Flown
October 2016
He left his eyeglasses on his desk. Brian didn’t think his older brother would forget his glasses. He was nearly blind without them, he’d said. It’s like the whole world was a blur, like you’d look at one thing and it’s really something else. Like your eyes were lying to you about what was right in front of you.
That was what Brian was feeling, right then, finding his brother’s glasses left on his desk. Like the world was lying to him. As if he could look a few inches to the left at the bed he’ll find his brother lying down and staring at the ceiling, or strumming wantonly on his out-of-tune guitar. And that news, that whatever it was, that he’d heard earlier in the day, that was just one of his dreams playing tricks on his memories. Or maybe everyone was mistaken, that the name they mentioned was not his brother’s at all. Maybe it was someone else with the same name, and then his brother would just step out of the bathroom and be baffled by the long faces in the living room.
He checked the bathroom anyway, even though he knew it was ridiculous. There was nobody there. Of course. There was nobody on the bed either. There was nobody in the room but himself, and the things that his brother had left.
Brian took his brother’s glasses and went out to the living room, where his parents and his uncles and his cousins were watching the television, trying to snatch what meagre information they could find on the news. He sat with them just as the death toll was updated. Ninety-something missing. They didn’t mention their names again, but his parents must still remember every word of it, every syllable of his brother’s name in the tired, indifferent reporter’s mouth.
My writing club threw out a random challenge to write a story with the theme "Glasses". This is what I came up with.
Someone told me the last paragraph was a bit too much, but I'm reading it again and I think the story is made fuller with its inclusion.
- 2019