“Look me in the eye.”
“Which one?” I stammered.
“The… um… the big one.”
“This one?”
“Sure. That’s not the big one, but sure. No, stop. Just pick one eye and stay on it.”
“I can’t. There’s so many.”
“Oh my gosh,” the eyestalks quivered in anger.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “It’s just, well, very distracting. Why do you need so many eyes?”
“To see with.”
“I see. I mean, I see fairly well with just these two, but I suppose two eyes are better than one, which somehow makes four in total, I think—”
“What are you mumbling about!”
“Well, having more eyes gives you more perspective; I can grant that. But, aren’t you hogging eyes now? Like, they’re still all your perspectives. You’ve gained sight at the price of… um… insight? Is insight what I mean? You’ve got eyeballs up in the rafters and on the floor and everywhere else in between. I mean, most of your eyeballs are just facing each other at this point. You only have yourself to see.” I looked down at my feet, scratching my chin. There was another eyeball there, looking up at me. “There’s a reason to put blinders on a horse or why tunnel vision happens to people. Most of the time, if you need to focus, aim—I use only one eye myself.” I looked up and tried to find the big eye the monster had meant earlier, but pretty soon was lost jumping from one eye to another. “I get decision paralysis myself. I can’t, even now, choose an eye and stick with it to talk with you. How can you aim at anything with so many eyes? What is it you want?”
“I want you to stop getting distracted and listen to me.”
For a few moments, I kept jumping from one eye to another, each eye I happened upon looking angrier than the last. Finally, I threw my hands over my face and said, “Alright. I’m listening.”
The eyestalks quivered all around me like reeds shaken in an ominous wind.
“Alright then!” It shouted. “You and your cohort have done fairly well. I suppose, if it came down to it, I could crush you, but I’ve already lost too many eyes in the pursuit of yours. So, here’s my deal: I’ll let you leave if you each give me one of your eyes. Can you remember that?”
I nodded.
“Otherwise,” it went on, “I will wait. You will starve, grow weak, and when you cannot fight or even stand, I will come and take all your eyes for myself, leaving you blind, desperate, and doomed.”
“Blind, desperate, doomed,” I said. “Anything else?”
“No. That is my message.”
“Blind, desperate, doomed,” I repeated softly. My hands fell from my face and I blinked. “We have a message for you too, if you want. We wrote it down.” I pulled the letter from my pocket. “Would you like to see?”
Silence answered, and I presumed:
“I’ll open it, then.”
Unfolding the paper, I took a step back and laid it beside the little eyestalk which had sprouted between my feet. I watched it bend down and smiled. The air was filled with the staccato clicking of the jostling eyestalks as they all craned down to look at the glyph I had drawn. Then, as the eyeballs settled and a quiet fell over all, I began to ease my way off of the stage.
As I wandered up the aisle, it began to rain. A soft trickling, at first, it grew into a deluge of hot tears before I found my way out of the old theatre. I threw my shoulder into the door and was nearly trampled by the flood of eyes pushing their way in. Fighting my way past the slithering throng, I stepped out into the amber twilight of the ending day.
A cacophony of screeching and the din of shattering glass and creaking timber filled the air. Whence ever the eyes were, they came careening toward the theatre. They came to see what they would never understand, and what no amount of eyes could ever reveal. They came to dream.
Blinking as I moved from the darkness of theatre to the dying light of an ending day, I shaded my eyes with my hands looking across the street. There, I saw the shadow of a waving hand and what I could only guess at being a thumbs up. Nodding, I returned the thumb and, looking both ways, though come to think of it, everyone was dead and it was unlikely anyone would be driving down main street, walked across the street.
“Goddamned aliens,” I heard as I jumped up onto the sidewalk. “Thinking they can just come in here and steal our eyes.” I kicked at a can of gasoline and heard its hollow echo.
“I take it everything’s ready?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he said. “We’re just waiting till we’re fairly sure they’re all in.
We waited. Susie came by and broke the silence.
“Haven’t seen any new ones in five minutes.”
I looked over at Hank whose bandaged face was turned toward the theatre.
“Send it,” he said.
It had grown dark in the last hour, and the yellow flame of the gasoline soaked rag leapt into the night with a heartbreaking brilliance. I threw the bottle across the street at the old theatre. The façade quickly lit up as the fire swept over the whole building.
I could feel the heat from here even as the dark night’s chilly breath passed over me.
“Die,” I whispered into the night. I heard myself laughing. “Die,” my voice rose. “Die! HAHAHA, DIE!”
Then darkness enveloped me, and I entered a world of dreams. I dreamed that my finger was still bleeding, pulsing with pain as I drew The Yellow Sign in my blood. I felt Hastur’s smile in the darkness as the echoes of my mad laughter carried on and on into the fading visions.
Tale Told 