Photographs lacking context offer numerous possible stories, and few photographs are more mysterious than those without a known author or time period. In every print issue of Don’t Take Pictures, a writer is presented with a found vintage photograph to use as inspiration for a micro-fiction story. In doing so, the photograph is given new meaning, and the truth of the image is subject to interpretation. To coincide with our our current issue’s theme (The Fiction Issue), we are looking back at some previously published stories.
Photo courtesy of John Foster/Accidental Mysteries
He didn’t like talking about his eyes, but he must have said something to somebody because everybody knew. That he was going blind was understood, though how soon was a source of disagreement. By thirty, most felt, which seemed a long way away at seventeen, though not so far to diminish the tragedy. It’s like a white ball in the middle of your vision, one friend reported confidently, and each year the ball gets bigger. One day he would see nothing but white, like closing your eyes, except white instead of black. Nobody could accept this. To be born blind was one thing, but to lose your sight day by day, year after year, seemed unbearably cruel. If he didn’t laugh at a joke, people assumed he’d missed a nonverbal cue. If he came to class irritable or unhappy, people assumed the ball had grown wider. Both students and teachers gave him the benefit of the doubt and liked him better for this, recognizing their generosity. Boys respected but did not envy him, thinking of the things they would see at thirty and forty and fifty, but almost every girl loved him for a while. They asked him to talk about it, and when he refused—he always refused—they delivered pitiful looks, wondering how much he could see. How big is the white ball, these girls asked, not meaning to be unkind. What’s missing? And they wore their favorite tops, their mothers’ brightest bracelets and rings, for if you succeeded at catching his eye, he looked at you the way none of the other boys did, like he was trying to remember you, like you might be the last thing he carried into the void.
Kevin Clouther is the author of We Were Flying to Chicago: Stories. His stories have appeared in The Gettysburg Review, The Greensboro Review, Gulf Coast, The New Orleans Review, and Puerto Del Sol among other journals. He holds degrees from the University of Virginia and Iowa Writers’ Workshop and is the recipient of the Richard Yates Fiction Award and Gell Residency Award.
This story first appeared in Issue #10, Spring 2018