Super Vision by Marguerite Alcazaren de Leon

Super Vision
by Marguerite Alcazaren de Leon

Eric took his glasses off. The eyewear store switched to static, a layer
of thick, transparent tinsel sheathed over everything he could see. It was all
still there—the sliding glass panels on the walls, the four glass counters set
in a rectangle, the crowded rows of eyewear, the saleslady in green with one
hand extended—but not as convincing and accessible as before. Eric gave
his glasses to the saleslady, hoping that he had placed them in her open
palm with realistic accuracy. The saleslady showed no signs that he had not,
although Eric knew, as he stared at the woman-like shape before him, that
he would never really be able to tell.
He was getting his glasses fixed, and he did not bring a back-up pair
for the wait. This was on purpose. He had his first pair when he was six and
had not gone a day without glasses for the next twenty-two years, never
putting them away until he slept. He would slip them off when he washed his
face or wiped dust and smudges off of their lens, but that would be it. He
even wore them in the shower (back turned from the showerhead), in the
swimming pool or the sea (head above water), during sex (neck strained
upwards).
His wife had left him the previous night. She had left him as he slept,
placing signs of her permanent exit everywhere in the house. The alarm
clock outside the window farthest from their bed, set on the edge of the
ledge. A squeeze-bottle of Joy dishwashing liquid in lieu of bath soap. Ice
cube trays in the crisper, eggs in the freezer, longganisa links jammed into
the butter compartment. An open umbrella hanging from one ceiling fan
blade. Books slipped into shelves, spine-first. Coffee-soaked briefs and socks
sprinkled out on the hallway floor. Their son’s clean, blank bed. The large,
jagged hole in their front door. Displacement, disorder. His wife knew him
well.
As the saleslady’s shape slipped into the backroom, Eric sat on what he
was eighty-five percent certain was a chair. He looked around. Eyewear
stores were always such tiny spaces. Customers moved around in areas the
mere width of two people, trapped in a partitioned glass box made even
more harrowing by the countless frames on display. Regular glasses, reading
glasses, sunglasses. Plastic, thick plastic, thicker plastic, wire. Oval, semi-
oval, rectangular, round. Horn-rimmed, cat’s eye, rimless, half-rimless. Clear,
tinted, opaque, mirrorshaded. With or without UV protection. They all looked
the same to the half-blind Eric. They seemed like dead insects, thin legs
folded or outstretched, bunched together in some cramped, poorly-curated
wing of a natural history museum. Eric thought that if he took his glasses off
for a while, he would see everything as one calm blur, free of the details of
disarray that irked him. His wife had always begged him to loosen up.
Literally begged him, knees scuffing the floor, hands seizing the hem of his
shirt. That morning finally pushed him to take up this suggestion, to try

