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Lying in her bed face-up, without making a single sound, with nearly no signs of life besides the slow rising and falling of her chest accompanying her every breath, Penny Crygor resembled more a freshly deceased corpse than a living human being.
It sort of made sense, she thought. Because even if she could clearly feel the calm beating of her heart against her sternum, it was as if she was dead, like her mind had already given up and faded away from a soon-to-be deceased body fighting a losing battle against the cold, firm grip of death.
She finally decided to grab her phone from the bedside table, feeling around the smooth wooden surface for a couple of seconds before finally getting ahold of the thin Apple device. It was an iPhone SE, although she couldn’t remember exactly which generation it was.
Pressing down on the home button for a couple of seconds, she waited for the sound of Siri activating.
And when it chimed, she asked: -“Siri, what time is it?”-
A second later, “It’s 6:45 A.M., April 14th 2022” went the feminine robotic voice from the phone.
Penny switched the device off and laid it down on her lap with a heavy, heavy sigh. Another day of suffering, she thought, as she dreaded the moment she would have had to actually get up and go to school.
In an effort to keep her mind occupied with something else she allowed her hands to run through the soft blanket gently laid on her body, taking breaths as deep as she could as her fingers carefully examined the fabric, taking note of every single fold they encountered.
That was her favorite blanket. It was so heavenly soft, and warm, and pink too. Yeah, ever since she was a child she had always adored the color pink in every single one of its aspects, from how delicate and feminine it was to the way it looked on her.
But unfortunately for her she was never again going to see her favorite color, or any other colors for that matter.
Because where most people would have seen a white ceiling, four cotton candy colored walls , a white desk and a hot pink office chair, all Penny could see was pure, deep darkness. Not even a single drop of color left in her vision, nor the ability to distinguish light from dark; her eyes were completely, irreversibly broken beyond repair.
But blindness itself wasn’t the reason she despised so much her current life, far from it. Had it been an illness, or an accident at the lab, or some other thing she would have tried her best to adapt to her new normal, never really losing her joyous, carefree attitude. But it hadn’t been just an illness or some accident that took away her sight.
Last spring break Grandpa had taken her and Mike with him in some poor, crime-filled zone somewhere in rural South America. The two were often alone by themselves as he went in the forests to study the flora and the fauna or stuff, although both had permission to go wherever they wanted and even buy something for themselves.
And so Penny went to check out some shops, to see if there was anything that could have sparked her interest. There were all sorts of shops: supermarkets, barbershops, gift shops…
…And some kind of run-down beauty parlor which offered various treatments, one of which was apparently named “eye melanin removal”.
Penny didn’t expect to see that one. She would often notice weird treatments advertised in the shop windows of various salons, but she had never seen something like that, and even though some popular girls at school had told her about beauty treatments she could have got she really couldn’t remember ever hearing about the procedure.
And you know how they say, “curiosity killed the cat”, and in the end she decided to go check out what the treatment consisted of. In hindsight, that had to be the worst mistake of her entire life.
When she walked in she noticed that the place was overall pretty unsanitary, with mold on every wall and roaches running along the floor tiles like it was nothing.
When she asked the woman at the reception what the advertised procedure was about, she simply smiled and told her -in very broken English- it was a very simple surgical operation that could make her eyes look a beautiful shade of blue, like a clear sky. She also added that the procedure was entirely painless, and gave little-to-no side effects even if incorrectly performed.
Now, Penny wasn’t stupid. She was a scientist, after all, and knew quite a lot of things about the human body, including how utterly fragile the eyes were. That, mixed with sight being her as well as the vast majority of people’s main way of exploring the world around themselves essentially meant that the tiniest of mistakes in an operation could cause a person life-long disabilities and a severely reduced quality of life.
But in the moment none of that mattered.
Penny’s biggest flaw had always been acting before thinking, not uncommonly with consequences she’d regret later. She would let her heart do the reasoning for her way more often than what was good for her, only using her head when the damage had already been done.
Furthermore, Penny had noticed how models, actresses and even singers like her all got praised for the same thing: their eyes. Ocean blue eyes, to be exact. No matter how skilled they were in what they did, how stunning the rest of their faces and bodies were, or even if they were at all a celebrity or just some random person who shared a photo on the internet.
Everyone just seemed to love and praise blue eyes, ignoring darker shades even when they were objectively prettier, always neglecting them in favor of the lighter colors.
And Penny wasn’t just a joyful, carefree girl; being a teenager meant she was also very much concerned about what others thought of her, and no matter how much she tried telling herself her chocolate eyes were just as gorgeous and worthy of compliments as any other color; every time she saw a comment like that on social media posts she would always lose some self-esteem. Just a droplet at a time, so that it was unnoticeable the first few times, only to then escalate slowly until she was finally low enough to seriously consider having the surgery done.
