“Sight Lines”, by Ophelia Hiney, was an intriguing fiction story that drew my eye as soon as I read the first sentence. In “Sight Lines”, a girl named Maurice is asked to test out a prototype of “Vision Sensing Goggles”, which are goggles designed for stealth operations. She is put in a dark room with other people and, using the goggles, needs to determine how many people are in the room. Each person that she sees is marked by a “sight line”. After multiple trials, Maurice counts twelve people in the room. This worries Derek, Maurice’s instructor, and the tension increases as people begin to panic and argue. After the trials, one sight line still remains in the testing room. Derek then calmly tells Maurice to leave the room immediately. He had only sent eleven people into the test room.
          I enjoyed reading the piece and did not expect the horrifying twist at the end. Ophelia leaves readers wondering who, or even what, is in the testing room with Maurice. The cliffhanger ending doesn’t tell us what caused the twelfth sight line, or of Maurice makes it out of the room alive. However, I liked the abrupt ending because it leaves us in suspense, forcing us to imagine the rest of the story ourselves. I thought that the concept of a prototype test gone wrong was creative, and liked the idea of the readers being left in the unknown.
         The descriptiveness and attention to detail added to the image being created, and increased the tension being built. Lines such as “...Maurice carefully marked each line of sight that shot through the dark in a vibrant pallor of sunset…” brought detail into the piece and made reading it feel more flowy and well-thought out. In conclusion, “Sight Lines” is a well-crafted, innocent piece turned into a suspenseful horrific test gone wrong.