The Eyes Have It...

This is a story that is probably best told through pictures and video than in written form. Since I have no photos to offer, I will try to paint the picture using the theater of the mind.

Imagine, if you will, one day waking up from a restful dream only to find one or more of your body parts has gone missing. This story is not about organ robbers and people waking up in a bathtub full of ice, missing a kidney, with a telephone taped to one hand and 9-1-1 on speed dial.

This is an exploration of the self. What makes us who we are? Are we the sum of our parts or is it the other way around? When we lose a part of ourselves, does a part of our soul die as well, that is, if you believe in a soul? DNA is in every fiber of our being; whose road map of what we are is indelibly marked and differentiates us from someone else. Yet, as the cell has the amazing and mysterious ability to replicate itself, so too does it have the master plan to recreate any other part of itself. What if, one day, it decided to secede from the union and venture forth autonomously? As a sentient being of free will, it breaks from the bonds of its host and seeks a new life filled with adventure and new experiences. Will it seek to return to its place of origin out of necessity? Can it live comfortably out of the bonds of the whole being? To what lengths will the incomplete being struggle to get part of itself back? This is our story…

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It is late at night in a darkened bedroom. A man sleeps peacefully on his back unaware of what is about to happen...

His eyes slowly open and scan across the room. When the eyes detect that the time is right, the eyelids open wider to reveal their color and the bloodshot veins are now visible. The eyes are now wide open and slowly continue to scan across the room. Without warning, the eyes extend further, past the eyelids and eventually we see two eyes fully distended in a Tex Avery caricature of the man. (Tex Avery’s cartoons famously depicted characters whose eyes pop out of their head when they see something of significant interest, usually a hot girl) With an audible “pop”, “pop”, sound, the eyes slowly inch their way, like a pair of snails, across the face and onto the bed sheets below. The person only stirs lightly as the eyes freeze in place, so as not to disturb the sleeper…

With a couple of wet “splats”, the eyes land on the floor below and make their way downstairs. A few quiet “thud, thud, thud’s”, are heard as the eyes descend the staircase. What mischief is in store for them?...

Just then, the sleeper awakes to a completely dark room. He uneasily makes his way to the bathroom and tries the light switch. Nothing seems to work. Frustrated with this apparent overnight blackout, the man attempts to take care of business by Braille. Once finished, he cautiously makes his way back into bed. In what seems like seconds later, his alarm clock goes off and he springs out of bed to shut it off. In doing so, he stumbles in the darkness, trips, and falls flat onto the floor with a deafening “thump”…

The eyes look upward from the television at the source of noise, briefly, and then continue watching “The View”…

With the alarm still shrieking in the background, the man tries in vain to locate the source of sound. With arms outstretched, he knocks over a reading lamp, the alarm clock, a pile of books, and finally, a half-filled glass of water which proceeds to fall to the ground in a million wet pieces. This poses a challenge for the man as he is not wearing his bunny slippers his mom got him last Christmas. Barefoot and blind, the man cautiously navigates his way through the glass to find the alarm clock…

The eyes, one balancing on top of the other, are downstairs trying to open the refrigerator…

The alarm clock, finally located, is silenced by a swift toss at the wall. “CRASH!!!”…

The eyes look up quickly again, lose their balance, and fall to the floor with another wet “splat”…

Blind and confused, the man finally realizes what has happened. He slowly navigates himself to the hallway at the top of the stairs. Just as he is about to grab the handrail, he steps into a wet puddle of eye slime and tumbles down the stairs “THUMP, BUMP, BOOM, CRASH!!!”…

The man gets up, slowly, and makes his way around the house. He listens intently as he tries to find his eyes. The sound of a distant lawnmower, a few birds, and children playing outside made it a little more difficult to listen for clues. Just then, he heard some shuffling in a corner…

The eyes were enjoying a game of poker. Their wet muscle tissue held their cards tight as they snuck occasional cheating glances at each others hand. Neither of them had anything good…

The man reached down, grabbed the eyes, and went upstairs to rinse them off. After refreshing his eyes, he popped them back in his skull and closed his eyes tightly. When he opened his eyes, he scanned the bedroom and surveyed the mess…

The man crawled back into bed and drew the covers back over his head. After taking a relaxing, deep breath, he said, “Okay, can you give me a hand with this?”…

His hands popped off and began to clean up the mess. One held the brush, the other, the dustpan. When they finished tidying up, they returned to their wrists and spent the rest of the morning in bed…

…and they all lived happily ever after…

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Chapter Eight

Heroin - The Velvet Undergroun...

