Aiden
Legacy Name: Aiden

Aiden Riviere's father was a wealthy wine-maker of Bordeaux, France. His mother was of Irish descent, but a French noble-woman all the same, whose love for her children was rivaled only by that of opera. The four vineyards and wineries that Monsier Riviere owned, dusty with their creeping tendrils and plump, blue-violet grapes, helped supply the funds that decorated every gleaming corner of the ivory manor.

Aiden had two elder brothers. They were strong and wiry as their father thought boys should be, with aquiline noses and long limbs. Aiden, more delicate in frame than that of his siblings, was like a spun-glass orb lying at the feet of two magnificently carved marble statues.

While Phillipe and James spent most of their time fencing and perfecting their parkour in the concrete foundations of the city, Aiden usually retired outdoors in the neat vineyard rows with a book in hand, listening to the leaves murmur softly in the summer breeze. And while his brothers merely scraped by in their lessons, Aiden spent hours immersing himself in the rich history of other worlds, lost in the sand-stripped stone of Babylon and the smooth marble of Alexandria.

Aiden delighted in the small and finite. He was one to pause and marvel at a tiny snail on a dew-covered tendril, or sit for hours in the loamy soil of the vineyards. As a boy, he loved to crane his small head skywards, up and up and up, losing himself in the vast, blue heavens. And in those moments, he would often realize, with a sudden breathlessness, how small he was -- a tiny pinprick against a rich expanse of white.

Of the three, Aiden alone was closest to his mother. She delighted in examining the perfect sphere of the grapes with him, and showed him the smallest and most quaint of the attic eaves to call his own. Her mahogany-green eyes were soft when she ran her hands over his short hair, and when she kissed him gently on the crown, he felt as if there was no other place he could, or would, want to be.

But his mother's love and kindness could not protect him from everything.

At the age of ten, Aiden's piercing gaze began to dim. An opaque, milky-white haze, like the pearly white shimmer of steam rising from water, began to seed in his eyes. Like lacquer on the surface of wood, the mist shielded his acute sight to everything that had once engraved and etched itself in his vision. For the next few years he caught brief glimpses of the world he lived in, but the images were always hazy and fleeting.

His father paid a considerable sum of money to the healer — for his services, no doubt, but mostly to keep the man quiet. His mother had insisted, for she did not want her child taken away and thrown into an asylum.

They were known as prison institutes for the blind. They were also the final destinations of many who had lost their sight. Aiden would've undoubtedly been tortured by unconventional sound therapies there, his ears gouged by the screeches and clangs of sharp instruments to cure him of his disability. And so within the confines of the mansion he stayed, slowly withering away: his home now turned into a prison, where his skin felt no daylight for many years.

The healer tried his best during this time. But while the man's methods slowed the overtaking fog, they could not halt it.

By the age of twelve, Aiden could no longer differentiate light from dark. At thirteen, the world faded completely as he plunged into an unwelcomed chasm of blackness, where the only warmth rested with the phantoms in his own mind. And there, imprisoned in a world of no light, the boy who once reveled in the quaintness of the vineyards, the vastness of the sky, and the beauty of the earth, crumbled and was no more.

I am blind.

I am blind in the sense that I cannot see what you see, but not so blind that I am naive. While the tableau in my mind is white and unstained, these concealing barriers burst forth with kaleidoscopic visions and brilliant colors.

It is often said, as is the convention of our times, that art is a gift for the eyes.

I disagree.

It is not an eye for colors on a palette, but the imagination, that makes their birth viable -- and it is the imagination that I use as my paintbrush. My hands depict the vistas, my lips the emotion, and my soul the life; my veins thrum and empty with their soft murmurs and sharp words. And as I breathe, they breathe; and as I sing, they sing, a lingering melody as soft and sweet as a songbird's. They are the essences of my being, and the glue that bind my world in resolution.

I am a modern Monet, a reincarnated Renoir. I take the world in which you live, and paint it how I see it.

To you, a pond I create may be unrecognizable as anything but an abstract splash of shadow and light... but to me, it is the breath of the water, cut from diamond and glass; it is the delicate curl of the tendrils of water lilies, and the hushed hum and cacophonous sounds of the shore. As a baker kneads the dough of his bread, his hands covered in the residue of sweet-smelling dust, I am the maker of my own sustenance.

