The Blindfold Hour – Part 1: Dark

"Say it again," said Isadora, "so I know you mean it."

"Eyes covered. Ears covered. Hands free."

"And?"

"If I squeeze the rubber ball, everything stops. Instantly. If I say Lighthouse, everything stops. Instantly."

"And what do I do?"

"You take off the blindfold, you hold my hand, and we talk."

"Good." She set the little rubber ball in his palm and closed his fingers over it. "Keep hold of that. It is the most important thing in the room."

Wes was forty-two, an air-traffic controller, a man who spent ten hours a day making hundreds of decisions per minute and who had admitted, after a particularly bad week, that what he wanted most in the world was to be unable to see anything at all, and to trust someone with the rest. Isadora was thirty-nine, a hospital anaesthetist, calm and exacting. She had asked him a great many questions, and made a great many notes, and bought a heavy black silk blindfold and a pair of noise-cancelling headphones that she had tested on herself.

The bedroom was warm and dim, the curtains drawn, a lamp on low, a soft rug on the floor. A tray stood on the nightstand: water, a straw, a small towel, a bar of dark chocolate. She had arranged it all, with the same care she gave an operating theatre.

"Sit on the bed," said Isadora. "Hands on your knees."

He sat. She stood in front of him and tied the blindfold, slowly, her fingers cool against the sides of his face. The world went black. She slipped the headphones over his ears, and the room fell silent except for his own breath. He gripped the rubber ball. His heart began to thud.

A hand touched his, gently, and tapped twice. Are you all right? He tapped twice back. Yes.

She drew her fingertip, very slowly, along his jaw.

He caught his breath.

In the dark, with no sound and no sight, her touch was the only fact in the universe. It travelled along his shoulder, down his arm, into his palm, and paused. A long, long pause. He did not know where she was. He did not know what she would do. All he knew was that he had asked for this, that she had built the whole thing around his safety, and that his whole body was alive with a sharp, sweet, shaking attention.

The hand tapped twice. He tapped twice back.

Good, she was telling him, in the language they had agreed. Good. Stay.

Continue the story: Part 2 – Light.