Science Fiction: Welcome to my Worlds

Then, just as suddenly, he realized that it was no daydream. It was a vision. He hadn’t had one of those since he’d been blinded in the war. Since the last time his life was in danger, he realized. As it was right now. He could feel the presence of his own death very near. It smelled like the heavy ozone of a hovering thundercloud.

Isaac couldn’t help it. He burst out laughing. He might be in a wheelchair but his lungs were still strong, and the house rang with peels of his mirth. He’d spent the whole of last week planning methods of suicide. What good was life without his sweet wife Angela, after all? Together they’d been strong, even when both were in ill health. Alone he was nothing. Less than nothing.

“Shut up old man!”

The woman slapped him, her long fingernails savagely scoring his face. His hand went instinctively to the sting, coming away wet with his blood. What kind of woman slaps a blind man?

“I don’t have time for your hysterics. Where is the painting?”

He didn’t have a clue what she was talking about, but he was really beginning to dislike her tone. “Hidden where you’ll never find it, I hope.” This time her slap rocked him in the chair bruising