'I saw what you did.'

'I saw what you did.' His unseeing eyes roll back, perhaps in pleasure. No one hears him.

'I saw what you did.'

Jack's never seen a girl like that before—of course, he's never seen any girl. Her name's—Melissa? Meg?—he's straining to hear, but they have to go, and he can still smell her, hear her, picture the girl was sitting across him. She’s captured all his unseeing senses; Jack almost feels he knows for certain what she looks like. She’s opening a candy packet. The plastic rustling, the tang of the sugar overwhelming her natural, softer scent - magnolias, he thinks. I could call her Magnolia and it wouldn't seem out of place.

Jack, blind by a different agency—ah, Eros, dangling hope where there is none!—makes his way to the classroom. He fails to hide his grin behind his sunglasses. It does not matter. He is the teachers’ favourite, and if a little blind boy is smiling to himself, what of it?

Jack is a sweet, shy boy, full of good intent. He’d waited in the cafeteria so patiently. Jack, having followed her voice, her sweet scent, creeps soft up the plumbing. The pipes echo with his clambering. Cold air tells him it’s already night. This is a large house, but he can smell her. He can almost hear his lady winding down, ready to fall prey to slumber. Ready to fall prey to him.

He follows the magnolias.

In the morning, the hallways are abuzz with news of the missing girl. He catches a half-whiff of her scent, and halts so abruptly the guy behind him curses—but no, it is just her nightdress in his backpack. Jacky-boy smiles, a slow shy smile to himself.

I saw what you did, and I liked it.




Word Count: 300