She walked in with a shit-eating grin on her angelic face. This woman, however, was no angel by any stretch of the imagination. This was Brianna, a photographer’s assistant.

She gets paid to photograph people in their homes doing what we don’t really want people to see. She sees this behavior as being for the good of humanity because society is so caught up in taboos and social stigma. She sees the camera as being the ultimate tool for showing us reality as it is, not how we want it to be. She views it as a better reflector than a mirror when it comes to viewing ones soul. She could also be seen as your basic perv.

I’ve known her ever since I moved here. She always comes to hang out and to catch up on the local gossip. She saw this place as the deep, dark underbelly of the city and she wanted to scratch it.

The local talent was breathing into the open microphone as the barrista yelled at someone in the telephone. The breathing led to something about a bicycle tire with green fur on it. I took my drink outside for a little air...

Chapter Seven

Java Jive - The Ink Spots

Nothing compares to the bitter Joe served down at the Phoenix.

It's a transcendental experience.

A meditation.

Time,

stops.

I sip slowly.

The aromatic curls of vapor waft through my nostrils.

Like so many fingers, tracing the lines of my haggard, sleep-deprived face.

Sip.

Pause.

Sip.

Pause.

Sip.

Pause.

There is great solace in this ritual.

That is,

until she showed up...

Chapter Six

Beside You In Time - Nine Inch...

I felt as if I were watching a movie. I couldn’t believe I didn’t say a word to him while he was there. Bernie never even looked at me. He never bothered to scan the store to see who was watching him. This wasn’t the withering old man who kept to himself. This man who I only casually greeted at best, an invisible ambiguity, was here now standing prominently amongst us. He seemed like he had somehow sloughed off the old shell of who he used to be to reveal a newborn man. Then he just flew away, without looking back. That was so weird. I walked over to the store owner.

“You know that guy, the guy that just left here a minute ago.”, I asked.

“I see a lot of people come through here all day.”, he replied as he continued to replace the various magazines in the newsstand. He thought for a minute. “That old guy comes here maybe once a week, if that. He never cause nobody any trouble you know, he just do his own thing, see. He just come in, get his shit, and leave. Why? You a cop?”, he smiled.

“Nah. You see, I live next to him and he seems like an okay guy. Doesn’t talk much, but I don’t know. I was wondering if he told you anything or do anything out of the ordinary that you can think of that didn’t seem normal?”

“Well, he smiled at me.”, the store owner quipped.

“What, you mean he was trying to pick up on you something.”, I smiled back.

“I don’t know. Maybe he just had a really good breakfast. I don’t know. Why? What the hell do you care? He’s just like any other nut that walks in here. Come on, I got other customers waiting.”

A couple of kids were waiting at the counter with a gallon of milk. I walked outside and sat on the steps. As I took a big swig of juice I could see the firetrucks pull away. A firefighter was sitting on the curb next to the ambulance, oxygen mask in hand. Apparently the conditions in Bernie’s apartment were a little too much for him. You’d figure a guy who is used to picking up the inside of some person’s head off the side of the road could deal with a little stink. Must be a new guy.

Another mystery still remained. Who or what in Bernie’s apartment caused the stench? Enough wonder, time for action. I popped the last doughnut and straightened myself to seek the truth. Just as I did however, I noticed a dark Chevy Nova parked in the alley by the store. Two dark looking men with sunglasses were staring straight at the apartment I was headed to. I tried not to pay any attention to the men as their attention had turned to me. Their stoic faces pierced the tinted glass of their car. I gingerly walked across the busy intersection to avoid a confrontation.

