Third Eye pt II

Third Eye II

by Graham Swanson 

Ralph wrapped his Third Eye. too much flooded his vision. Even when he closed his predominant eyes, the third stayed open and it showed him sights both beautiful and horrible. He saw wings on the gas station clerk. He saw a child as an old man.But he kept it hidden. Hidden under wraps and bandaids and the brim of a hat. He hoped it would halt the power of the Third Eye but he could feel it pulsing in its socket. He could still see outlines though the gauze, and the hat he wore quickly became tight and hot. 

The Third Eye tried to focus, and when it couldn't it hurt his eyes, his mouth, his ears, and skull. Sometimes it opened on its own, and closed on its own. But then he saw a woman running for mayor. He saw her on fire. So bright was the flame that he saw it through the wrappings. The eye focused so hard that he felt a screw twist into his brain. He made a doctor's appointment. It hurt so much that he decided the sight was not worth the pain and embarrassment. The x-rays came in. The doctor didn't believe what he saw.

"I want it removed." Ralph told him.

"That's the strangest defect I've ever seen." The Doctor pointed at the x-ray with a pen. "It's not just connected to your brain, but your other eyes, your tongue, your ears, your fingers... even your nervous system." 

-

 Ralph didn’t feel so random anymore. Everywhere he went he felt eyeballs focusing on the splash of color on his shoulder. He kept it under a bandage under a gauze wrapping under a ball cap. Still he felt them stare. As if the third eye called to them. When it wanted out, it throbbed in its socket like a key stuck in the lock, it pulsed until Ralph’s head hurt, sending ripples of shiny silver and crimson down his field of vision. At times it even pulled at his brain  as it tried  to open.

Like when he walked past the yellow tape. He could still smell the ashes of the church that burned down. The Third Eye felt like it was cracking his skull open. Even as he walked past. He hoped the eye would relax and shut again, but he felt its pupil scratching at the fibers he bound his forehead with.

Then while at the fast food place, he saw a cute girl. Big eyes, long back, windswept hair, small nose ring. He wondered if the eye could tell him anything about her. While ordering food he took the cap off, and loosened a layer so he could see her shadow through the fog. But the eye remained shut no matter how hard he tried to get it to open. The encounter only weirded the girl out.

“What happened in that fire?” Ralph asked the eye.

He drove to the gas station. The eye became alert here. He saw a trucker stuck in a tornado. He saw a cop with his foot stuck in a bear trap. He saw a young boy with a red mark on his forehead. Then he saw Mrs. Tabitha Slugger walk through the doors. Ralph loosened the bandage again. It didn’t just pull to be opened as it had before. He could feel its pupil widen, as if a ratchet loosened on his forehead. It wanted to see her. So Ralph bent his head that way, it could see the outlines of flame, the spikes of a torture bed, and the door or an Iron Maiden. A man in a shadowy hood, high and pointed, stood behind her.

“Fuel on pump 4” She said to the gas station clerk.

The clerk has bright, heavy wings protecting his body.

Ralph almost didn’t notice because he was using his third eye to focus. But in his normal vision, Mrs. Slugger held a business card. Before he left she left it there.

“Slugger for Mayor.”

The mayor closed the pool down last summer. It was the only fun activity for kids to do in town, and doing so was widely unpopular. He hid from the public ever since they caught him watering his grass at 4am during the water restrictions. Vandals even came along and poked holes in his hose.

Ralph watched Slugger leave. He thought he saw the pointed headed man hold a needle in his hand.

Ralph stepped aside to hold the door open for her. She smiled. The pointed headed man glared in silence.

-

He made it home, swimming in sweat from the summer humidity. It kept going up and up. Water limits implemented daily. What did trickle out of the sink was gray and bitter. He bought bottles of water and hoped a storm would break the heat someday.

But more exhausting than the heat was the tension under the Third Eye. Once the door was shut, he checked the windows, then closed the curtains. He took off the hat and unpeeled the bandgages. The eye still didn’t open. It lay there rolled up in fluid and flesh as soft as cotton. He rubbed it with his palm. He massaged his temples. He felt the eye start to split.

He walked into the bathroom, flipped on the switch, and stood in front of the mirror. The eye liked the mirror. It came open and rose to the surface of the socket. Its eyelid unfolded and a bright pupil opened up in the glare of the mirror.

It loved the mirror. Every chance it got it scanned the mirror. It looked deep into itself, ogling its own cornea. Ralph not only saw his own haunting shadow, but he almost sank into the glass. A million Ralphs stood alongside him. Each one asking a different question, but receiving the same answer from a great golden eyeball that was the size of the sky.

Knock knock went the door.

Ralph knocked over items on his sink. He opened the case behind the mirror and took out another bandaid. He shut out the light, covered the Third Eye, and hoped the visitors would go away, but they didn’t. They kept knocking louder and louder. He took the first thing he saw. A cardboard box. He set it over his head, and answered the door, yawning, and holding a tv remote.

At the door was the redhead from next door. A teenage girl who was always getting in trouble. With her around, the eye sank into the socket and rolled up in a blanket of tissue.

-

Ralph sat beside the clear water of a muddy creek. Cliffs above him where the water once carved deep edges on the rocks above the trees. It was once a passageway for whales and mammoths. Now unless it rained up north, it was too shallow to fish in. 

He wondered what this eye meant. It came open when he crossed the flame-scared ruin of the abandoned church. It was like a drill into his head. It drilled deep into his brain meat, into the cone of spinal neurons. It hurt him until his hands balled into fists. It still hurt even when the eye closed. He cried from the pain. Tears streamed down his cheeks. 

It reminded him of his days working in the limestone quarry. How the guys would play croquette with their hammers. Tapping stone blocks and sending balls rolling to holes in the dust coated gravel. 

He plucked a worm from the thawed mud, and hooked it onto his rod.  He hoped to relax here and contemplate the sights of the Third Eye. More so, if it was connected to his brain and eyes and ears and tongue and fingers, then it must be possible to control. 

He tried to close his eyes but something kept them up. He covered them with a blindfold. He put gum in his mouth so that it would stay shut. He plugged his ears, and put on gloves. Once closed, the Third Eye unfolded from its roll of gray matter, fat, and fascia. He cast the line into the deep end where the ground washed away a century ago. The line sank beneath the gap where no light touched the bottom.

He spent hours talking to fish, to the rocks at the bottom of the water, to the leaves of the tree he leaned against. The third Eye finally awoke. It peeled open and rose from his skull to bask in the sunlight. He felt dragonflies whizz by. He felt the dandelions waver in the breeze. He felt sand shake off his jeans when he uncrossed his legs. Hawks high above him soared by. He felt their eyes on him. He spoke to all things and to something he could not speak to. Some things wander in the sunlight, but some things are not just hidden from it. They appeared to Ralph clouded in shadow and blood.

He opened both eyes and tore off his blindfold. The Third Eye saw it and focused so hard that the hemispheres of his brain crashed together. Pumps of raw vessels over his scalp became highways of pain. The stone hammers of the quarry hit his skull on all sides. He screamed out into the country sky so loud that farmers got out of their trucks to hear it. 

It was there. He saw it. 

A white hand floated in the water.

Muddy footprints led up the rocks.

Ralph followed the steps from the quiet of the creek, to the scorched ruins where gashes in the skeleton of the old church screamed back.