Muted Vision

Prologue - Rude Awakening

(Warning // MC has Missing Eye)
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"RYAN!"

No response.

"RYAN, WHERE ARE YOU?!"

Still no response.

"Oh god, no.."

The footsteps got closer and closer, the pain was too unbearable, he couldn't see a thing, all he could see was red..

The gun was cocked once more, closer than it was originally, before all of a sudden...

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"NO!"

Autumn finally shot up from his restless position as he woke up from the nightmare, sweating bullets and heart pounding. Looking over at his clock, he realized that it was still pretty early, he wouldn't have to be up for school for another few hours. However, considering he just had another nightmare, he decided against just going back to sleep, fearing that he might have the nightmare once again. With his newfound reason to get an early start to the day, Autumn got out of his bed and placed his feet onto his messy bedroom floor, looking around the room that was illuminated only by the pale moonlight casting from his window.

"Come on, you can do this Autumn.."

Despite having a pretty crappy start to his morning, he still tried to make the most out of this early morning start to his first school day of this year. After willing himself to leave his bed and grabbing his phone from the nearby nightstand, he walked over to his dresser on the other side of the room and grabbed a spare set of clothes. He was planning on getting a shower in, as he didn't want to go to school reeking of sweat after his very rude awakening.

Walking to the bathroom, he looked around the upstairs area of his house, staring at each door leading to each room and remembering that pretty much all of them were unused, except for one door at the corner of the hallway. That was his mother's room, but it rarely ever got used anyways, so it might as well be labelled as completely unused like every other room there. In fact, for the most part, Autumn basically had the whole house to himself pretty much every day, since his mother would always be going to work really early in the morning and coming home really late. Despite how early he woke up, he knew that he still wasn't going to catch his mother going to work, just like every other time he's woken up.

Before he got too sidetracked in his thoughts and looked like a weirdo just standing there in the middle of his hallway, Autumn remembered that he was going to take a shower before his mind got the better of him. Walking into the bathroom, he placed his clothes on the corner of the counter, far away from the shower itself to make sure they didn't get wet, and placed his hands on the edge of the counter, staring down at the sink, the soap scum still being there even after cleaning the bathroom not that long ago.

Looking up at the mirror, an unfortunately familiar face was staring back at him, seeming as if they were judging Autumn as they continued to stare at each other. The bleached blonde, short hair from when he wanted to change his appearance after the incident, the plain white shirt that filled his closet as he didn't want to change his outfit too much from what he usually, and lastly, the white bandage wrapped around his left eye, somewhat bloodied from his rude awakening causing him to be stressed out and reopening the wound from his thrashing around.

'Fuck.. I gotta redo the wrapping after I'm done with cleaning myself.'

After consoling with himself about his own wound, Autumn began to slowly unwrap the bandage around his eye as to not disturb the wound anymore than he already has. Once the bandage was off, all he saw with his right eye was a barely open socket where his eye once was located at, now beginning to bleed a bit more now that the bandage wasn't covering the whole thing. Acting somewhat quickly but cautiously, as to not make it bleed more than it already was, Autumn opened up the medicine cabinet that was accessible behind the mirror and grabbed one of the many waterproof patches that his mother had bought in preparation for showers, staring up at the ceiling as he began placing it on the somewhat open eye socket, making sure the adhesives were properly on his skin before looking back down at the mirror.

After checking one more time that the waterproof patch was adhered to his skin, he lightly nodded at himself in the mirror before walking over to the glass door separating the shower and the rest of the bathroom, opening it up and reaching inside to turn on the shower, making sure the water temperature was just right. Once the proper preparations were made and the glass was beginning to fog up, Autumn began to strip every bit of clothing that he was previously wearing off and throw them into a nearby laundry basket that was nearing its top in the amount of clothes that were inside of it.

'I gotta do the laundry when I get back home..'

Keeping his mind occupied with his own train of thought as he waited for the glass to fog up, he already began to think of everything that he would do right after school, considering he really didn't want to go to school today, but his mom wouldn't like it at all if he skipped the first day of his senior year. Before he got too lost in thought and spaced out, he realized that the fog had consumed the glass, making it perfect to take a shower in if someone were to enter the bathroom while he was in there. Getting into the shower, he immediately went to washing his hair and face first, just to get those out of the way before going onto everything else, taking extra precaution to make sure not too much water was building up around the patch.

Once the shower was done and dealt with, he grabbed one of the towels hanging on the wall and tried his best to dry his hair without disturbing the patch too much. After the main issue at hand was dealt with, he went onto drying the rest of his body off before eventually putting the clothes he had selected onto his person: another plain white shirt, simple patterned underwear, brown pants, and white socks. He didn't try to make himself stand out compared to everyone else at school, he just tried to make himself look presentable at best, mainly because he just really didn't care about how he looked to other people.

After dealing with everything below his head when it came to clothes, he now had to rewrap his eye to prepare it for the day, sighing once more before looking at his phone to check the time. It was now nearing the point where the bus for school would arrive in about 15 minutes, meaning that he had to quicken the pace a bit to catch the bus on time. Grabbing the medical tape from the medicine cabinet, he began to wrap the area near his missing eye with the patch still on, considering he didn't have time to change it out for gauze. In a move that surprised even him, he was able to finish wrapping the area in only about 5 minutes, but that meant he had 10 more minutes before the bus arrived near his house.

Shoving his phone into his pants pocket, he quickly ran out of the bathroom and down the stairs, keeping a hand on the rail just in case he fell from how fast he was moving. It all happened so fast that it might've just looked like he was having a psychotic episode to anyone outside as he ran around the ground floor of the house. In not that long, he managed to grab his bag on the couch that was somewhat prepared for this day, put on and tie his shoes, and then grab the house key he needed to, you know, get inside the house. Once all of the proper preparations were made with his routine, Autumn rushed over to his door and swung it open, almost making a hole in the door stopper that protected the wall, before continuing to rush outside, shutting the door and running all the way to the end of the driveway.

Right on cue, the bus turned the corner to his area of the neighborhood and picked him up, taking him back to the school that he had attended for years now to continue the same routine that he had gotten used to for years and years. However, what Autumn wasn't aware of was that the whole routine he had gotten used to would eventually be turned on its head once he realized, he wasn't alone in his own disabled world.