And she did.
The operation was apparently free of charge, which meant Penny didn’t lose anything, on the financial side at least.
The receptionist made her sit on a small chair with leather upholstery which had clearly seen better days, and then she instructed her to place her chin close to some sort of device, which in turn was put on a small wooden table. All in all the place was extremely unsanitary, especially for a surgery, but she didn’t immediately think of that, being too focused on how beautiful her eyes were about to become. She already pictured looking at herself in a mirror and seeing those pretty sky-blue orbs in the middle of her face, and then she thought about all the kind, poetic words her fans were going to say about her new eye color.
All too good to be true.
After a few seconds a middle aged man came in, and sat on the chair opposite to hers. He probably wasn’t an actual doctor, though. There was nothing about him giving the impression of one apart from his latex gloves and a thin, dirty medical gown that looked three or so sizes smaller than what he was supposed to be wearing.
-“Ready?”- he asked her, showing off his yellowed teeth in a nausea-inducing grin.
-“Ready.”- she answered, aware of the huge impact the operation was going to have on her life, but at the same time unaware of just how negative said impact would have been.
The whole thing hurt like hell, the little laser going into her eyes was so much worse than expected, but Penny somehow managed to keep her mouth shut during the entire thing. At that point she would have done anything if it meant feeling more loved, even if it meant suffering in the process.
When the thing was over she finally got up, thanked the “doctor” and went back to the hotel.
When she got back she made sure to show Mike how cute her eyes had become, but apparently he hadn’t noticed until she explicitly told him. And even when she did tell him, the bot simply shrugged and said that gray eyes didn’t really suit her.
Wait, gray eyes?
Yeah, turns out the whole “painless” thing wasn’t the only lie she had been told at the salon. Her eyes hadn’t become a beautiful shade of vibrant blue, just a dull, stone-like shade of gray. Oh well. People with gray eyes received almost as many eye-related comments as people whose eyes were blue, so maybe it wasn’t that bad.
It got worse though. When her grandfather finally got back at the hotel he was weirded out, almost shocked by Penny’s change in eye color. She vividly remembered how upset he was, both because he considered her eyes already pretty enough, and because apart from her red hair Penny’s chocolate-colored irises were all he had left of his deceased son, whose wife gave birth to Penny only a few years before their ultimately demise by car crash. In her opinion though he was overreacting, especially with the second thing. The world was filled to the brim with dark-eyed people, all she had to do was to marry someone with brown eyes, have a kid with them, and voilà, there it was yet another dark-eyed kid who could remind her grandpa of his deceased son.
And why grieve over brown eyes, anyway? Why would he be upset over the loss if said color was the single most common in the entire world? Why didn’t he just take a walk in the street, he would immediately spot someone with the same eye color as his son!
In the present time Penny’s now-blind eyes went moist recalling that. What an absolute dumbass she had been. Even before losing her sight she already was so, so fucking blind.
It took about a day before the surgery’s side effects started setting in. Penny recalled it perfectly: it was a beautiful morning, and inside of her room she had been woken up by the warm rays of the sun rising like any other day. But this time, the warmth of the sun over her closed eyelids wasn’t pleasurable, like all the other times. Now it was painful, and her eyes just wouldn’t stop burning until she finally got out of bed, away from the sunlight.
And yeah, she knew it was pretty normal as less melanin equaled to less protection against the sun, but even so it was just…too much. All it took was the smallest ray for her eyes to burn like hell, the pain unlike anything else her eyes had ever been subject to.
But after waking up, she found out something that was even worse than the sudden light sensitivity.
Penny’s vision was blurry. Really blurry. Not even putting her glasses on, which were of just the right prescription just a day before, could help in making the blur go away. It took a few moments for Penny to realize what this meant.
That day was spent mostly sobbing, as well as leaving the country early to go see a doctor, a real one this time, so that Penny’s eyes could be at least somewhat fixed.
But there was no cure.
Between the effects of the procedure itself and the extremely unsanitary place she had the operation done her eyes were so damaged there was very little the doctors could do; and in the end she went completely blind. Never to see again the light of the sun rising, just feeling its fire-like heat against her eyes, those very same eyes she had been an accomplice in ruining. Those very same eyes she was now a prisoner of, unable to care for herself alone or to continue her scientist career.
Everything was now over for her.
And it was all for the sake of something called “beauty”, which unbeknownst to her she had possessed from the very start.