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getting used to ignoring what usually ticked him off. However, the way the
store still made his skin crawl proved he had a ways to go.
An inch in front of him was a round mirror, his reflection the clearest
thing he could see. He was not an ugly man. He had strong, dark brown eyes,
a perfectly-sized nose, soft lips, a square, smooth jaw. A fail-safe face
altogether. He doubted that a woman would reject him based solely on his
appearance. Then again, he could not say for sure since he had never
pursued anyone himself.
As he tilted his head to inspect his sideburns, he noticed another figure
occupying a fraction of the mirror’s surface. The curves ascertained it to be a
female figure, but it was not the saleslady, for this one was completely in
black and had a slighter frame. He assumed her to be moderately attractive
at the very least. The black she had on was most likely a dress, cut several
inches above the knees, which most likely required a degree of vanity and
confidence from her. The bit of face available in the reflection did not seem
to protrude or sink where it should not, and there were no signs of
discoloration extreme enough for his vision. He placed all of his
concentration on this light caramel smudge. Was she looking straight at him?
“Excushmeshrm? Shrm?”
The saleslady had returned, standing right next to Eric. His other
senses were supposed to be heightened in his state, but this was not the
case. It was as if his hearing was out of focus as well, like he had been set
before a wall of glycerin, both sight and hearing impeded by a dense,
constantly shifting liquid. He could hear her voice but doubted his grasp of
her words. Eric was afraid that certain syllables and inflections were escaping
him and realized how reliant he had been on reading other people’s faces
and lips. He stared at her.
“Shrm, pleasecombaknwonawr.”
“Come back in one hour?” he parroted with the greatest caution.
“Yesshrm. Thalensneetobcheyngshd. Endthafreymneedsnuskrus.
Itwilteyknawr. Awrteknshnneedsparsfrmawrothebransh.”
“Lens changed. New screws. Parts from the other branch.”
“Yeshrm. Wonawrshrm.”
“Oh, okay.” Eric stood up, relieved that he had understood. “Okay.”
He winced. His head was beginning to ache from this overall lack of
clarity. An hour walking around the mall should do him good. And it would
give him a better chance to practice seeing things less meticulously, which
staying in the eyewear store had not been able to offer him. A nice, long
stroll unawares. He gave a small wave to the saleslady, telling himself not to
care whether or not she saw him, and exited the store.
Eric stopped after only a few steps. The mall’s spaciousness provided a
significant distance between him and everything else, enough for him to take
it all in as a great display of assorted blobs. The humans were the moving,
vertical blobs. The kiosks were the large, squat blobs staying put in the
middle of the walkway. The stores were the long, enormous blob strips to his
left and right, hollowed out to contain even smaller blobs, some in motion,

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some not. A color splotch show, a television program seen an inch away from
the screen. Eric blinked quickly, trying to maintain the distinctiveness of each
blob, and walked into the next store.
It was a women’s clothing boutique. Eric had never been in one before.
He moved slowly from rack to rack, his face almost skimming the fabric
before him. His wife had no need for these necklines that slunk past the
collarbone, or these skirt slits that lent much more than ease of movement,
or these flimsy materials with flimsy names, or these cuts fashioned for their
own sake, or this gloss. She had no need for prints. The plain cotton shift
dresses he had the seamstress on their block sew for her were light, loose,
came in different solid colors for an adequate sense of variety, and cut just
below the knees to be apt for any occasion. Not that she had to leave the
house. Eric insisted that she simply care for the child and property that he
had supplied for her, for she deserved no less than the luxury of a
straightforward life, one that had the clearest sense of purpose.
Eric could never fully recover from the honor that was their romance.
She had courted him. He had never been an ugly man, but many others on
campus were more attractive. And far more interesting, with their intense
involvement in sports and rock bands and all those other gregarious
activities. They obviously seemed to have a much better chance with
someone as beautiful as she. She volunteered at the campus infirmary where
Eric often stumbled in after his regular panic attacks. To his surprise, she had
become fascinated by him. She had fawned over his fright—over pop
quizzes, substitute professors, sudden hard spells of rain—and the resulting
sweating, hand-wringing and hyperventilation that she had to appease. He
had never heard anyone else call him an idiot with as much adoration. When
she insisted on meeting him outside of their sterile little rendezvous, in
settings as foreign to him as coffee shops and restaurants, he agreed without
a trace of terror. And when he realized that he had, he knew that she was
someone he had to value intensely.
As Eric sidled past a full-length mirror to get to the next rack, he could
have sworn that the black-clad woman from earlier was in the reflection,
dallying by the shelves across the store. He stepped back for a second look.
There was no dark, vertical blob to be seen. He quickly turned around, but
nothing disrupted the steady, fluorescent soup of dresses and jeans and
heels in his vision. He walked out of the boutique. The woman, if she really
had just left seconds before, would no longer be recognizable amidst all the
other figures strolling in all directions, but Eric tried to look for her all the
same. It was more likely that he had just made a mistake. And even if he had
not, it would not have been that great of a coincidence for her to browse
through the same store that he had. Still, Eric could not resist feeling a
certain intrigue, unfounded as it was, and willed himself to be as alert as
possible as he walked slowly on.
After a few minutes, however, an electronics store suspended his
vigilance. He could just make out the enormous red letters pasted onto its
display window. The LDVC-Zero, the latest in his preferred line of surveillance

