CLOSER TO HEAVEN

green

No. No. No. He didn't follow me, right?

"What are you doing in my house?", I clenched my teeth harshly. My father would skin him alive if he had followed me here. The man huffed a little. My mind was running over a gazillion thoughts and haphazardly, he was still a blur of fear and nervousness to me.

"Your father's a client of mine," there was an edge of humour to his tone. Distate filled my immediately as I stepped back in haste. "I assume you can imagine what I'm doing here then."

"You want my father to do some filthy work for you?", I asked in a hushed whisper, my fingers grasping tightly onto the wooden shelf against the opposite wall.

"It'll only be fair for your father to tell you everything by himself," he smirked a little and I started to familiarize with his voice more. From our proximity now, I could smell his perfume. Though i could barely recognize it, his scent was too spicy for me. It went straight to my head, dizzying me for a second. I blinked hard and straightened my spine in anger.

"Did you come to the shop on purpose? Did you know I was his daughter?", I asked, making sure not to be so loud that my father could hear me. "If you hurt me-"

"I'm going to hurt your father," he said simply and my breath hitched in my throat. The man shuffled closer till i could feel his breath on my nape, shivers arising on the skin. This had to be a joke, my father wasn't weak enough to be hurt like that. "You heard it right Miss Barlowe, I am going to hurt your father and nobody can stop me from doing so."

Nobody wants to.

What could a man like him possibly hurt a high end criminal for? My father wasn't reasonable with his crimes or his victims. He was brutal, sick and ruthless like he had been waiting to take his anger out on someone. Where this anger came from, was beyond my understanding.

My father was his client? This man was going to hurt his client?

"Is this," I gulped. "Some sort of joke that you're playing on me?"

"I'm not sure why you think I'd play a joke on somebody who's basically a stranger to me," he laughed a little and shamefully admitting, I had the audacity to like the sound. "Hm? You like my laughter?"

My blood ran cold at his words. I hadn't said anything out loud. How did he know?

"I'm sorry for what I said back in the shop," he admitted, even closer to me now. My limbs felt immobilized by this man who's name i didn't know. I felt stuck in a trance and I hadn't even seen him but then again, to be fair, i hadn't seen anything in my life. "I can change that."

"Huh?", I asked, barely speaking. "C-Change what?"

"I can make you see things," the man whispered, his face so close to mine, I felt his slight stubble rub against my cheek tenderly. "I can give you the power of sight."

I closed my eyes and swallowed hard. He can not. Nobody can do it. There are no matching donors for me, I had looked every where possible and had stopped looking years ago. "Nobody can give me the power of sight. This isn't a medical deformity," I laughed a little. "It's a curse. I was cursed with blindness at birth."

"There's nothing I can't do," he told me, voice trembling with a sort of anger that left my baffled. Who was this man? "Do you hear me, Cecilia? There's nothing Abnus can't do."

Abnus. Abnus. Abnus.

I repeated the name under my breath and then something happened. It was like a firework exploding wherever he touched me. Abnus held my quivering jaw in place and placed a soft kiss on my cheek. I whimpered, fear consuming me in anticipation of what this man was about to do to me. "Please, you'll regret this if my father finds out."

"If there's anything I'll regret it would be not taking you with me when I leave this house," I felt him smile against my skin and shivers crept up the expanse of my skin. "Open your eyes."

I did as told and immediately, a burning sensation occured in my pupils. I blinked fast and hard and then I repeated the motion. "I...I can see your eyes," I half gasped and instantly I could feel a migraine shoot up to the back of my head. He had green eyes.

Distinct, bright shining, gleaming green eyes. It was a colour like none I had seen before. I had a perception of colour, maybe better than I was expected to but my illness was so different from what I had heard about blindness. I could dream, I could visualize with my eyes closed but none of the things in real life could be percieved by me. I knew colours, I knew green, I just didn't know it could be so vivid and so drastically beautiful. Green and specks of gold in it, his pupils looked at me with a hunger that I hadn't understood back then but maybe I knew now. Abnus carefully placed a hand on my eyes and closed them back again. Taking what away he gave me.

"This was my payback for being insensitive towards you," he told me. "If you wish to experience this again, there's a price you must pay Cecilia. A deal with the devil must be made." I had heard his words but I hadn't registered them. How on earth had he done that?

Before I met him, green used to be just a colour I had known of. I used to associate it with trees, nature, places even as others described them to me time and again but then you happened. Now everytime I look at it, all I can think about is you.

You. You. You. Abnus, Abnus, Abnus, the object of my destruction, my heaven in hell.