The Eye Unseen

by Cynthia Tottleben

  “Mom. She’s been screaming all night and I can’t get to her room to see if she’s okay.”

  “Really? What’s going on with her?” I knew He already had all the answers and didn’t know if I was supposed to respond. I had no idea what was going on.

  “I don’t know. But she’s been hollering like she was dying. Tippy and I can’t stand it anymore.”

  “So why not ask her yourself?” God kept hold of my wrist while He climbed through the window.

  Tippy bolted for the bed again. She was silent this time as she hid under the box springs.

  “I tried, but the hallway floor was gone.”

  God chuckled.

  “Are you dehydrated again, Lucy? What do you mean, the floor was gone?”

  “It just wasn’t there. I almost fell into the basement when I started out of my room.”

  He helped me from the roof back onto solid flooring.

  “That sounds pretty serious. Let’s take a look-see, shall we?” God grinned at me and His teeth made me shudder. His eyes dropped to my chest again.

  I couldn’t help but squirm.

  We crossed the room together, His hand firmly grasping mine. God did not even hesitate when He opened the door.

  And of course, there was the floor. Perfectly intact. Making me look like a fool.

  “Do you sleepwalk, Lucy?” God smiled again, poking His toe on the wooden planks in the hall. They squeaked, and I realized that this was the only sound in the house. Mom had finished dreaming, or being boiled alive, or whatever had made her so distraught only a few minutes ago.

  “No.”

  “Well, let me tell you a story. Let’s have a seat, shall we?”

  God escorted me to my bed, the only place in my room for us to sit down. My tummy flip-flopped, anticipating the worst.

  “What do you think will happen if you try to jump off the roof?”

  I preferred hearing a story, but being interrogated about my behavior won hands-down over the other things I feared God would do to me.

  “I might break my leg. Or get hurt somehow.” I felt six years old.

  “Lucy, I know exactly what will happen to you. You have two alternatives: stick out this bad period with your Mom, which will end, eventually. Or climb out the window.” God put His arm around me, pulled me so close that I could smell His body odor. I wondered if He had to shower. His hair didn’t look greasy, but His skin reeked of something like cigar smoke.

  “If you climb out the window, it won’t be pretty. There’s not enough snow left to break your fall, and quite frankly, your body is in a hideous state. You’ve been ill for months and your bones will not hold up well. You’re an awkward child. If I hadn’t intervened just now, you would be lying on the ground with a compound fracture in your left leg and a broken hip.”

  “You can see that?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “Now, think about this. Your mother has never really proven herself a supportive parent. Do you think she’d take you to the doctor after that? To the hospital? How would she explain that the daughter she had sent away, who hasn’t been here for months, supposedly, fell off the roof? She wouldn’t. She’d either use the shotgun on you or put you back in the basement and leave you there until you died.”

  What a horrid thought. I couldn’t imagine living through that again, with all those injuries to boot. Surviving the darkness. Without Tippy. Without any hope this time. Just waiting to die.

  “Now, if you can just restrain yourself, Lucy, I promise that you will outlive your mother.”

  “Is she dying? She certainly sounds like it.”

  Of course, Mom had quieted down now that God was on the premises.

  “Promise me that you won’t go out the window.”

  I hoped Tippy heard Him. I didn’t want to defy God, and I was certainly tired of my dog prodding me to jump off the roof.

  “I want to hear it from you, Lucy. Promise me.”

  “Okay. I promise. But…what if I can get out from a downstairs window?”

  God stiffened His back. His hand moved to my thigh, where He tightened His grip.

  “This is the safest place for you. In the house. With your mother. You’ll know when the time is right for you to move on. And you won’t have to break out any glass to do so.”

  I dared look God in the eye. As soon as I made contact, He quit talking and had me plastered against the bed before I even noticed we had moved.

  “I just love good girls. Your pure little hearts. The sweetness that surrounds you like a whirlwind of sugar.” His lips pressed against my own. “I bet you even have on white cotton panties. No, not panties. Bloomers.”

  He undid my jeans and pulled them halfway down my legs in a second flat.

  “See! You do! Your mother was the same way when she was young, too. I just couldn’t stand it. She drove me wild, wearing those big old bloomers. It wasn’t until she got married that she switched from cotton to rayon, like that diamond on her hand warranted a change in fabric.”

  I closed my eyes. Tried not to disrespect God. Found myself muttering a prayer but then stopped when I realized my error.

  God had four hundred hands, and I could feel them all rummaging my skin at the same time. Three running through my hair, some massaging my back while others prodded my every part. For an instant, I felt encased in bliss and realized that this was why everyone loved God so much, why His creepiness was so far removed from the image portrayed in the Bible and all of the works generated thereafter. My breath stuttered, then wound so tightly that I had to gasp for any air I could find. I could reach the clouds. My every cell shouted with glee.

