Hellfire Eyes

About two weeks after Artemis Returns, I was pulled into The Iron Writer again. This time it was for the seasonal playoffs. Here is my piece. I don't have any feedback on it yet. The elements were: astigmatism, magma, a solid plutonium halberd, and a picture of the canals of Venice.

Hellfire Eyes

My eyes have always been a source of curiosity. Severe astigmatism plagued me from an early age, accompanied by blurry vision, frequent headaches, and lower grades. My parents would not allow modern medicine to intervene. Disease was caused by the devil, they said. Only prayer could save me. They cared about me, though, so they prayed all the time.

As a teenager, a secondary condition called phoenix crystal nucleation had taken hold. With it came the coloration seen in every science journal photograph of me - the crystalline striations of red, gold, and orange reminiscent of the legendary creature’s birth flames. Through my eyes I perceived rivers of hellfire everywhere. Where you see a street covered with gently falling rain, I see Hell’s rivers overflowing their banks, unleashing evil across the land. Where you see gondoliers on the canals of Venice, I see Charon ferrying down congealing lava flows from some unseen magma chamber below.

One year I accompanied my parents to Washington, D.C., where we visited the Smithsonian Institute for a conference of religious scholars. I still remember the Institute’s stylized yellow sun on a blue field, which could have represented God, science, art, technology, or even heraldry. An adjoining exhibit held a variety of medieval weapons recently unearthed, ironically enough, from the excavated foundation of the Center for Peace in Rouen, France. While my parents were distracted with their conference, I made my way in, careful to avoid the fountains and pools throughout. It was to no avail, though. My hellfire eyes always saw more.

At the display, the light from a bare fluorescent bulb cascaded downward over a particularly tall halberd, making it seem as though it was cast of solid plutonium. I was transfixed! I must have stared for fifteen minutes. It was while I stood there that I met acclaimed ocular surgeon Dr. Eklund. We spoke at length about science, technology, developing surgical procedures, and even theology. 

We stayed in touch. When later I became an adult he provided a comfortable place to live at his manor in Baltimore where he studied my condition and developed what we both hoped would be a cure.

On the fateful day, I was awakened early and brought by limousine to the George Washington University Hospital. A wheelchair carried me to the pre-op room where nurses transferred me to a hospital bed and prepared me for my procedure. My next stop was an impressive operating suite full of machines, monitors, and people. A gallery above was open and packed with onlookers. I envied them their ability to see from that vantage. The anesthesiologist at my side asked me to count backward from one hundred. I said a prayer to my newfound faith in science and slipped into unconsciousness.

When next I was aware of my surroundings, I could see with perfect clarity. The bright lights of the surgical suite brought out the tiniest details, from the sweat on Dr. Eklund’s brow to the frantic movement of the doctors and nurses, trying in vain to revive my body below.

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It was about five days after submitting this story that I saw Daredevil, and the way the special effects team chose to visualize (no pun intended) the way the main character sees things around him. It was quite similar to what I described here for how my character sees things that flow in some way.