As I returned to the scene of Bernie’s apartment, I saw the landlady crying on somebody’s shoulder. She didn't see him across the street. I went down to her and asked about what happened .

“Oh Bernie! Oh Bernie how could you do this to me.”, she wailed. “I thought he was such a nice man. Always paid his rent in advance. Never caused no trouble to no one. Just when you think you know somebody, something like this happens. Why this? Why my Bernie?”

Some of the neighbors took her inside her room to comfort her. Somebody called for a pizza for her. Food always seemed to soothe her no mater what. I saw Donna who lived three numbers down from me. She said that his apartment was filled with all sorts of insects, bugs, and dead things. The place was turned inside out, trash everywhere. It’s a wonder that nobody noticed a stink before. She said animal control would have to come by and clean up the mess.

Well. This turned out to be just another day in my life to reflect upon when I’m older, sitting on some front porch, having a drink, thinking, “God, I’ve made it this long. Is this as good as it gets?”, moments before I have a stroke and die. Life marches onward.

So I get to thinking about how the hell I ended up here. In this rat-hole of a city that, for some reason, attracts other rats like myself. Where’s the cheese, man? Is this some laboratory maze with some bald guy in a white suit and spectacles looks down at us and just waits to see what we’ll do next?

I outstretch my middle fingers to the sky and wait. It feels good to rebel against something valued, yet, as intangible as a fleeting thought, only to react to it in a concrete sense just to give the thought validity in it’s creation. God made man, but a monkey supplied the glue.

An old lady walked by with her dog. “That’s very rude, young man”, she said clutching her pooch under the folds of her pink sweater. As she passes by, I redirect my birds in a different flight pattern toward her.

Enough fuckery. Time to get a move on...

Chapter Five

All The Love In The World - Ni...

Thousands of cockroaches floated out of the apartment door as the fire crews worked to put out the source of the smoke. The smell was too horrific to describe in detail. It just smelled of death. I had finally recognized the odor of spoiled meat. Making my way through the gawkers, I peered through the doorway. I could see some of the firefighters kicking things around. A few papers and more cockroaches floated outward to the street. The fire crews apparently put whatever was smoking, out.

After a few tense moments, the firefighters walked out one by one with a sullen look on their faces. One of the fire crew quietly spoke with the police officers on site, at which point the officer was visibly disgusted. After the raw sewage cleared the doorway, the police officers then slogged their way past wet clumps of debris and filth. I saw that they were walking into what appeared to be an indoor garbage dump.

Bernie had lived for years, unbeknownst to anyone, in a pile of filth. He had given up any interest in housekeeping and just let the crap pile up, literally. I remember seeing stories on the news about people who live in slum-like conditions, sleep in cat feces and dirty diapers. The thought that something like that was in our community almost made me gag.

But what about Bernie? Jesus. How long was he in there? Is he dead, eaten alive by cockroaches? Just thinking about that turned my stomach. I could imagine his rotting corpse clutching an old photo of him and his wife as cockroaches ate his blackened flesh.

So. Time for breakfast. My stomach was killing me, I needed some food, but this lovely experience was making me a little ill. I went down to the corner store to pick up some mini-donuts and a thing of orange juice to take with me.

As I looked back at the firetrucks, cop cars, and the ambulance, I thought out loud, “What a lousy way to go." Billions of years of evolution...generation after generation...struggling to survive...to be the only species on our corner of the boundless cosmos to experience life, the lives of others, and love...and to tragically lose love and just gave up on life and the people around you...to just rot away to oblivion. "What a waste. You poor bastard.”

“Tell me about it.”, said Bernie as he closed the refrigerator door, bottled water in hand. I just stood there, amazed. He was dressed in his best suit, left hand buried deep the pocket of his newly pressed slacks. The curious side of me wanted to ask him about the filth, the smell, the smoke and the cockroaches, but I got the impression something was happening that I probably didn't want to have any part of. I just watched. He paid for the water and took a moment to stand at the steps of the quickie-mart. He took a swig as he looked across the street at what was happening. He seemed to have a casual air about him. After a few brief moments, he swiftly ducked into an expensive new car that was parked out back and drove off as if nothing had ever happened. I thought I saw someone sitting in the passenger seat through the darkened windows...