  And then his mouth met mine.

  I had never kissed a boy before.

  Or a piranha.

  God’s frightening teeth took horror to a new level when He attacked my lips, tearing into them like a wolf with a fresh kill. His fingers held me, thousands of grappling hooks ripping every muscle. The brief pleasure I had enjoyed fell aside, and this time I could not find breath because my fear had hidden it so well.

  When God stopped I gasped. He patted me on the back, acted concerned that I was practically drowning in my waterless room, lungs full of panic and unable to process my newfound oxygen.

  “Well, that’s enough for one night. Keep your promises, Lucy. Stay in the house. Don’t kill yourself trying to escape her.”

  His eyes widened and I felt myself, naked, sprawled in front of Him, then as He turned my clothes became visible again.

  I wiped the blood from my lips.

  Changed back into my nightgown.

  Crawled into bed.

  Mom was on her own tonight.

  Chapter 34

  Evelyn

  He tricked me, my devil.

  Led me by the hand like a star-struck child. With him I had gathered hundreds of souls. Caused unfathomable pain. Even giggled uncontrollably as he brought down the bolt that took out my own mother.

  Dare I say I’d fallen in love? With him, our whole lifestyle, the torment of being his wench?

  When I began to notice his distraction, I was infuriated. Had I grown too old for his desires? Was I not willing to do anything he commanded, no matter how vile? Did I not protest enough? Had he tired of my devotion? Did he only want a woman he had to tame into submission, not one stretching the boundaries of her own soul to remain by his side?

  First it was a shriveling of our camaraderie. I remember it exactly. We were in Cambodia, trolling the rainforest, a breathtaking adventure on its own. But when we stumbled upon a group of men hunting deep within the veil of the trees, we decided we would have days of fun and take their minds long before they took their final breaths.

  Kind of a vacation for us, if you will. A safari.

  Our adventure started with almost jokily hiding their supplies, making weird noises that set their hair on end, playing old childhood ghost-story games that paralyzed them with fear.

  I had taken over while my lover tended to his more
professional duties. He had left me like this many times, running off to some backward country to motivate insurgents or help a politician wallow in the sleazy alleyways of his own mind. I was used to that.

  But when he came back, when I had all five men staggering around in pain and fear, while I had spent my time moving them like puppets through the dense foliage and waiting for my companion to come back and help me finish them off, when he came back he was bored.

  We were in the heart of action.

  “Look at that fool!” I laughed, pointing at one wretch as we watched from our seat in the canopy.

  The man was minus a foot. He had lost it the day before, when our game of cat and mouse had ratcheted up a notch and he barreled into the river in an imprudent attempt to escape me. A Siamese crocodile, who had been eyeballing us for quite some time, decided to make a snack of him. The hunter had a healthy set of lungs on him and had survived the croc’s attempt to roll and drown him. Of course, it didn’t hurt that I was at the other end, yanking the creature’s tail. I wasn’t about to let him steal my new toy.

  I wasn’t done playing.

  The hunter was on a slow trip to Hell. His mind was disintegrating, unable to handle both the fear and agony of his condition. He hobbled through the difficult terrain, his leg bent at the knee, the flesh below it ragged and yellowing. Still, he fared better than his companions.

  One had become a pincushion. Only hours earlier he had suffered a vicious attack of hornets, thousands of them leaving their mark on his skin. He was barely alive, hunkered down by a tree, begging death to find him.

  “Oh, you do it.” My lover waved his hand at me.

  “But I’ve been waiting for you to finish him off.”

  I probably shouldn’t have spoken so boldly. My prince was quick to scold me, his taloned hand raking my cheek. “You do it!”

  And I did.

  I finished while he sat back, criticizing my work, punishing me when he deemed fit. Which was often.

  His distraction was obvious. I couldn’t help but wonder, what had happened on the global front? The big picture? But I dared not ask.

  “I’m bored with this.”

  Our time together, done, just like that. We were in Cambodia and then back in the States, standing in the back yard of my niece and her family.

  “Now, this is entertaining.”

  Her child played among the flowers. What was she, five? Maybe six?

  “She’s a relative.” I didn’t understand yet why we were here.

  “Oh, I know. She’s one of my good girls. Look at how sweet she is. Don’t her eyes just shine with delight?”

  He lit up like a proud parent. I hadn’t known him to go after such young flesh, unless he was unnaturally hungry. But this time my lover stared at the girl like she was the next in line to join his harem.

