Introduction
by Specfiend posted 25 July 2001 22:12
At the edge of the town, on top of a hill, was an old abandoned warehouse. It had been derelict and empty for years, but suddenly activity buzzed around it as it was renovated. No one knew what it was being turned into. Curious townies questioned the constuction workers, but they denied any knowledge of the true purpose of the warehouse. No one had told them anything.
A year later, renovations were complete and the place was quiet once more. The gates were always firmly closed, so everyone was still in the dark about its purpose.
Except for a select few.
Across the world, a small number of people suddenly received a strange silver envelope. It would come through their letterbox, or be left in their mailbox. Wherever they lived, each envelope contained the necessary number of return aeroplane tickets to Scotland, and a mysterious invitation printed on stiff white card.
HAVE YOUR DREAMS FULFILLED!
You know the fantasy you've always had?
Well now you can SEE your dreams come true!
Right in front of your EYES.
Each and every person knew exactly what this "fantasy" was, and interpreted the cryptic message correctly. The majority arranged time off work to travel to Scotland, to the once-derelict warehouse in the Highlands.
MARIA
by Specsfiend
Maria was eager to please her husband. And it was clear he wasn't overjoyed with her vision.It wasn't bad enough for him.He was a closet glasses fetishist. Closet to all but her. In his opinion, the thicker the lenses, the more attractive the girl. He had been overjoyed when he'd discovered, when they first started dating, that she wore contact lenses. He'd persuaded her to get glasses "to wear occasionally" he'd said at the time. But then her contact lenses had mysteriously gone missing. He denied all knowledge of this, saying it was her own fault for being so careless.
She'd had to wear her glasses full-time for a couple of days before she could get a replacement pair of contacts. And Eric had gradually worked on her, saying she suited glasses so much that she should wear them full-time. Eventually, she' given in and, although she had got her new contacts, she'd never actually worn them.
But she knew that her -3 lenses weren't anywhere near strong enough for his satisfaction. So, when he brought in the invitation he had received, and showed it to her, she knew immediately what he wanted her to do.
"Come on," he said, smiling eagerly. "-10. What do you say?"
Maria didn't get any real pleasure from wearing glasses, although she didn't mind wearing them. Unlike a lot of the people she knew, she actually suited glasses. But she knew there was a big difference between her current prescription, and the one that Eric desperately wanted her to have. While she could muddle through life uncorrected if necessary at -3, there was no chance she could do that if her corrective lenses had to be -10.
The question was, she thought carefully, what could she get out of it? And she knew the answer. Until now, she'd kept her fetish secret from him. She may have got no pleasure from her own glasses but, like Eric, she liked to see other people in glasses.
"I'll do it," she said. "On one condition."
Eric looked questioningly at her, eager to do just about anything.
"You have to need -10 glasses too," she said. "If you won't have them, then neither will I."
It took Eric a couple of minutes to decide about this. His vision was 20/20. He didn't really want to wear glasses himself, although he occasionally tried on Maria's spare pair when she wasn't around to witness it. Was it worth, he thought, ruining his own vision in order to have a more myopic wife?
The more he thought about it, the more reasonable it seemed.
"It's a deal," he said. He was already beginning to feel excited.
Two weeks later, they made the long trip from the States to Scotland, were met at the airport by a chauffeur and limo, and arrived at the warehouse, feeling both excited and apprehensive. The imposing gates swung open to let them in, as if by magic. The chauffeur brought them in through the main doors, into a huge reception area.
The receptionist was a beautiful woman with minus glasses about twice the strength of Maria's. "You understand what happens here, right?" she asked. "We help glasses fetishists by 'giving' them bad vision, or worse vision, so that they have to wear thick or thicker glasses. Then we let them loose in the biggest optical store you'll probably ever see. Then, every night we have a party so that like-minded people can celebrate together."
Both Eric and Maria liked the sound of this. But, before they went upstairs to unpack, Maria had a question.
"How do you actually GIVE us bad eyesight?" she asked curiously. "Will it be painful?"
"There are several different ways we can do it, all experimental of course," the receptionist explained. "Here's a pamphlet which will explain the various processes, but you don't actually get the choice. Because you're getting this service for free, we choose the process."
Up in their room, Eric and Maria curled up on the bed and studied the pamphlet together.
Process One was an operation where a lens was directly implanted in the eye to cause a worsening in eyesight. It had an effect much like putting in plus contacts in order to wear minus glasses, or vice versa.
Process Two involved the eyes to be bathed in a special chemical for five minutes. At first the vision would remain the same - gradually, over several days, it would begin to deteriorate. Regular eye tests would take place several times a day and, once the person had reached their desired degree of myopia or hyperopia, another chemical would be applied to halt the process.
Process Three was basically LASIK in reverse. Both flinched at that thought.
Process Four sounded worst of all. Sitting in a darkened room for hours a day, forced to stare at strange patterns, images and words, designed especially to strain one's eyes and cause the vision to grow weak. Both Maria and Eric really hoped they didn't get stuck with this process, they wanted to avoid it even more than they wished to avoid any surgical processes.
