The day I got my vision back, I didn’t see stars—I saw my fiancé unzipping my nurse like a cheap suitcase behind a plastic curtain.
Poetic, if you’re into Greek tragedies and cheap lingerie.
***
My name is Leo Christofides. I’d lived in the darkness for two years, and I tell you, it’s not like walking in a black dream with your other senses swell and sharp—people who tell you that are full of crap. Darkness is just that, darkness—large, cold, and ugly like elderly catfish.
It wasn’t always like this. I used to dance for the Royal Ballet. But that was back when my legs weren’t just furniture in an expensive hospital. I wasn’t born blind. I’ve seen the blue of the sky and the cherry blossom in late spring. I remember a photo of Margot Fonteyn on my bedroom wall. It was black and white, blurry, and preciously old. It showed Margot dressed in a black leotard, with her right leg poised in the air like she was kicking fate right in the teeth. Her points looked worn and not that clean. Her face was full of disgust for life and the effects of extreme dieting. But I liked the hard sweetness of it, and her eyes were cheerful and dark, like a drop of good whiskey.
That portrait wasn’t just art—it was a challenge. My dad bought it at a swanky auction at Christie’s. It cost him a fortune, but he didn’t care. He slapped it on my wall like a personal dare. My dad—hard as a nail, built like a tank, and twice as thick-skinned. He wasn’t the guy who believed in half-measures. You did it right, or you didn’t do it at all. Deep down he was proud: his little Leonida had talent. She wasn’t just another soulless, well-stretched doll. He used to say I had a touch of magic only a few dancers had. That magic was all I had left when he died in the car accident. Mom never got over it. She couldn’t find her way out of the hole it left in her heart. She lives in a posh clinic now, sitting on a carved bench by the river, waiting for dad to pick her up. It’s been years. She’s still waiting.
When my dad died, his friend volunteered to look after us. He called himself our guardian. That was Ricky’s father—Rick the Slick, heir to a dodgy fortune. He was cute the way a baby gator is cute. But I didn’t mind the nasty side of Ricky. I liked his carefree life, his infectious laughter, and his hands on my waist like he thought he was holding something fragile.
Then there was that night. I remember it like it was yesterday. I was in my room, staring at Margot Fonteyn’s poised leg, wondering how long it would take me to get there. Then the phone rang. It was Ricky. His voice had that lazy drawl, like he was born bored and never quite shook it out.
“Done with the audition, pretty? Fancy a fast ride?”
“Check,” I said, not thinking twice.
“Yey! Come to my friend’s place. We’ll figure out the rest. 5314 Lakewood Walk. You know where that is?”
“Sure, Rick. You slumming it now?”
Ricky gave me a lazy chuckle. He sounded half-drunk. “I’ll send you a cab. Don’t keep me waiting.”
I didn’t like it. Not one bit. But Rick had a way of making you feel like saying no wasn’t an option. The cab dropped me at a modern, sleek villa with an artful sandstone staircase. The place looked cool and wonky, as if a drunken moose had given it a few good kicks. Rick opened the door—tall, blonde, with a sun-kissed face that made women’s pants drop. He yanked me inside and kissed me like he was claiming lost property.
“Change of plan,” he whispered in my ear, voice tight.
“Plans are for suckers,” I shrugged, trying not to sound weary. “What are we up to?”
Rick lit a cigarette, and I watched the flame flicker against his blue eyes. “We are doing business. Nothing to worry about.”
I laughed, low and sarcastic. “Sure.”
Ricky and doing something, especially business, were mutually exclusive concepts.
His grin was quick, like a knife flicking open. “You are coming with me. We hand over a bag of cash, get some stuff, and leave. No big deal.”
“Sounds swell.”
“It’s nothing, baby. Just keep quiet and don’t look anyone in the eye.”
We got in his car—a long-wheel black Merc that purred like a happy fat cat. I took the wheel because Rick looked jittery. I’d seen him like that once before—after his dad caught him with coke in his pocket.
We took a winding road that seemed to go nowhere fast. The air was wet and thick, and the mist made the headlights look like fireflies. We stopped near a wide-span warehouse made of steel containers. Rick looked pale, sweat pooling at his temples.
“Stay put,” he whispered. He slipped out into the dark, leaving me with the smell of his sweat and a nagging sense of doom.
Then I heard it—two gunshots, then metal grinding against metal. I didn’t think. I just ran. I found Ricky pinned under a steel container, blood spilling like cheap wine. I dragged him out, slipping on the wet ground. Didn’t notice the cliff until I fell, and when I hit the rocks, the world blacked out.
When I woke up, I couldn’t see a thing. I heard footsteps crunching closer and a voice rough but not unpleasant.
“You’re a tough one, Leo Christofides. Just like your old man,” the voice said.
It was Ricky’s dad. He pressed a kiss to my forehead, voice shaking but strong.
“You saved my son. He’ll marry you, Leo. You have my word. But first, we’ll fix you like new. You will be fine, I promise.”
I didn’t answer. My face felt like a crushed vase, and everything around me was black as coal. In the distance, I heard a helicopter. It sounded like salvation, but not mine.
