An old man, thin as a rake, with cheap Clicks Pharmacy reading glasses perched on his nose, was leaning on the counter, paging through Die Burger newspaper. When he looked up, Leon involuntary took a step back. The man had the most intense blue eyes, strikingly contrasting his tanned bony skull. But it wasn’t the colour of the eyes that stopped Leon in his tracks, it was the expression on the man’s face. His eyes were limp, blank, incarcerated by an unfocused daze. He stared straight through Leon into, what felt to Leon as if into a vast abyss of nothingness.

Louis Wiid, from upcoming Novel SUBMERGED