William Royden

rendering him blind.

It looked like two frayed pieces of cardboard had been put over them and sealed there clumsily with several short strips of black tape.

There was a thick smear of dried blood on the side of his face, almost entirely obscuring one cheek.

I remember pointing at his face and being unable to form the right words to tell him what I was seeing.

He put a hand to his eyes to feel the tape and

when something struck me hard on my right side, so hard that I and my camera went flying.

My wind was knocked right out of me, and I fell to the cement.

It felt like a light human body had collided with me at top running speed.

And for the briefest instant, I know I felt human hair, long human hair.

Hair grazed my face, and I detected the scent of perfume.

The back of my hand was scraped, and there was a lot of pain, but I managed to quickly grab the camera and whip it all around me, trying to pick up a physical image of what had struck me.

There was nothing.

When the camera caught Cording in the frame again, no more than seven or eight seconds after I'd seen him with his eyes taped, that tape was gone, and so was the blood smearing his cheek.

He tried to help me to my feet, but I pushed him away.

I lay there for a few minutes, trying not to cry.

Cording and I exchanged no words.

I checked the camera, and it was all right.

When I started to rewind the tape to watch the last minute of it, Cording assured me I would see nothing that explained what had happened.

And it was true.

But the camera had at least caught, incontrovertibly, the black tape on his eyes, his confused reaction to my shock, and the sound of a body slamming into mind as I lost all control of the frame and the picture went askew.