Thicker Glasses

Note: First fiction post, yay! This is a short piece written in an attempt to practice a closely limited third-person point of view, as well as stream-of-consciousness. I don't think the stream-of-consciousness worked well at all, but the point of view was definitely a fun experiment for me.
Although the characters aren't named, I'll tell you; the "he" is an eleven-year-old Sylvyrr, and the "she" is his temporary caretaker at the time, Melley.

For those who don't know, Sylvyrr is my main squeeze. I write about him... a lot. A whole lot. Get used to him. Remember that name. <3



'Thicker Glasses'


He follows his mother’s best friend to the doctor, dragged along for one of many appointments; head down and eyes squinted, he tries to forget following her away from his mother’s grave the same way three months before. He kicks the back of her ankle accidentally and does not apologize. He knows she will ignore it, because he knows ignoring him is the best method she has for dealing with him.

“Better hurry. We’ll be late.” He feels her hand at his back and wonders if she really cares or not. She probably wants to go back home, wax the floor, bake a strudel and pretend life isn’t getting worse every day. She’s always like that now, like enough sweets can stop him crying at night or get rid of his thick useless glasses or give her more money or bring back his mother. His mother had been perfect. This woman, her friend, can never compare to that.

He stumbles over something and hates whatever it is, and hates her hand tightening on his shoulder. He holds his own hands to his face and peers at them. They are fuzzy brown blobs of flesh to him, and blend so seamlessly with the dull backdrop of the illegible world beyond them that he’s not even sure they are his hands at all anymore. He’s done this often in the past three months. Things keep getting duller--

“We’re here,” she says with a soft voice, softer than usual. She better not have been watching him staring at his hands. He blushes to think she has. He nods once and sits in the waiting room chair she points out to him, not because he wants to, but because he has no better option than waiting for more nurses to shine more lights and put more drops in his eyes. And the doctor always says the same thing--“thicker glasses.” He knows that’s going to stop working someday.

Once, the doctor said “surgery,” and he remembers seeing blurry needles and then nothing for a while; when he opened his eyes again afterward, nothing was different. His mother’s friend had yelled at the doctor then. Now she is talking quietly to the nurse with the deep voice who usually does the preliminary work before the doctor comes in to say “thicker glasses.”

“He’s a little stubborn, you know,” mother’s friend says. “He’s not got the best attitude.”

Deep voice tries to whisper but isn’t capable of it. “I don’t blame him. Poor kid.”

He doesn’t like being “poor kid,” but has been anyway, ever since he got sick, since before he got his mother sick too. Before she died and his vision started dying. They want him to use a cane now, says deep voice. He doesn’t want to, because they want him to. Still, he wants to stop being “poor kid.” He doesn’t answer her. He really doesn’t ever know what to say anymore. He doesn’t want to have to think about the doctor who is coming in the room pretending to be happy. He doesn’t want to have to sit there feeling like everyone is staring at him and he can’t stare back. He wants to be left alone, but he wants to be loved deeply and fully again, like he was a few months ago.

Since he doesn’t know what he wants or how to want it, he simply sits and listens. “Thicker glasses,” says the doctor. “Once more.”