Enid Wiles, an avid reader of powerfully imaginative literature, found herself lying one sunny afternoon on her grey sofa, tucked fleshly into the corner of the sitting room of her house.

In her hands, untouched by the harshness of manual labour, she held a book. The book was a novel, one of those powerfully imaginative ones she was accustomed to and almost solely restricted herself to reading, that she had started reading only recently, but was already almost finished. Above her and above the sofa was a wide, clear window, one recently cleaned by no one else other than herself and one she often utilised to admire her bountiful garden, prettily furnished by a polyplethora of exciting flowers of innumerable colours, arranged into a gradient that pleased not only the eye but also the heart, and evoked an envy from her neighbours as immeasurable as the beauty it contained. On this particular evening she wasn’t admiring the garden, but lay on the aforementioned sofa like a lazy ragdoll, unwilling to move for any purpose other than to flip the pages of her nearly finished book, and glance at the time that was passing all too quickly.

She got lost in time, her book captivating her so entrapingly as to not preserve any sense of temporal passing, and the sun shifted seemingly faster than was its custom across the light blue, cloudless sky. This sun remained outside the scope of her awareness of interest, being completely overshadowed by the pages in front of her, till in its calm, steadfast trajectory, it shifted far enough through the sky to move into the sliver of window Edith could see from her place on the sofa. Peeking from above her book, a ray of potent sunshine stung her in the eye like a needle, and no matter how captivating the reading, she could not distract herself from the stunning sun.

She wormed around a bit on her sofa, still holding the book in her hands, but independent of her efforts, every point on the sofa was covered by the sun, and she could not without straining herself find a relieve from its incessant blinding force. She tried repositioning, but that was of little help: the sun cast its rays simply everywhere. What was meant to be a pleasant openness to the shiny outside world, an access to a glistening liveliness irreplaceable by the artificial produce of modern factories, turned out an insurmountable obstacle in her enjoyment of the final few pages of her book, and her irritation was waxing to an outright vexation.

She briefly thought herself carried away, and calming herself down, tried again to return to her book. But it was no use. The sun was blinding. No sunglasses could help it, and no cover was sufficient to allow herself an escape from the pestering rays. She decided to wait for it to pass far enough in the sky to leave the frame of discomfort, and she put down her book despite only ten pages of it remaining, sparing them from the enjoyment they deserved.

An hour passed, then two. By the end of the third, a wave of confusion struck Enid’s mind. Was it really the case? Had the sun not moved at all? In three hours of waiting had it maintained a fixed position, disobeying all sense, both common and scientific, that has been known through and confirmed by hundreds upon thousands of years of human existence?

No, it was impossible surely. Her watch was broken, surely, or really her phone, which she used in place of the watch she didn’t have. But no matter the apparatus, she had certainly felt the passing of time. She was reading her book, where time almost felt like it stood still, and then she was distracted briefly, and time actually stood still. A shiver travelled down her spine. Surely not? Had she, in her incessant reading, become so accustomed to the feeling of time staying still, that when she finally put the book down, she didn’t know how to feel it passing again?

The thought was so powerful, so imaginative, it was as if from one the books she had so likened to reading, and with a self-reflective glance she dismissed it immediately, thinking herself on the verge of madness if she started believing such thoughts. She stood an instant with closed eyes, that spanned longer than a minute, and wished for it all to pass.

And when she opened then again, her wish was granted. It was dark, the middle of the night, and she could hardly see a thing. In fact, she could see nothing at all, but the affirmation of her sanity was more than enough recompense for the darkness that prohibited her reading. Time was in fact passing, and her momentary lapse of judgement was just that, a lapse. She was sane after all.

Sane, and blind. The sun had taken her vision entirely, and the night she opened her eyes to never passed.

21.VIII.2021