The None-Seeing Eye

io9 has a regular feature they call Concept Art Writing Prompts. They post a piece of art and invite readers to submit stories based upon the illustration. I've started writing short—often aiming for very, very short—stories as a warm-up to my real writing. 

This one was based on what seems to be an uncredited vintage photograph.  

The None-Seeing Eye

They never understood. Her entire life, she had been poked and prodded, mocked and manipulated, and had hated every second of it. All she had ever wanted, she insisted, time and again, was to be left alone, in a dark room, to waste away and die and finally achieve some sort of peace, or at least, an end to the constant misery. 

And yet somehow that very same girl, that famous medical mystery—or one-woman-freakshow, depending upon who was describing her—was now performing thrice daily, and with an extra matinee on Sundays. She never missed a performance and never took a day off. How could this possibly be the same person? What could be worth putting herself through that torment? 

What they didn't get was that once she stepped out there onto the stage, the rest of the world simply vanished. The glare of the lights, the cruel footlights and the harsh, unforgiving spotlight, blinded her to everything but herself. For once in her life, her impossibly-acute vision, the bane of her waking existence, was stripped away and she could see exactly nothing but glorious, dazzling whiteness erasing all else. She could move, she could glide, she could dance, and for those brief moments, she was beautiful. She was perfect. She was an angel.