I can’t see.

.

My eyes don’t work anymore.

.

Seeing that they melted right off my face, its to be expected, really.

‘Seeing’, get it? Did you ‘see’ the pun coming?

Ha…

Hahahaha…

haha…

.

*sigh*

.

I can’t see.

.

.

I feel sick.

.

.

What did I do to deserve this? What the fuck did I do to deserve this?

I rejected her cleanly.

It wasn’t me who made fun of her publicly. What was I to do if my friends rummaged about in my desk and found her letter. Some friends… the assholes cut and run the moment they saw me writhing on the ground, screaming as the acid burnt through my face.

Gave her enough time for another splash.

If the gormless fuckers had a little more iron in their spines, I would have just been disfigured instead of disfigured and blind.

.

Hah haah haaah.

.

I’m hyperventilating again. Fifth time this week... A week without the light. I want to scream... I can’t. My body won’t let me. I feel dizzy, my consciousness is growing fuzzy. I’m going to faint again, aren’t I?

.

*whine*

.

A cold, wet snout touches my feverish face.

*whine*

I can feel the concern flowing off her.

*hum*

Another nudge and antsy whine.

.

I can feel my anxiety flowing out of me and my breath steadying. I grab Ria and burrow my face into the soft fur of her neck.

*rrmble*

She growls comfortingly as my wracking sobs shake her entire body.

.

I am reminded of how I don’t have tear ducts anymore. They say real men shed no tears. I must be one since I practically can’t.

Hahaha…

Damn it.

.

My sobs grow louder.

.

I was a military brat. I lived in the Army quarters along with my mother. I only saw my father several times a year. The rest of the time, it was just the two of us.

Until it wasn’t.

...........My mother thought me too young to understand.

She was wrong.

I knew she had caught the sickness which I had seen tear apart several families in the quarters already: Infidelity.

So, when my father came home for summer, I told him.

.

It didn’t stop our family from crumbling like dry earth that hadn’t been moistened by the rain of affection for a long time.

My father humiliated my mother in court.

Utterly.

To retaliate, she asked for full custody of me.

When asked, I chose my father. After all, he was supposed to be a Hero who fought for our safety while my mother was the one who had betrayed him. Right?

.....My father chose to give me up.

I was shocked.......

Was this the man who played catch with me every summer? Was he the one who had taken me to the pool to learn how to swim? Hadn’t he promised to help me learn how to ride a bike next summer? Then why did he abandon me?

Why?

.

“Son, I’m sorry but I’m at an important stage in my career… I have to be present full time if I want your custody… I’d have to retire. Your mother loves you, son. Go with her… you’ll be happy.” His baritone sounded unfamiliar over the phone. His words seemed stranger still. He chose his career over me. Worse, he lied to me about me being happy with my mother...

I wasn’t.

She knew I was the whistle-blower. She knew I was the reason she couldn’t hold her head up in society anymore. She made sure I knew too.

My back was always crisscrossed in red with her reminders.

.

Her lover abandoned her as soon as the court came into the equation. Turned out, he was married too. Even had kids.

.

She had us move to another state to escape the judgemental eyes. The meagre allowance she managed to wrangle from my father as child support went into alcohol to ‘soothe her weary soul’.

It was a horrible few years until our neighbours moved in and hired security.

It was my first contact with dogs as they weren’t allowed in the military quarters. When I first saw the majestic German Shepherd patrolling the block, led by the uniformed guard, I felt a connection. When its eyes locked with my own, I could tell what it was feeling.

‘vigilance’ ‘curiosity’ ‘light hunger’

That day, I learnt that I was an empath.

At least, for creatures with simpler minds, like dogs.

.

I was seventeen by the time I made enough off of using my power to train dogs for legal emancipation from my mother.

It had been a hard fight to keep my job a secret from her and a harder one to keep her from drinking away all my earnings when she found out. The moment I had all the forms signed, I parted ways with her, shifting to a different city to start rebuilding my life.

Over the years, my training of dogs had enhanced my powers enough that I could get a fuzzy read of human emotions. A powerful weapon to have when your peers are hormone driven bundles of self-consciousness.

I was popular.

It seems, I was too popular with some.

.

*sigh*

Fuck!

.

I finally exhaust myself while crying against Ria. She is the Labrador I was training to be a Guide dog for an old man who had lost his sight to cataracts as part of my charity work. Its ironical that I am the one who ended up needing her.

Without her, alone in my rented apartment, I would have taken my life.

I’m sure of it.

Her simple emotions, a constant cycle of hunger, playfulness and an unconditional love for her pack leader, me, kept me grounded and alive. Well, it’s a moot point as the hospital wouldn’t have let me go so soon without her presence. Having a trained Guide Dog at home was a powerful argument for discharging me. They seemed to believe it would be helpful for my rehabilitation. Specially since the burns from the hydrochloric acid were mild enough that they didn’t pose a threat of infection.

Too bad, my eyes were too far gone.

.

I embrace Ria tighter, immersing myself in her sense of satisfaction at being useful, the giddy joy takes the edge off my depression.

.

My future is dark.

In more ways than one.