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cameras, had just been released. What appeared to be a slim pedestal was
set behind the window to exhibit the camera, and Eric knew that he would
have just as hard a time seeing it even with his glasses on. The LDVC-Zero
was made entirely of transparent material, from its casing to the wires
within, and was a third the size of a matchbox. The thought of one nestled in
each room of his house had always been a big fantasy. Realistically, though,
he could only make do with one of the earlier, card-size opaque models,
which he had strapped beneath the dinner table, set to face the front door.
Eric had the only key to this door, thick plastic panels made up for windows,
and jalousies stretched all across the topmost part of their walls, enough to
let plenty of air in but much too slim for his wife or son to squeeze through.
Still, the camera was a precaution.
All this insurance had collapsed the night before. His wife had
managed to make a hole through their front door by hacking at it with their
entire set of cutlery. This must have taken her several hours, but diligence
was not that big of a surprise. The bent spoons, tine-less forks and dulled
knives she had left in her wake spoke of pure fury.
He could not fathom why she had been so riled up, however. He had
not been anything but a loving husband and father, and he would even like
to think that his devotion towards them had become more and more
apparent through the years. When they had just gotten married, he and his
wife had tried the more conventional way of living. Both held jobs: she as an
English tutor, he as manager of an office supply company. They took turns
buying the groceries. They had dinner in a restaurant every Saturday night.
She bought him new underwear when the current ones got too holey; he
brought home croissants from bakeries with past-six P.M. two-for-one sales.
Yet the prospect of something much better for his wife nagged at Eric,
and once she had given birth to their son, he proceeded to make the
necessary changes. First off, he had her quit from her tutoring and remain at
home, which she had easily agreed to because of their newborn. It was
perfectly logical, then, for him to delegate himself as sole grocery buyer after
that, relying on a list that she would write out for him. In fact, any single
thing that needed to be bought became his exclusive duty. And instead of
dinners out, they had pizza delivered Saturday nights. This new set-up, with
Eric becoming more responsible and his wife experiencing the repose she
deserved, was infinitely better than the previous one. Eric knew he had to
preserve this state. His wife had always made him feel safe, and it was about
time that he did the same.
Eric continued to squint at the pedestal. As he strained to determine
the spots where the empty air ended and the LDVC-Zero began, a faint
reflection appeared in the display window’s glass, revealing an all-too-
familiar dark form standing a few feet behind him. He pretended to be
unaware of this, keeping his eyes fixed on where the camera was supposed
to be. He felt something that was far beyond intrigue now. The total opposite
of feeling violated by her presence; a strong yearning for her to invade his
personal space.

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He knew it was wrong to get so tickled. The concrete signs of his