Chapter Four

Right Where It Belongs - Nine ...

It is said that when a person falls in love with their soul mate, there is an unbreakable bond that can never be compromised by any other person. The joining of two souls is the strongest element on earth. However, if the bond is broken before its appointed time, the souls fall into a state of chaos. An eagle cannot soar with only one wing. When this type of tragedy occurs, a human feels less human, incomplete, and useless. A deep depression sets in with little to no hope in sight. A person can just give up on life if there is no reason to get out of bed in the morning.

This was the unfortunate tragedy of Bernie...

Chapter Three

The Great Below - Nine Inch Na...

I awoke the next morning with a searing pain in my nostrils. Recalling back to the sepia toned childhood memories of sunny days, ants skittering about on a sidewalk, and Dad’s magnifying glass, I detected the faint aroma of burning insects. It's most likely my sexagenarian neighbor, cooking what I could only guess was some form of meat. Rancid bacon perhaps? Even when he’s burned it at it’s worst, bacon still retains some pleasant aroma that reminds you of songwriter Jimmy Dean, strumming a guitar with a devilishly sinister grin. The stink, however, was unbearable.

I threw on some shorts and a T-shirt and lumbered across to the apartment where the stink was. The sun was out with a few clouds, not a bad morning, but a hell of a way to wake up. As I made my way down the stairwell I noticed that the smell had attracted a few other annoyed neighbors. I’ve never seen such a motley collection of humanity. A couple of kids were running around squealing and chasing each other with loaded cap guns. Older gentlemen were standing around in their stained undershirts and black socks. Why is that such a popular fashion combination indigenous to older generations? Some of the more obese women were wearing discolored and worn out bathrobes with holes just big enough for you to catch a glimpse of their pasty, dimpled thighs as they complained about one thing or another. Each of their faces were painted in grimaces of disgust. A fitting visual image for such a wretched odor.

The tenants made a few more attempts to get the attention of their elder neighbor, of whom to this day they hadn’t seen anyone pay the old man a visit.

Bernard had lived a very quiet life, in that apartment for well over 20 years. He lived alone, never had any parties, never said as much as "hello" if you passed him by on the stairs. He’d just give you a crooked smile and quick, gravelly grunt. It was said that he lived in New York for a number of years with his late wife. She was the daughter of an oil tycoon and upon the death of her father, she stood to inherit over a million dollars after taxes. Bernie didn’t want any part of his wife’s inheritance due to some disagreement he had with her father. One night, in a heated argument, his wife got in their car and drove off. The police found her car the next day on a country road wrapped around a tree with part of her lifeless body still inside. It seems she lost control of the vehicle on a sharp turn and spun out, or so they thought. I’m always a skeptic. He truly loved his wife and nothing else. All he ever wanted was her, not her money. It is unclear as to what Bernie did with the money. According to local legend, it's said that he burned it all in an attempt to exorcise the ghost of his late wife. Since then, he had led a very lonely and squalid life.

This morning, all attempts to get his attention were to no avail.

Rumors of what was happening in his apartment were spreading like wildfire. People were saying that he was cooking “Vietnamese Style”, others were implying that he just fell asleep and left the stove on. Some were voicing concerns about having their apartments burned down because of his carelessness. A few neighbors were whipped into such a frenzy that they ended up calling the cops.

By the time the cops showed up, there were visible signs of some type of smoke coming from the cracks of his door. Immediately, the cops called in to the fire department for backup. Within moments, the fire engines arrived and firefighters were unfurling their hoses to douse the possible fire. With the entire apartment complex as audience, the fire fighters kicked down Bernie's door as clouds of stench visibly billowed forth. Everyone cupped their hands over their mouth's as the fire crew cautiously pressed in.

A few tense moments later, they came back out, faces forlorn, some retching on the porch.

Everyone squealed in horror by what happened next...