access ramp to an underground parking lot.

People were constantly asking for help and assistance. They moved clumsily and senselessly, stumbling over the untidy tangle of cars, twisted irons, vehicle parts and pieces, fenders, mirrors and torn doors, various scrap metal scattered on the asphalt.

Some people were engulfed in flames, others lay motionless on the ground, bloodied, and others skidded and fell comically into the roadway from the layer of oil and debris spilled by the wrecked cars. Others, frightened, remained inside the wrecked vehicles. Some pedestrians were huddled together, crowded around, forming a strange gathering, like a melee at a rugby match.

He was deeply impressed by a bus that had collided with one of the busiest stops, crushing and running over a large group of citizens, sowing the sidewalk of mutilated bodies in different formats, amputated limbs and viscera bathed in blood.

In another area of the street, he observed a woman fall down a flight of steps, remaining motionless on the ground. Another man was seen sinking into a construction ditch, another stumbled over a carpet of glass from a broken shop window, cutting his hands and arms several times. Suddenly a smoking vehicle exploded, knocking out the people around it and causing a deadly shower of scrap metal and debris that reached another group nearby.

He turned his head to look down the street and the scene was similar all over the avenue, with several fires causing a smoky fog.

Rapha was petrified by the surprise, what had happened, no matter how much he thought about it, he didnt know what was happening. Surprisingly someone collided with him and took him by the arm, with great anguish he begged and pleaded for help. Another stumbled behind him and grabbed him by the waist, crying out for help. A very close individual braced in the air and managed to grab him by the other wrist, while a boy of about seven years of age hugged his thigh, and almost in unison, in front, a mature lady of about fifty years of age hugged her neck tightly. Rapha was trapped, surrounded and while everyone was shouting, he tried to get away with it without success. He could not move, they were hurting him and he felt very overwhelmed, he tried to reason with them but they had entered into a kind of collective hysteria, everyone was talking at the same time making communication impossible. He couldnt stand it anymore, more people were coming, so he chose to lose his balance and throw himself to the ground dragging them all. He managed to get some of them to let go, where it was easier for him to get rid of the rest and roll a few meters. He got up quickly, sore and eroded, and turned the corner.