The Vision Test by krazykatie

Won't tell you who the point of view is, even though you find out pretty fast. The character the POV is from is seven years old.

I leaned against the side of the crate, the bars pressing cold to my back. A feeble light seeped sadly over the room. The whirring of machines were the only noises and I stared sadly at the ground outside the dog crate, waiting for Fang – Subject Three, as they called him – to return.

I heard wheels roll down the corrider outside the dark room. Fang was rolled in in a crate on a long wheeled table. The whitecoats harshly grabbed his crate and threw it onto the table between Max – Subject One – and I.

He whimpered slightly before huddling back into a sad little bundle against the corner. I scooted as close as I could and took hold of the bars between us.

"Fang," I whispered, "what'd they do?"

He shuddered. "Tested strength. Kept putting weights on. Hurt my arms. Couldn't hold it all up."

"I hate them," Max growled. "Hate them, hate them, hate them, hate them," and she kept going on while I talked to Fang.

"Did you hear who's next?" I whispered.

He nodded.

"Who?"

"You are," he murmured. A shiver ran up my spine. I didn't want to be next. No one ever did.

"Hate them," Max grumbled. "What're they gonna do? Did you hear?"

He nodded slowly. We all were always shaken up after being…experimented on like we were lab subjects. I guess that's because we were lab subjects.

"Something 'bout vision. Increasing it or something."

That was odd. "They already tried that and it didn't work."

"Then they're gonna try again."

I shuddered. I hated those eye tests. I had sensitive eyes, so it hurt me more than the rest of the tests did.

We all heard someone coming down the long hall and I jumped, hitting my head on the low ceiling. I rubbed my head and they wheeled the familiar stretcher into the room. I pressed myself against the furthest back part of the dog crate.

"Wait," one of the whitecoats said, "Which one?"

"Subject Four."

Four. That was my number. That's all I was. To them, I was a number. An it. No, I wasn't Iggy. Heaven forbid I should have a name. No, I was Subject Four.

They seized the handle on top of the cage. The top of the crate weren't bars like the rest of it – they'd learned to fix that up a long time ago.

The cage was thrust off the table and I tumbled, smacking hard into the metal, making my head pound. They threw me onto their stretcher. I grabbed the bars and squeezed my eyes shut, letting the world envelop in blackness. It blocked out the white of their coats, the fluorescent lights all around, my own ghastly pale skin and everything. It let me sink deep into my little hole of depression and momentarily forget the coming tortures.

I heard the top of my cell come off and hands roughly took hold of my arms. I let them pull me out. There was no use to struggling. I'd tried before – it would happen no matter what, and in one case I was beaten and strapped tighter. In the other, I wasn't thrown around as much.

A few of them threw me onto a long white table, tying me down, wings and all.

"Ok," someone out of line of sight said. "Starting the experiment now."

A horrifically bright light blinded me, and I shut my eyes. The light began to burn my eyelids.

"Laser ready," a whitecoat announced.

Laser?

"Get its eyes open."

A pair of hands pulled on my eyelids, but I kept them as tightly shut as I could.

"It won't open them. Can I have some tape?"

The hands pried my eyes open wide, burning the edges where my eyelids connect, feeling like they were being stretched beyond their ability. Something sticky stuck to the inside of my eye and eyebrow. Tears flooded my eyes as he did the same to my other eye, both beginning to burn instantly, as soon as they started to dry out.

Next to the blurry bright white light, a little red dot grew in size. It exploded and shot me, blinding me for a second. I cried out and the whitecoats laughed. My vision came back, only to be shot away again by another blast. Again, a scream, again, the laughter.

My sight hazed over with tears I couldn't blink away. Suddenly a chemical flowed into my eyes, burning like fire and making my eyes scream. I held back the scream.

I don't know how long they went on. After who-knew-how-long of utter pain, they began jabbing my eyes with pointy things. Between the lasers, the chemicals, and the poking, my face had completely numbed out.

"Turn the lights off," a whitecoat shouted and the room blackened. There was a minute of calm. If you can consider being strapped to a table by maniacal scientists who want to 'enhance' your vision by pouring rotting chemicals into your face calm.

I listened to them a little, trying to ignore my eyes as they screamed to blink. They said something about working on Subject Nine next. I tucked that away in my mind. They were saying something about letting the chemicals settle down, whatever that meant.

My eyes adjusted to the darkness, though things were still blurry.

I saw a picture above me that I couldn't quite make out. It looked something like a big house. Or something.

"Tell me what this looks like," someone ordered at me. I choked out another sob. The picture shook and the whitecoat shouted at me. "What does it look like??"

I tried to responds. I whimpered when somebody hit me, making my arm throb.

"A…a house…" I sputtered quietly. "Big…door in front…" Just like all homes should be. Pretty. Sweet. No spawns of Satan.

"What else do you see?" the man barked.

I cringed. "N-nothing."

