With a quiet, intimate, almost obscene squelching sound, Ray pulled out his glass eye. I flinched.
"Disgusting," I said, letting the word slip out of my mouth unthinkingly. "Sorry." I'd never seen anyone with a glass eye before. Not to my knowledge, at least. I'd seen people who were blind in one eye, with that strange, not-quite-looking-at-you gaze that was so disconcerting, their two eyes pointing in slightly different directions. That was unnatural enough. I found myself trying to look anywhere but at the empty eye socket, and couldn't look up until he'd put on a black eyepatch, pirate-like. I tried not to watch as he cleaned the glass eye in some kind of sterile solution, his fingers caressing the false iris, the pupil that was solid and would never open or close.
Ray put the now-pristine eye in a small rack like an egg tray, filled with about twelve other glass eyes of the same size but different colors: hazel, mud-brown, icicle-blue, an inhuman violet, cat-green; all with a strange, luminous tiger-eye shimmer. The pupils came in different sizes, from relatively normal to huge and startled-looking. I suppressed an involuntary shudder, then let it out in a full-blown shiver when I felt Ray's hand land lightly on the small of my back. I turned to face him; he left his hand in place.
"No, I'm sorry," he said, finally. "I felt comfortable—I thought it wouldn't be a problem." He raised his eyebrows, contrite; the effect was somewhat spoiled by the presence of the eyepatch.
I reached one hand up, shaking, and ran a finger around the edge of the patch, slowly, feeling the taut, shiny skin there; down his temple and jawline; then reached around to cup the back of his head.
***
This week's piece was inspired by this photo by Flickr user phantom kitty. I don't actually know what it sounds like when you pull out a glass eye, nor have I ever inspected a glass eye in extensive detail, but that's why it's called "creative writing, eh? Check the usual suspects for more Flickr Fiction: The Gurrier, Isobel, Elimare, Chris, TadMack, Neil, and Valsha.
8 comments:
"You'll shoot your eye out!"
Sorry. I just had to add that.
cool, a nice short snapshot of a story.
Intimate... and obscene.
(Shudder)
I know somebody with a glass eye, if you'd like to find out what it sounds like.
Not really, thanks...in fact, I sort of disturbed myself writing this...but it was late at night and it was all I could think of!
Now that I think of it, how cool is it that he had VARIOUS colors and pupil widths!? An eye aficionado!
This was really well done - and disturbing.
Eew, you went all David Cronenberg on this one.
As a child I knew two individuals with glass eyes, one of whom would pop it out and leave it in your pint for you to find and the other, well actually they both did that. Thankfully only to adults. I guess the alcohol would kill the germs.
Creepy, and also kind of sweet. Nice one.
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