Immortal Eye

Okay here is one of my "horror shorts" for an upcoming illustated book.

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IMMORTAL EYE.

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Ever since I was a young boy, I've had a keen eye. I could see both near and far. I could even see birds hundreds of feet in the air on days too bright to look for them.

As I became a man, I was enlisted to take watch at the tower on the outer perimeter of Section Five. I was up both day and night — the team's sharpest eye.

One starless night while asleep, I was kidnapped by a rival troop. They knew about my eyes and how valuable I was to the team. They would have never caught me had I been awake. I am haunted by having slept at all that night.

For what happened next, I hardly wish to say. But I am compelled to say. The rival troop had tied me up tightly. They wound my arms and legs in rope, then bound my arms to my body. They allowed me, out of spite, the ability to see them.

What happened next was that they lashed me to a board, while already bound in this way. My head hit the board on my way down. Then one of the men dangled a stiletto blade in my eye.

The right one, he gently traced with his knife, carving and twisting out a white hot cone of liquid fire from my eye socket.

The left one, he tore out mercelessly. I felt the wetness ooze down my face.

And then, for a moment, there was nothing. But the real nightmare was about to begin.

When I woke up, I could not see my body. I seemed, in fact, to be a specimen under glass. I saw the men laugh as my eye crystalized in consciousness. I was somehow alive inside of my eye. Just my eye. My body was gone, and I was after everything, a ghost in an eye. My vision haunted me.

I would have lapses in consciousness. Anxious dreaming. I would see my team. Everything would seem fine at first, but as our day progressed, we would be constantly raided. I would wake from my dream by the men laughing.

After an eternity of dreams, I realized the pattern. I cannot, god help me, control my mind. I have to sleep, even while dead. I continued, haunted and embodied just in my eye, to dream. And these horrible dreams were being transmitted into the glass which caged my eye.

My dreams were telling all my secrets. My eye was being exploited for its visions of my team. The men could see it on the other side of the glass, like a crystal ball. They laughed at me every time I awoke from my visions.

I am so sorry my friends. But I have been unable to die, and release you from the curse of my memories. Please forgive me.