The last process was the least well explained. All it said was "Grow gradually into your desired prescription with your special lenses." This fascinated Maria, and she couldn't help but wonder what it meant.
At the end of the pamphlet it said that they were expecting more and more processes to be added to the list before long, their experiments were showing them many new ways to give bad eyesight away.
They were jet-lagged, so they didn't go to that evening's party. The following day, someone came into their room at 6.30 in the morning to wake them up. "The specialists are ready to start your process," they were old. Maria reached for her glasses, but the woman stopped her. "No correction for the moment," she said sternly.
They were lead downstairs and then taken into separate rooms. The woman told Maria to sit in the chair in the centre of the room, then she left. Maria waited quietly for the specialist.
The specialist was a woman, and seemed very friendly. She told Maria that she was to be a Process 5 candidate. "Now, it's not exactly going to be a comfortable experience," she warned her. "But it's less painful than surgery and less boring than Process 4."
"But what does Process 5 actually entail?" Maria asked.
"It means you'll grow gradually into your glasses. It will probably take four or five days." The woman walked over to a table. "Now, you want to be minus ten, right?"
"Yeah." Well, that was what Eric wanted her to be.
"Okay. So what we have to do is fit you with these special minus ten lenses. It's imperative, in order for you to become accustomed to them, that they are not taken off until your vision is clear with them. So, for the number of days this takes, they must be basically padlocked on."
"What?" Maria glanced at her with raised eyebrows.
"Well, they need to stay on everywhere. In the shower, the pool, even in bed. In front of your eyes at all times. Once you can see with them, that's no longer necessary. But, if in the process of getting accustomed to them, they move from in front of your eyes at any time, even to slip down your nose slightly . . . it just won't work." The woman watched her carefully. "You still want to go ahead with this?" she asked.
"Um. Yeah."
The woman removed a strange looking pair of glasses from a drawer. "Close your eyes," she told Maria. "Don't open them until I tell you to." Maria did as she was told. The specialist placed the glasses over her eyes first. They were like goggles rather than glasses . Maria was told to hold them over her eyes, while the specialist pulled the straps tightly back, yanking them so they were as taut as possible. She tied these together before pulling back the second set of straps, which were more solid than the first. These were, quite literally padlocked together. Maria was told to push the goggles into her face. The rubber created some sort of suction, and they were stuck there.
"That's it," the specialist said. "You can open your eyes now."
Maria couldn't see a thing when she opened her eyes. The lenses inside the goggles were much much too strong for her. Her eyes began to smart and tear up. This must have been anticipated though, because there were tiny drainage holes which her tears dropped through.
The specialist lead her to the door. Eric was outside, looking completely the same. His eyes looked a little red though.
"I got Process Two," he told her, gaping at her begoggled appearance. "The chemicals stung like hell. My specialist says I won't notice a difference in my vision for a couple of hours. Then it'll be downhill from then onwards." He stared harder at Maria. "Wow, your eyes look incredible behind those lenses," he blurted out. "Can you see through them?"
"No," she muttered, feeling a little annoyed at him for putting her through this. But she could hardly complain - before long he would be in a similar situation. "You're all blurry!"
He laughed huskily. "It won't be long," he said warmly. "Soon you'll be able to see everything through them." He took her hand and squeezed it. "Let's go back to our room," he suggested, obviously turned on by her thick lenses.
A long time later it was time for dinner, and they ventured into the dining room. Inside, they were presented by an extremely strange site. There were people like Eric, bare-eyed but red-eyed. People like Maria, with thick lenses goggles pulled tightly around their heads. People with bandages over their eyes (usually it was only one eye), people who looked pale and squinty (they had to be the unlucky people stuck with Process Four), and people already wearing regular glasses with thick lenses. Both Eric and Maria wondered if these last specimens had already had their eyesight "ruined", or whether they were naturally that way already and wanted to go even blinder.
At their table, there were three other people. A girl who was alone and bare-eyed, and another couple - the man was wearing thick minus lenses, and the woman wore plus glasses, not too strong, but enough for her to clearly want to wear them full-time.
The girl was called Daniella, and she was Scottish. She told them that she had perfect vision, but had always wanted to wear glasses. "Nothing exceptionally strong," she said airily. "Minus four or so. I don't know what process I'm getting, but it's gonna happen tomorrow." She glanced at Maria and Eric. "I'm guessing you got Process Two," she told Eric. "And was yours process five?" she asked Maria.
"Got it first time," Maria said. Her eyes were still stinging painfully, and she was having difficulty seeing. She turned to the other couple (who sounded Australian) and asked about them. It turned out the guy, James, had just went through the lens-implant operation, on the request of his wife. The wife, Colleen, told Maria that she herself had been hyperopic from a young age, and that she had always wanted her husband to get thick glasses. "He was perfectly willing to do so," she said. "But he only needed a -1 correction, which wasn't much good in my eyes. So now he has -15 glasses." She smiled lovingly at her husband.
"I'm doing this for Eric's benefit," Maria said, indicating the hard-to-miss goggles over her eyes. "But I said I would only do it if he did it too."
"Smart move," Colleen grinned. "Make it a hell of a lot more pleasurable for you. Right?"
