The Gift

Klaus looked down at his hands in astonishment. It was almost 3am. This can't be happening, he said to himself.

He rose from the couch and turned on the corner light to get a better view. All was quiet, the neighbours would surely be asleep. In the new light everything superficially seemed normal, yet there was just this growing feeling that there was more, much more, to be seen.

As he looked, every wrinkle, every curve of his hands, every vein and angular bony joint seemed to resonate, as though for the first time he could see what was truly there. I was so clearly blind before, he thought, as he realised that he was beginning to perceive the deep living force that bound his body together.

The tyrannical headache from earlier was lifting. He had waited, sitting in silence, after he warily intoned the strange words that were written on the card that so mysteriously had been pushed under his door around midnight. His first thought was that this was a joke, but the words “you must do this” had sat heavily in his mind, and so eventually he had followed the instructions.

At first Klaus had sat in silence waiting for probably nothing, but then there was a mounting internal pressure, and an uncomfortable cycling from skepticism to fear and apprehension as his perception seemed to shift in unfamiliar ways. Nothing is happening—I am just psyching myself out, he had told himself over and over.

But now the change was impossible to deny. Now in the light he could almost see right through his own arm; he could trace the muscles and fibres, now noticing for the first time the knots of damaged areas that needed his attention—and he knew exactly what to do to heal himself.

Fear and elation came in waves as though he was truly awake for the first time. But he looked once again at the card in apprehension. What might those words “eternal life” truly imply? I am just a normal person, he had thought, so what is really happening? Suddenly reality felt heavy and imposing. How much further could this strange gift take him?