Dan's story

See No Evil

A blind boy's mother has convinced him that if he prays and is a righteous boy, God will reward him with sight on his sixteenth birthday, which happens to be April 1. She even buys him a car in preparation for the day when he still wakes up blind and she gets to yell 'April Fools!'


First off, there's some phrases and word choice that I enjoyed, such as the candle flames failing to even 'twitch' from Billy's 'explosive exhale' (vivid, and alliterative), Billy 'lava red in the face.' I like the setup for the following line here: "Billy couldn't believe what he was looking at. He saw nothing.' I think setup for the whole story is clever, almost as a joke itself with the last line serving as the punchline. But why is she so hateful? I didn't get a single hint as to why. I can speculate resentment, but that wasn't hinted at in the story, either. If it's simply a mystery, I suppose I'm willing to accept that. One obvious problem, easily solved: you keep tense shifting in the story. Given that the story takes place over the period of a year, it might make more sense to put in past tense, but then again it might not. Cheers.