dedication to his wife and son were countless, increasing in number over
time. And all of them were completely sincere. Their new, post-birth lifestyle
was mere groundwork for the rest of these offerings. It was hard enough to
support the three of them on his own, but he had also taken charge of the
details, altering living standards little by little over the course of seven years.
His wife’s wardrobe. Doing away with the television and mini-component.
The choice of books (Og Mandino, Robert Fulghum, Bo Sanchez), CDs (the
definitive set of Mad about Mozart) and DVDs (anything with Julie Andrews,
full-length Disney cartoons before 1960). The disconnection of their phone
line which, in turn, led to less oily home-made pizzas Saturday nights. The
six-foot bamboo spikes along the backyard wall. The front door, the plastic
panels, the jalousies. A sound life, with no possible outside force to upset its
balance, took constant effort and the truest love.
But the reflection of the woman was still there, and he did not want to
ignore it. She was the first person since his wife who had paid such specific
attention to him. Her approach was very strange, but the novelty of it all was
still exhilarating. For whatever reason, he was being stalked. He never
thought he would be the type.
It was time to participate. Eric shuffled over to face another gadget on
display. Pretending to stare at what he could only assume was an mp3
player, he made quick glances towards the LDVC-Zero. Her reflection
remained in place. Eric then shuffled over to the far end of the window and
took another glance. The dark smear, much smaller now, still stayed put. He
had been in front of the electronics store for quite a while now. She was most
likely going to be behind him wherever he went, so he decided to move
someplace else.
At the end of the hall was the supermarket. It would be a good place to
get stalked. It was well-lit, roomy and had plenty of aisles he could pretend
browsing through. He started walking towards it at a pace he hoped was not
too fast and not too slow, keeping himself from looking back.
Eric went through the turnstile. Suddenly, he felt the tiniest pang of
sadness. Grocery shopping had always been his favorite weekly task. He
loved seeing the shopping cart fill up with food and toiletries, loved the
thought of his family’s health and hygiene being wheeled around with his
two hands. From that morning on, he would just have to shop for himself. He
would buy the same things—the same shampoo, the same cuts of meat, the
same laundry detergent, the same ketchup—because these had already
passed his standards of quality, but he would get them in smaller amounts.
Smaller bottles and boxes. Less kilos. Packets, sachets. And the items
exclusive to his wife and son, like her panty liners and his chewable vitamins,
would be removed from the list altogether.
Eric’s eyes darted to the smear of a security mirror bolted by the
ceiling. In the cloudy convex reflection, he was the curved little blob in the
middle. After a few moments, what was most likely the black speck of his
stalker appeared on the bottom right corner. He then made for an aisle

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several feet away, knowing from habit that that row of smudged color was
allocated for junk food. Conveniently, several other vertical blobs were there
to test her nerve. He wanted to see how close she would get to him with
others so nearby. He picked out a bag of chips from the foil haze aglow
before him and pretended to check its price. He then placed it back, feigned
a little frown, and looked at the opposite end of the shelf as if searching for a
better brand. Her vertical black blob stood at the very edge of the aisle,
blocked by the blobs of others in search of snacks. After a few moments of
mock musing, he picked another bag out, returned it and glanced again. She
had not moved. He repeated the process again. It had been a full five
minutes, the others were still there and she still refused to draw closer. It
appeared that she wanted him alone. He decided to move to the shelves on
the other side.
When he turned the corner, Eric took a deep breath, suddenly
remembering where he was. The large, exceptionally vibrant mist facing him
was the candy section. The pang of sadness spread a little further across his
chest. He had been there just a few days ago in preparation for his son’s
sixth birthday.
The party, held just yesterday, was the greatest risk Eric had ever
taken. Despite the immense threat it posed, he had convinced himself of its
necessity. His son had been doing well in the evening home-school program
Eric had devised the previous year. So far, the two of them had covered the
ABCs, the 123s, the colors, shapes and all other basic bits of information
offered in regular nursery schools. The special focus on war and genocide,
the fragility of the human anatomy, excerpts from the literary trinity of
Mandino, Fulghum and Sanchez, etc. would come in much later, of course.
Still, Eric knew that hands-on education would have to be introduced at an
early age, hence this first real-world exercise.
There was a very vital lesson to be learned at a children’s birthday
party. It was the perfect occasion for his son to come face to face with
ruthlessness. There would be other children there. However young, they
would have seen current television programs, would have heard the newer
forms of music, would all in all have been exposed to an uninhibited range of
thought. Self-interest, then, would be in their nature, and all Eric would have
to do was give the proper little push.
Eric had bought candy a few days back for the pabitin frame, pabitin
being the worst possible party game he could think of. Children bunched
tightly together, sweating, shrieking, struggling to get their mucky little
hands on sweets dangling from a bamboo lattice. When the lattice was
lowered, they jabbed their elbows into each other’s sides, pushed their hands
against each others faces, clawed at each other’s flailing, straining arms.
When the lattice was raised, they tried to hold each other down by the
shoulders, gawking skyward, readying themselves for the next few seconds
of savagery.
Eric had only played pabitin once, at a party for the son of his father’s
good friend Gen. Antonio Reyes, a fellow retired Marine. It was the first time

