It was a few months after the car accident in '89 that I began to notice the tiny flashes which punctuated my vision. Although that was how I initially described them to doctors, truth be told that wasn't what they appeared to be at all. The flash was simply the reinstatement of an image once the brief darkness was dispelled. The underlying nature of the problem were the short, constant, lapses in my sight: the dark pools.
      Clarissa, my girlfriend at the time, used to massage my temples for me. As though she had read somewhere that this slight pressure could make the problem go away. After a few minutes of working her fingers in concentric circles she usually got bored and slipped out of her dress. Her figure was plumpish and undeniably attractive. She then expected me to reciprocate her attention by spending the next half hour kneading baby oil into her folds.
       Such distractions, although they were pleasant, never alleviated my problem. But back then it was never really much more than mild annoyance. My irritation even stemmed only from the fact that there never seemed to be any pattern to the sequence. I could never predict when it would come or go. To compare it with accounts of Chinese water torture I found myself simultaneously longing and yet dreading each blank black moment to arrive and pass.
       For a couple of years after the accident I felt that perhaps my brain was attempting to rationalise the crash so that I could deal with it, but my subconscious wouldn't allow it to go that far. In cinematic terms I always felt that I was about to experience a flashback, but it was instead a flash turned back. The dense spots fragmenting my vision in order to disseminate my world view.
       It was during one night's love making with Clarissa that she finally decided to leave. I had been concentrating on whether I had my visual problem when I had my eyes closed as opposed to concentrating on her.
       "I can't stand it anymore," she said, as I rolled off her selfishly satisfied. "I'm sorry Dave, but it's time that I moved on."
        I lay there in the darkness. My eyes open. The curtains were closed and there was nothing present to permeate the deepness of the night. I could see transitory patterned shapes before my face being casually obliterated as though I were being covered and then uncovered by a heavy blanket.
        I think I said "okay", but Clarissa had already slipped into sonorous sleep. I wondered how long she had remained awake whilst waiting for my reply.
        When alone I became much more introspective. The first thing I had wanted to do after the accident was to surround myself with people. As though by doing so I could convince myself that I was still alive. I had been so lucky to escape unharmed that the worrying problem with my eyes escalated rapidly into paranoia. As though any vestige of the accident undermined my initially fortunate self.
       Of course, what I feared more than anything was losing my sight. I'm not one for music, or good cooking, nor into perfumes or the touch of serge. Out of all of my senses it has to be sight that I value the most.
       "The problem does not appear to be with the eyes as such."
        My optician paused before turning on the lights. With a practised motion he swung the metal mask away from my face and he took off his own glasses before looking me in the eyes.
       "In fact, your vision appears fine. No deterioration compared with your pre-accident prescription. There could be any number of possibilities to explain the symptoms that you describe. It could be that your vision is being ambushed either to or from your brain. That is, there is either a problem obtaining the information or alternatively interpreting it."
        He blustered through a few other options but in retrospect he never touched on the real possibility. That I was quite simply seeing things as they really were.

I've often thought about my life both before and after the accident. Now I really need to place it in perspective if I am to make a valued judgment.
       At twenty-two years old I graduated from university with a 2:1 in Media Studies. I had already spent my acceptable, almost traditional, year out country‑hopping the world and so felt geared up for making my living. Through a series of contacts developed over the previous three years I found work as a trainee picture researcher for an agency based in Harrow. I kept it up for a couple of years before I took a job writing computer games.
        It wasn't as though that was my first love but it stemmed from my admiration for animation. There was no money to be made in that field, so my instincts took me towards the closest approximation.

"Dave? Dave? Are you there?"

        Annie is calling to me from inside the zoetrope. I take myself out of my armchair and go upstairs quietly, pausing below the trapdoor to the loft. Hearing nothing further I slowly descend the stairs again.

I hadn't been drinking, and anyway I wasn't driving. Paul hadn't been drinking either, and neither had the driver of the car that shot in front of us. At the time it all seemed to be happening as though it already was a memory. A sequence of events being replayed in slow motion as though this was an experience one should savour. I recall a flash of white headlamps then red tail‑lights, the road markings slewing off sharply to the right, the approaching darkness and then the solid image of the tree. The bark pressed up so close to me that it seemed impossibly focussed, as though some kind of hyper-real brass rubbing.
        I was cut out of the car by a crew of firemen who ensured that they spoke to me all the time. I was fully aware of what had happened and was totally without pain. Paul was not so lucky and I never saw how they removed him from the wreck. Sometimes I wonder whether they took their time and did it gently or much more roughly. As he was dead I wasn't sure whether it really mattered.
        From then on in the computers gave me blinding headaches. Clarissa was initially sympathetic, but like I said, she wasn't motivated to be a nurse. She loved attention only so long as it was directed at herself. Not that I blame her because we are all like that at heart.

            Today more than ever I've been wondering if she made a conscious decision to leave. Or is it rather that she was simply taken away from me?

 

I quit my job with a lot of savings and spent time on my own intending to recuperate. That time slowly spread into an increasing period of undirected unemployment. So what was there to do all day anyway? I returned to my youth and whiled away the hours with animation.

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