Darkness.
That was the first thing April knew. A deep, consuming black that stretched endlessly.
Then came the silence.
Not the comfortable kind. Not the kind that came with peace. This was something else—something suffocating, a void where sound had once been.
April was awake. But the world was gone.
Panic clawed at her chest. April tried to move, but something tugged at her arm—wires, tubes. Her skin felt numb, heavy.
April wanted to scream, but no sound came out.
A hand touched her wrist.
April flinched. She hadn't heard them coming. Hadn't felt anything before the touch.
A vibration pressed against her fingers, steady and slow.
A heartbeat.
April focused.
A hand squeezing hers.
Reassuring.
A doctor? A nurse?
April didn't know. She couldn't ask.
April was trapped in this darkness, this silence, and she had no way of escaping.
April didn't know how much time passed.
When the bandages were removed, April expected… something. Light, color, shadows.
Instead, the darkness remained.
April was blind. Completely, permanently.
Her eyes, the doctors said, had taken on a darker shade of silver—almost unnatural.
A strange side effect of the surgery.
April didn't care. What did it matter? Silver, black, red—she would never see them again.
The doctors tried to explain what had happened. Words she couldn't hear, written on a clipboard she couldn't read.
But April picked up fragments.
Head trauma. Skull damage. Unstable surgery.
And something else. Something they didn't want to say too loudly.
Something about a mistake.
They had put something inside her.
Something they shouldn't have.
Weeks later:
April was released from the hospital weeks later.
No family came to pick her up. No one held her hand on the way out.
She had no one.
But she wasn't weak anymore.
April had reported him. Her so-called father. She had told the police everything.
And now, he was rotting in a prison cell where he belonged.
April was free.
Even if the world had gone dark.
Even if the silence never ended.
But the silence wouldn't last.
Because something inside her had changed.
Something waiting to wake up.