Maria laughed. "Exactly."
The following day Maria opened her eyes, still to be confronted with a hazy blur. It had been really uncomfortable trying to sleep in the goggles, especially with a mini-padlock digging into the back of her head.
Eric was sitting up, rubbing his eyes. "It's starting," he said to her. He pointed to the window, which was directly opposite their bed. "Nothing outside is clear anymore." He sounded slightly panicked. Maria guessed it was understandable - he'd never experienced vision that was less than perfect. So he couldn't deal with this.
"Here." She handed him her glasses, since they were now useless to her. "These might help for a while."
He slid them on gratefully and she glanced at him, feeling enormously turned on. She'd never seen him in glasses before (he'd always been reluctant to try hers on, although she had offered on more than one occasion), and he looked unspeakably sexy. They took the intimidating edge of his stunningly good looks, making him slightly more approachable, but even more gorgeous.
"Are they too strong for you?" she asked.
He shook his head. "Actually, they're a little weak." He squinted slightly through the lenses. "I guess I already must have progressed further than minus three."
Maria had come to a split-second decision. "When they check your eyes this morning, tell them to put the other chemical in, and stop your eyesight from getting any worse," she told him.
"Why?" Eric asked, puzzled. "I thought you wanted me to be minus ten, like you're going to be."
"I've changed my mind," Maria shrugged. "You know I don't care as much about how thick the lenses are. All that matters to me is that you have to wear glasses now. And it would probably be better if one of us could just about function without correction. Okay?"
"Fine with me." Eric said. He seemed relieved as he left for his examination, still wearing her glasses. Maria smiled. She really didn't want Eric's vision to get any worse. He was going to look completely sexy in any kind of specs, thick or thin lenses!
She couldn't wait until he had a pair of his own glasses to wear!
She went back to sleep - putting off getting used to her lenses for a while longer. She only woke up when Eric returned. "Hey," she murmured huskily, squinting at him. "You got it stopped?"
"Yeah," he nodded. He was still wearing her glasses, and still having trouble seeing through them. "I'd got to -5," he told her. "They said most people would only be at -2 by this point, I progressed a lot faster than they thought I would." He smiled at her. "Will you come and help me choose some glasses?"
"Of course," Maria grinned back. "I thought you'd never ask."
They walked downstairs, following the sign that said "Optical Store this way". Of course, both of them were having trouble seeing the signs, but they were illuminous pink, so were hard to miss. Luckily for the pair of them.
"Wow!" The optical store really was one of the most massive stores they'd ever seen. Not the largest optical store, one of the largest STORES ever. There seemed to be acres of space, crammed with millions of spectacle frames. How could they possibly make a decision?
Their problem was solved when an assistant approached them, realized their problem, and lead them over to a computer terminal. "This is a questionnaire," she explained to them, gazing kindly at them through her thick plus glasses. "You just touch the screen to answer each question and at the end, it will print out a list of frames you might like. Then I'll locate them for you so you can try them on and make a decision from that." She smiled. "Of course, you're free to just look around if you want - but it could take forever."
Eric and Maria sat down at the computer, and the assistant noticed how much trouble Eric was having reading the screen. "Here." She picked up a huge glass lens and slid it over the computer screen. It had little holes in it so that it was still possible to touch the screen to answer the questions. The lens magnified the writing and made it much easier to read.
The questionnaire involved questions about life style, career and colour preferences. The computer then took a snapshot of Eric's face (he had to slip Maria's glasses off to do so) and processed it internally, obviously assessing and discarding a large amount of the frame choices it had generated. Finally, it printed out a list of ten possibilities and the assistant went off to find them.
She took Eric over to a mirror and let him try on each pair, taking pictures of him in each one. After this process had been completed, Eric and Maria poured over the photos to gauge which frames would be the most attractive. They couldn't decide between the subtle wire-rims and more in-your-face dark plastic oblongs (he looked fantastic in both) so Eric eventually decided to get the two pairs.
"It won't take long to make them up for you," the assistant told them. "We'll deliver them to your room in an hour."
Sure enough, the glasses arrived exactly an hour later. The "delivery man" handed them over, made Eric sign for them ("You wouldn't believe how many delivery guys steal the glasses instead of delivering them") and left, telling them to ring down on their phone if there was any trouble.
Eric looked apprehensively at the two glasses cases sitting in front of him.
"Go on," Maria said softly, after he'd been staring at them for a while. "What's the matter?" she asked.
He took a deep breath. "It's just scary to think I actually need these now," he said softly. "That's all."
He selected the wire-rims, removed Maria's glasses, and slipped his very own new specs on his nose.
"Wow," he said pushing them up. "This is a new experience."
He turned and looked at Maria, and she smiled involuntarily.
"Wow," she murmured. "You look incredible, Eric."
His lovely dark eyes were minimised slightly behind the lenses, and the frames suited his face perfectly. She basically fell in love with him all over again. He glanced at his reflection in the mirror, and suddenly smiled himself.
"I like them," he said softly. "I really, really like them."
"Good," Maria said, taking him by the hand and leading them to the bed. "Now, let's see how durable they really are."
No comments:
Post a Comment