He sighed and the searing lights came back on.

"Some night vision," someone muttered. So…they were experimenting with my night vision?

"What went wrong?" somebody asked.

"I think it was the retinal wiring," another man answered from somewhere behind me. "Let's work on that again."

There was some movement before two whitecoats appeared above me. They came in with long, thin blades, gently stabbing my eyes. I moaned, and after a minute, they stopped.

"Not that," the one on my right said. "From what I can tell, it was the radium. I don't think we put in enough."

There was more shirting around and I watched as a bright, hot liquid spilled deep into my eyes. It soaked completely down. I saw a whitecoat grin at my pain, behind him the bright light illuminating his ugly face. Everything had a reddish tint to it, even the horrible light.

Somebody flipped the lights off right as a burning, white-hot flame tore at me, and it felt like my eyes had just been brutally wrenched from their sockets. I shrieked out in my torment and the horrible people laughed.

"Turn the lights out!" someone shouted. Which didn't make sense to me, since the lights were already off.

I heard some shuffling in the dark around me. "All right, let's try this again," one of them said. "What do you see?"

I scrutinized for my eyes to adjust, but they just wouldn't. I tried to squint, but my eyes were still being ripped open by tape.

"Answer me!"

"Nothing!" I wailed. "I don't see anything, there's nothing there!"

"Great, someone muttered. "Now his night vision's worse."

A whitecoat ordered the lights on. No one obliged and the lights stayed off.

"What went wrong that time?"

"I don't know, I thought it was the radium."

"Well, find out."

There were more sounds of shifting around. Suddenly something sharp began prodding agonizingly in the eyes again. I wondered how they were doing that in the dark.

"Huh," the whitecoat above me murmured. "That's odd."

"What is?"

"Well, the optic nerve is completely burned out. Fried to a crisp."

They burned my eye?

"It can't see without the optic nerve."

"I know. That's what's odd."

I heard some papers above me.

"What do you see?" he asked slowly.

I whimpered. "Nothing," I said in a tiny voice.

"You idiots! You morons! You've blinded the Subject!"

Oh no. He didn't really mean that–

"Oh man, this subject was a good one, too."

"Should we expire it?"

I shuddered involuntarily and couldn't stop. The darkness began to close in on me like a disease. Their voices became all there was.

"No, no, of course not, we can still use it."

I felt the tape torn off my eyes, ripping off some skin with it. I blinked, only to be greeted by incomparably tortuous pain, searing on my eyelids and my eyes. I flew my eyes open, maybe in the hope that I'd be able to see.

I felt them release me, lift me up and throw me into my crate of doom.

Okay, shut your eyes now and pretend you can't open them…and imagine getting thrown around with your eyes still shut. Bad, huh?

I heard the wheels roll beneath me, rolling a long way and all the while, I was trying to comprehend it all.

Blind.

You've blinded the Subject!

Blind. As in, no more sight. All I could remember was that villainous scientist and the red shake of the bright light behind him. That last image was plastered in my head and it wouldn't go away. I was knocked around in the cage as my tormentors threw my crate down onto something. The table, I assumed.

Tears rolled down my cheeks as I tried to remember what I was supposed to be seeing now. Instead of the endless nothingness. I was supposed to be seeing a gruesome room filled with nasty experiments, all doomed to fail. To die. To be horribly tortured for the sake of 'science.' I shuddered and fought the sight away.

"Iggy," Max whispered. "Iggy! Your eyes are all swollen! And red, and puffy. What did they do?"

I curled up into a ball, my hands clasped around my legs. I rocked back and forth, back and forth, feeling the hard metal under me, pressing my useless, but hurt eyes against my knees.

"Iggy…" she said softly. "What happened?"

I opened my mouth to respond. All that came out was a slew of choked sobs.

"You okay?" Fang asked quietly. I didn't answer. "Oh…um, who's next?"

Through my broken chokes, I managed to get out a strangled "Nine."

"The baby," he said quietly.

"I hope they don't do to him what they did to you, you're a mess," Max observed, her voice floating to my ears.

My breath shuddered, but I managed to pull away from my knees and hug my chest.

"I…can't see," I whispered breathlessly. "They…fried my eyes." The whole idea of never being able to see again was suddenly becoming real. Never again. Ever.

"Fried?" Max asked. "Like…blind?"

The horrible word stabbed like a knife through me, ripping me.

I nodded.

I could have sworn my eyes were open. They felt open, but it looked like they were shut. It was alike a dream. A really bad dream. A nightmare.

She gasped.

"You're blind?" Fang asked.

I nodded quickly, the painful tears slashing through me.

"I'm so sorry…" Max apologized. I just sat there in my own little world of what was to be perpetual darkness.

"Was like they just…turned the lights out," I breathed.

Yeah. Just like someone had switched off all the lights.

Like they'd flicked off the lights and they'd never come back on.