Nobody listened, and nobody moved. I made an effort. I decided against crying. Now they were telling me I had to listen what my mother had to say. That ruined office of hers had the acoustics of a confession booth, making it a perfect place for reciting family history and other felonies. The lonely bulb buzzed, heroic and underpaid. Outside, the old factory breathed in that slow, damp way old buildings do when they knowingly outlived their owners. Water ticked somewhere in the dark like a patient metronome at my ballet lesson. I felt the countdown flexing on the back of my neck — 03:26:19 — the kind of number that walks into a room and sits in your chair, wondering why you are not in a rush.Anastasia finished binding her wrist and set the journal on the desk like a judge puts down a gavel. Her face, under the swelling, had the calm of a woman who has burned bridges and kept the ashes in a Chinese ginger jar. Elky stood just beyond the circle of light, a shadow with pockets, eyes numb
The ruin around us breathed mildew and salty tears, but when I closed my eyes it smelled like bergamot and laundry starch. Memory is a lousy film noir; it keeps adding bay windows to rooms you only used once. I leaned against the well-lived desk. My mother just told me I was just a medical experiment with nice legs, and the desk’s wood grain turned into the kitchen table from another country, another decade. I remembered sun playing on glass. Lace curtains trying to teach the breeze how to behave. My mother was called Anastasia then. It wasn’t a codename yet, nor a cautionary tale. She was brewing Jasmine tea in our kitchen like it could fix all troubles in my little world.She used to cool the cup with two spoons of honey. “Sip, little dumpling,” she’d murmur, and my name in her mouth made me feel invincible. The tea was honey-sweet, with a bitterness that only arrived after the second spoon. I thought that was what love tasted like—warm up front, bitter sweet in the afterthought. Ye
That tiny office had once been important. You could tell by the way the rot refused to take it all in starting at the door. Still, grey mold curled along the edges of the plain green wallpaper in patterns that looked like failed maps. A steel filing cabinet leaned sideways, drawers open, as if it had been mugged and no one had called the cops. Glass crunched under our boots—the remnants of the unlucky windows that had lost their argument with bricks.My mother sat at her old desk like she owned the lease on suffering. Rope burns painted her wrists raw, but she worked at them with the calm precision of a woman cataloging museum new finds that were nothing to do with her own flesh. A strip of gauze from a Elky’s med kit lay on her lap. I made a few unsure steps, offering help. She shook her head, stopping me. She wound the gauze around her arm with neat turns, each tighter than the last. Her face was battered, the right eye swollen, but her gaze had the kind of focus that made you feel
The old factory rose out of the fog like it aspired to be a cathedral but settled for a morgue. It had nasty concrete ribs, vines for veins, and empty windows black as missing teeth. Sixty years of weather had gnawed at its bones, but the place still hummed with the kind of silence you only hear in graveyards. Nature had done her best to erase the past, but sins age slower than ivy.We parked short of the gate. Elky cut the lights and let the SUV die with the kind of finality that make you regret not writing a will. He slipped the pistol into his hand, checked the chamber with the same care other men check wedding rings, and nodded. That was his version of a love letter.I followed him, bandage tight under my coat, gun reassuringly cold in my palm. The fog licked the crumbled edges of the building, swallowing the colorful graffiti in pale tongues. Someone had painted a halo on the south wall, years ago, but rust had turned it into a noose.“Just be quiet,” Elky whispered. As if I was
The road looked like it had been built by a drunk mason who’d lost a bet with gravity. Fog slid across it in white sheets, not drifting, not floating—crawling like a house thief. The kind of fog that looked like it had a trade union and worked in shifts. Cypress trees leaned in close, their branches scratching at the SUV’s roof like creditors collecting their dues. The headlights dug two pale trenches into the murk, but the dark swallowed most of the effort anyway.Elky drove like a man who had already shaken hands with death and just wanted to beat it up to the next checkpoint. His hands on the wheel were steady and firm. He wasn’t reckless; just precise. If he’d been a surgeon, I wouldn’t have signed the consent form in no time.I sat next to him with my bandaged shoulder humming like a bad wiring. Every bump in the road sent a shock through my damaged body, a reminder that I wasn’t here by choice. I could’ve been anywhere else—on stage, in a dressing room, hell, even in a morgue. B
We went back to do the thinking. We couldn’t make a mistake, and we couldn’t spend too much time on not making it. Elky’s study was the kind of place that made timid people feel confident. And confidence we needed in abundance. Maps curled on the walls like they’d lost the nerve to lie flat. Phones squatted on the table like too suspicious witnesses. Old ledgers lay open where they’d been abandoned mid-murder. The hearth had gone cold, though cigar smoke still loitered above the mantel, a ghost too fond of company to leave.The young capos moved around it like men in a burning theater, eyes wide, tongues sharp, each pretending his hands weren’t shaking. They weren’t the kind of soldiers you polish for parades. They were the kind you keep because when the lights go out, they don’t forget where they left their knives.Elky stood at the center of the room, hands braced on the table, dripping rain onto a ledger dated 1982. The watch he’d stripped from Andros sat beside his knuckles, ticki