I learn from the preacher here, in the Chateau d'If of my psyche -- his lauds are forever branching the infinite space between his world and mine. But there will be no escape for me here; I cannot find the door which shall pour in the light. This is my eternal prison.

As I walk along your streets, I know I am an outcast — foreign and strange — for my darkness creates a black blur in your expanse of light. But if I could see, would I crawl out of my cave tentatively, like a newborn is pulled from the womb? Would I leave my self-created world, so full of beauty and purity, to enter yours, resplendent in hate and ugliness? Would my ideas of utopia meet with your reality of cruelty and war?

Or perhaps it is best to remain locked up in my prison, looking longingly through the small window at the world which I want but can never have.

He held the stiff polaroid in his hands, delicately cradling it in his fingertips. It was worn and dog-eared at the edges — suggesting that perhaps the owner found more value in carrying it around than placing it in an ornate silver frame to grow dusty and forgotten.

But he had forgotten.

He could not remember the image. And he could not remember her face.

Her headstone had been carved and prayers murmured a few years after he'd been diagnosed with glaucoma.

She died of grief. His father never told him outright... but he knew -- knew that, even though he'd never seen her as she gazed distraughtly into his unseeing eyes, that it was his blindness that killed her.

He tried to recall his brothers and his father, but no images of recollection swam before him. They were gone. Lost.

He'd seen the world once, yes, but that was many years ago — it seemed from another lifetime, from another past. The memories always eluded him like the last remnants of a dream that disappear upon waking. Any images that did resurface were strangely distorted.

There was only one memory he could recall with a small amount of clarity. The edges of it were still fuzzy and hazy... but he remembered.

The first time he painted.

The grasp of the wooden shaft of the brush had been round and smooth. He remembered gripping it firmly, feeling the stiff, but soft, bristles against his skin. It was like an extension of his body. His young fingers, wet with splashes of cool, thick tempera, traced fine lines on the canvas as if they had a mind and soul of their own. He could not remember the colors... they had faded against the backdrop of darkness in his mind. But he remembered their names: pale blue, bleached green, deep ochre.

He decided to move on six years after the passing of his mother. He did not know why, but his conscience was filthy. His father was sullen and withdrawn, and his brothers were starting their own journeys.

Aiden packed what little items that were of value to him: a photograph of himself, his father, his mother, and two brothers; the pocketwatch his father had given him for his sixth birthday; and an ornate, silver locket that once belonged to his mother. And then he made the journey to the land that claimed new beginnings and a life of promise and wonder: America.

America was not the right choice for a man like him. Rising out of steel and molten iron, the boom and bustle of the Industrial Revolution enveloped the country like black tar. The rich rode on the hunched backs of those less fortunate, manipulating and monopolizing their shares of wealth at the expense of those drowning in poverty.

It had been a man. That much he knew.

The memory would forever be etched into his senses like the patched weave engraved on the lid of his mother's casket.

He took deep lungfuls of warm, thick air, heavy with smoke and ash and soot. It poured into his lungs like oil.

The sounds of thunderous clanking, the workings of machinery in the automobiles that chugged in the streets, rang in his ears, and he heard the hum of electrical wires and the hiss of steam.

He heard the grateful exclamations of a beggar — of a homeless boy thanking a man who had graciously dropped a fistful of large bills in the vagrant's worn, dirt-stained paper cup.

Aiden heard many things. Subtle creaks, soft murmurs, hushed tones in voices.

A slender rod of dark mahogany, topped with a cool metal orb that fit comfortably in his palm, was clasped in his right hand. The thing was battered and chipped along its length, bearing signs of wear and old age, for it had been his grandfather's. (He remembered following his father up into the attic for it, remembered the feeling of cobwebs brushing against his hands and the dust softly tickling his face as it rose in plumes under his padding feet.)

He had loathed the thing at first, for although he was a man without vision, his pride was intact and still stirred within him at the worst of times. Aiden had come to realize, though, that he required assistance if he were to leave the confines of his apartment. He did not do this often and the cane was rarely used in public, but he had slowly learned to accept it as an extension of his senses. And like an elongated and spindly limb, it was, in a way.