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his glasses got broken, swiped off his face and stomped on over and over by
dozens of sneakers and Mary Janes. Needless to say he was also the worse
for wear. His father had even berated him for his ineptness at the game on
the drive home. Eric had shamed him in front of his peers and their equally
competent, competitive kids, had made a most revered rifleman of the corps
look like a bad dad. It was a sermon he had heard countless times before,
except in this one, his father had threatened to do far, far worse than bark at
him if he messed up again.
Pabitin had indeed taught Eric a lesson on blind cruelty, and he had
wanted his son to learn from it, too. Eric had been confident that his wife
knew what he was protecting her from. His son, of course, did not, and it was
good that Eric could clarify things for him under his discretion.
The party was very well-planned. The children there were sons and
daughters of those he managed at the office supply company. These workers
had accepted his invitation with eagerness, telling him of how glad they were
that he was warming up to them at last. Anything for my son, Eric had
replied. He had also bought, rented and transported everything on his own—
plastic tables and chairs, unpoppable Mylar balloons, pounds of spaghetti
and fried chicken, a large birthday cake with countless 6’s written all over in
blue icing—which had taken several trips with his Volkswagen. His wife, of
course, had been in bed as he set up the backyard, resting with the help of
two sleeping pills he had dissolved in her bowl of soup. She seemed to have
grown immune to the single pill he had started giving a year back, so it had
been best to raise the dosage. Despite all his preparations, though, it was
Eric himself who had ruined everything, and this thought badgered him as he
stared at the other end of the aisle, waiting for the woman to turn the corner.
She appeared after a few seconds. This time, Eric did not pretend to
browse the shelves, continuing to face the dark, vertical blob before him. Her
smudge of a face was turned towards him, too. At that moment, Eric knew
that the meandering was over, that either he made contact or did not. And
with all the free time that had just been thrust at him, he had nothing better
to do.
He walked slowly towards her. Seeing that she did not back away, he
stopped halfway down the aisle. As she took her turn walking forward, Eric
felt the strangest calm, the memories of the previous day lifting as quickly as
they had pounced. The thick, black lint surrounding her was being shaved off
bit by bit to reveal a nice, slim figure. Something new was about to happen.
Something tremendously unlike anything he had ever dealt with.
She stopped a few inches away from him. He drew even closer,
surprised at his own bravado. He could make out her eyes, nose, ears and
lips now, but there was still the thinnest sheet of fluff around them. One
more inch and he would be able to see her with better precision.
She took the next step for him.
She was beautiful. Eric could not find a single flaw. No bags under her
eyes, no crooks or lumps on her nose, no swirls too strange in her ears, no
excess puff to her lips, no folds, fissures or flecks on her skin. It was hard to