Aiden made his way back to his apartment through the spiderwork of cobbled alleyways. The towering buildings made the pathways narrower than they seemed, and the sky was a sliver of yellow between the brick and mortar that leaned in heavily on either side. But he usually preferred this route to the one that snaked alongside the roads. Here, in the backways of the city, he could at least have some privacy.

On this particular day, however, he did not receive the quiet peace that he so eagerly sought: there were people lurking in the alley, their voices echoing loudly against the brick. He recognized one voice; it belonged to the young beggar from earlier. And although he could not see, Aiden knew something was very, very wrong.

xThe voice was distorted with a horrible gurgling sound, like thick tar and black, black blood. He heard wet, sickening thuds, and the deep crunch of bones bruising and shattering.

The sound was fueled by angry and unrelenting pressure, a horrible heat that burned Aiden's chest and settled heavy and hot against his diaphragm, even though it was not him who was lying on the cobblestone, bloody and mangled and broken.

If he had not been ailed with his disease, he would have seen a man, bent over the haggard figure of a homeless boy. He would have seen a boot slamming down, over and over, onto the boy's head, would have seen the boy drop the cup he was clutching and raise his hands, desperately protecting his face, would have seen the blood flow from the boy's mouth and stain his teeth and the cobblestones black.

But Aiden did not see this. He saw the darkness that he had always seen — only this time, it was accompanied by cries and the sounds of bursting skin and crushed bone.

The boy screamed in agony — for a mother, for mercy, and for death, heavy words falling from his wet, black lips like pulled teeth (I've already given you my money, please, please). His agony was Aiden's agony; it was everywhere and nowhere, it slid into his veins like ice and into his lungs like hot fire, and the blood churned in his veins, his own heart pumped hard and frantic in his chest, yet he knew nothing but the darkness around him and the searing, icy terror that pounded in his head, pulsating with each hoarse scream —

He fled.

That night he retched, breath labored and frantic, unable to stop the tremors from wracking his body, unable to stop the cries that still echoed in his ears.

When you can hear, but you cannot see, things come to haunt you in your dreams.

Dark, twisted shapes.

The smell of rot.

Dislocated limbs. Sharp little fingers and black, black nails.

They come, in a thousand different scenarios, twisted and gruesome.

They are behind you, whispering in your ear softly, lovingly, as the hairs on your nape prickle and your eyes widen.

You feel them breathe against your neck. You look over your shoulder, unsettled, and see nothing, yet the whispers laugh and laugh as your brittle veins empty in their branches.

They are images provided by your own disturbed psyche. You cannot escape.

He did not remember what happened afterwards, but Aiden knew that the homeless boy had been attacked for the money he had been given earlier that day.

Aiden knew that the boy had been murdered by a man fueled by greed and malice and gluttony.

Aiden heard many things. Subtle creaks, soft murmurs, hushed tones in voices that he would have missed before.

Now he heard something else — something that he had never before heard so clearly. It was faint — a small echo — and it was something he would have missed had it been spoken before he went to buy some canned meat and bread.

It was greed. And he heard it everywhere.

The greed clouded his nostrils and clogged his lungs like the thick, black fumes that spewed from the smokestacks dotting the horizon. He heard it in the voices of others, casual inflections and in little intonations. And most of all, it haunted his sightless dreams as they morphed into nightmares that played the same track over and over: hoarse screams that, long after they stopped in his subconscious, haunted his waking hours.

He found himself increasingly repulsed by the world he lived in. He loathed the covetous hunger that laughed in his ears when he strayed from his dwelling, so he stayed inside. But it was mostly fear and paranoia that kept the door of his apartment bolted shut for months at a time. He did not want to venture outside and experience that black terror again.

Enclosed in the walls of his apartment, hidden away by his own fear and hatred for avarice, cynicism began to take root in his brain. It sprouted and coiled in his skull like the weeds that forced their way through the concrete pavements.

He began to retreat further into his own prison. He embraced the darkness like a brother, and found solace in the disease that had robbed him of vision and his mother of life. And there, he painted like he had done long ago, something once outlined on a canvas now in his own mind — his own world, one that was not full of ugliness and unsightly horrors.

His ailment became his escape. And he was glad.