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get a thought in as he stared at her, as if her purity had leached into him,
rinsing him of his faculties. It was a peace of mind that had never stricken
him before.
And then, she smiled. Eric had never seen anything like it. It was a
smile that said the greatest things.
It told him: I know why you grabbed that boy and punched him in the
face, and flung that girl to the ground and kicked her, and did all those other
things to all the other children. You tried your best to stand aside while your
son suffered. But you couldn’t help it, and that’s perfectly okay. Those
children were heartless. You saw how they pushed him around, how they
grabbed the candy right from his hands and elbowed him away. They shoved
him so hard he fell face-first! They tried hitting you once you lunged at them,
scratched your glasses off your face as they struggled. If I were there, I’d get
mad at them, too. And I’d scream at their parents and wave a taser gun
around until everyone left like you did.
The party was an enormous lapse in judgment. You had worked so
hard to keep your family safe, only to undo everything in a single afternoon.
I know you thought that you could handle it, that all the danger you had
invited would be under your control since you’ve kept things in check for so
long. You made a mistake. But it doesn’t make you any less of a good father.
You meant well, and you should always keep that in mind. It’s just too bad
your wife didn’t see it that way.
I want you to know that I’m not like her. I will never do what she did
last night. I won’t wake up in hysterics. I won’t see your son’s tears as
anything but a part of the process. I won’t go into some silly, histrionic
speech about how miserable I’ve been for years. I won’t hate you for making
me wear the same dresses, eat the same food, read Kerygma out loud and
watch Fantasia on Tuesdays. I won’t hate you for the work you’ve done on
the house. I won’t hate you if I found a video camera under the dinner table
or learned that you told my friends and family that we’ve migrated to
Canada and gave them a fake address and phone number. I won’t admit to
tolerating you out of the greatest pity. I won’t ever regret meeting you. I will
love you with the deepest gratitude.
Eric smiled back, searching for the right thing to say in return. A
response, though, was not necessary. The woman drew her lips into a grin
and took one more step forward, filling up the space between them, her soft
curves against Eric’s stiff frame. He could not bring himself to step back. He
was not embarrassed in the least to feel a stranger’s solid warmth pressing
harder and harder against him, for he felt nothing but solace in their scene.
They had made the connection. However peculiar they may have looked, he
knew her compassion went beyond human speech.
Still, he doubted that she had picked up any message from him and
decided to say something out loud.
“Hi.”
The woman bolted. And once again, a channel switch, everything
flipping right back to static.

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Eric blinked. Without warning, the beautiful woman had left him, the
air-conditioning’s steady chill replacing her warmth, her face’s neat angles
swapped for shelves and shelves of jarring, clouded color. The mashed-up
sound of rolling carts, pop music and girls pitching free slivers of this and
that seeped through the smog. And this—the cold, the color, the commotion
—provoked further by such bright, white light, clamped Eric in place.
But he did not mind at all. A beautiful woman, but too shy for her own
good. What had happened between them was enough, those few seconds of
contact having lent him a new and greater resolve.
He was still young. He still had a safe home. He was still the superior of
a whole group of workers, their newfound hatred for him an empty detail. He
still had the same, impeccable principles. And he could draw women to him,
apparently. A lot more had to be developed in that aspect, of course, but at
least he had the chops for it in the most basic sense. It was more than he
had ever expected of himself.
It was not his fault his wife had fled. Loosening up, like she had
pleaded him to do, was not the way to go. He would find someone else.
Someone who knew that a good life waited for her in his care. She would
while the rest of her days solely in their home, craving for their special
Saturday pizza, marking lines from The Twelfth Angel with a highlighter,
humming Symphony No. 40 to soothe their child—a daughter this time,
hopefully—to a deep, deep sleep. He was going to work twice as hard to
make sure nothing disrupted their bliss. And she was going to love him for it.
Eric could not wait to find her.
But before he could start his life up again, the glasses. Eric managed to
break from his stupor and made his way slowly out of the supermarket. With
his new sense of expectation came an even greater loathing for the grand,
shifting mess before his eyes. As he moved from the supermarket’s stark,
prearranged haze to the more random murk of the walkway, he began to
crave for his glasses and the precision it lent him. It had only been an hour,
but the need for correctness was already too severe. It was foolish of him to
even think that he could last that long, much less try to embrace the fog
altogether.
He almost missed the eyewear store, stopping just as he noticed the
carousel of sunglasses flitting past. He winced. The headache from earlier
had long been forgotten, but queasiness was now crawling up from his belly
to his throat. An hour of intense guesswork had tired him. He walked feebly
into the store. The glasses had to be ready. He hoped the green vertical blob
at the very back was the same green vertical blob from before.
“Excuse me, miss? I had my glasses repaired two o’clock?”
“Ahyesshrmwamomumpleesh.”
The blob wafted into the dim hole of the storeroom and returned with
an arm outstretched. Once again, feigning exactness as much as he could,
he reached out for the small piece of matter in the saleslady’s hand. Its
smooth, slim angles were cold to the touch. Eric unfolded the frames very
quickly, jolted by the curved wires at his fingertips.

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“How much for the repair?” he asked.

“Nayhondureshrm.”
“What? How much?”
He slipped the glasses on. The jolt sped through his body, every inch of
him binding together into a tighter, more tangible whole. All things took on a
sharpness so potent that Eric had to blink to ease them back, each bat
reacquainting him with an irresistibly normal object. Desk: four corners, plain
hardwood. Shelves: two-inch panels, Plexiglass. Receipt pad: recycled and
carbon paper combination, low-quality ink. Saleslady: cheap pancake
makeup, mint-green polyester, predominantly unattractive.
“Nine hundred, sir.”
Eric nodded. The fee sounded steep at first, but he then remembered
the extra cash his bachelorhood entitled him. It would be temporary, of
course. He would meet her eventually. But in the meantime, he could very
much allow himself a bit of indulgence.
He slipped a hand into his right front pocket. Wads of lint and a twenty-
five centavo coin brushed against his palm. He slipped the other hand into
the left front pocket. Just the staggered teeth of his house keys. Alarmed, he
patted his back pockets several times, jammed his hands into them, tried to
will the texture of thick, folded leather to arrive, but the fabric around his
thighs remained slack. He peered into his front pockets this time, squinting
at the small, dark hollows with urgency. He could not see a thing.
“Sir? It’s nine hundred, sir.”
He looked up at the saleslady, able to make out each tiny wrinkle of
impatience on her forehead.
“Wait, wait, hold on.”
“Is there a problem, sir?”
He could not respond. The saleslady resorted to a sigh and leaned
against the shelves. Eric’s hands finally fell to his sides.
The beautiful woman. Could she have been a thief? A pickpocket who
particularly preys on male, near-sightless eyewear store customers, stalking
them, daring to show them her stunning face for a second not just to
mesmerize them, but to keep from seeming shady? The thought was just so
possible and so preposterous at the same time. If she was indeed that kind of
thief, then he had to admit that her modus operandi was frighteningly
convoluted. Incredibly perverse. Something whose design could only have
been crafted by an utter madwoman, something that catered to whims
beyond criminal intent. The very idea made Eric ten times more nauseous
than before, so he told himself—though he knew he did not believe in it at all
—that he had probably just misplaced the wallet. Or maybe he had left it at
home.
The saleslady sighed again.
He could make a run for it. Bolt out of the store, never to return. But he
was not much of a runner, too mindful of how each foot set itself in front of
the other, and the risk of someone tackling him down was very high.

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Super Vision by Marguerite Alcazaren de Leon

“I think I lost my wallet,” he said. “Maybe. I think,” he added softly. The

saleslady raised one eyebrow, but with a slowness that disclosed her apathy.
“I’m sorry, sir, but I’ll have to take the glasses back,” she finally
replied. “We’ll keep them first until you can pay.” And she drew her hand out
once again.
Eric stared at the saleslady’s palm. Hundreds and hundreds of skinny,
faint lines crossing and curving in countless directions. Streaks of purple and
blue appearing, fading, then appearing again beneath a translucent layer of
pink. Patches of shine from the fluorescent lights. The ring finger subtly
bowed to the left. The coarse, toothed tips of her nails.
The palm stretched itself out even tighter. He took his glasses off as
slowly as he could.
Her hand was pink. Not much else. Feeling the frames being eased
from his fingers, Eric fastened his gaze to the plain white mass of the back
wall, a fresh, intense batch of queasiness circulating throughout every bit of
his body. He could not bear to look elsewhere, the world as one whopping
blemish waiting inches away in every direction.
He did all he could to keep still. There were a lot of sick people out
there. ●

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