  Was I jealous or just indignant? Did it bother me that he stared at her innocent flesh and wanted to own it?

  The answer was clear.

  I was enraged. Joan looked up at us, invisible to her, her eyes piercing my heart, as if she could see straight through me, even though she didn’t know we were there. I wanted to crush her skull. Dig out her eyeballs. Let her know that he was mine!

  “This is the one,” My master informed me, his face beaming.

  My heart dropped.

  “Really? The one to replace you?” I asked.

  Joan’s long hair rose with the wind, flying back from her face. She twirled in the yard, spinning around in circles, until dizziness overtook her and she fell upon the ground in hysterics.

  “No. The one who will bear her. Look at her fine skin. The happiness in her eyes. I can’t wait to destroy it!”

  For a second I felt relief. He wasn’t here to convert Joan to his wicked ways or to covet her body. We were just there to look at the child. To laugh at her future death.

  “She will grow up to be beautiful.” Although disappointed, I tried to sound supportive.

  “Well, until I get my hands on her. Then she won’t be much of anything after that!”

  He suddenly became very interested in me again. I had my uses, and I understood that.

  But I couldn’t shake my sorrow.

  He rattled on about Joan endlessly. Her perfection. Her glow. Her eagerness to please, one of his favorite qualities in girls and women.

  I put on a good act but knew he could see straight through it.

  For months we spied on the child. He spiced our days with occasional forays into soul-catching, but neither of us had the same passion for it. My companion was obsessed with his new plaything, and my heart shriveled each time we visited.

  “Did you really believe I’d choose you?” He asked me once, after a week-long tryst with his friends had left me close to death.

  “Yes.” My honesty turned instantly into shame at my weakness.

  “But you are nothing without me.”

  Did I know that already? Somewhere, in the recesses of my heart, I understood this to be the complete truth.

  My flesh was wracked with pain. Every breath I took seemed to be my last. Yet he insisted I continue to give him pleasure. Was he the only thing that kept me alive?

  “You have served me well, Evelyn. Even when you were a teenager and I wore your father’s flesh, you gave yourself to me. You have done what I’ve wanted and born up to the consequences when you’ve let me down. But being a whore doesn’t make you the woman I’ve been looking for. Taking orders doesn’t make you a leader. Flinging souls into the abyss is fun, especially when you work as a team, as we have. But what we’ve got going is a war. You need wits. You need backbone. You need aggression. And you, quite frankly, fall short in all three categories.”

  I tried to let go.

  To whisper myself away.

  But I knew it could never be so easy.

  He would decide when I would die.

  And it certainly was not now.

  Chapter 35

  Lucy

  I approached Mom in darkness. She was moaning in her sleep, and I thought it would be rude to flip on the lights and wake her. I also didn’t want her eyes to open to the treachery of my hair. Stealth and I had become good friends.

  Her room was trashed. If she had been killing chickens again, she had had to chase these all over the furniture and maybe up a wall or two. The chair from her vanity caught my left foot while I tried to tiptoe into her room, and my tray with her breakfast went flying. I lay, sprawled on the floor by her bed, waiting for her belt or something worse to meet my skin after making so much noise.

  “No! Not again! I can’t take it anymore!” Mom started sobbing. Her voice sounded like my fifth-grade teacher’s, scorched and scratchy after decades of heavy smoking.

  I was terrified. Did I let her know it was just me? Did I take ownership for breaking into her bedroom and dropping oatmeal on the floor? Or was comforting her the better solution?

  “Please, just kill me this time,” Mom begged.

  “It’s only me, Mom. I thought you were sick and I brought you breakfast, but I fell over this chair and dropped it.”

  “Brandy? Sweetheart?”

  My heart plummeted. Now my betrayal had doubled. I was skulking about in the dark, hiding my appearance, and I wasn’t my sister, the one she loved.

  “No, it’s me, Lucy,” I practically whispered.

  She met me with silence.

  “I don’t want to be served by the devil.”

  “I’m not the devil, Mom. I’m sorry I woke you up. I was just trying to take care of you.”

  “Get out of here. Go! Get away from me!” Mom raised her head from the pillow, but didn’t have the strength to hold it there for long.

  “Be careful if you walk over here. I can’t see to wipe up the oatmeal….”

  A pillow landed against my head.

  “Leave, you wicked spawn! Just let me die in peace!”

  “Okay, but if you decide you need anything, I’ll get it for you. I’m sorry you don’t feel wel
l today.”

  I backed out of the room. Made sure Tippy was in the hall before shutting the door. Worked my way downstairs with the wooden tray, eager to make my own breakfast.

  “I can’t let you out, sweetie. But I’ll put these newspapers over there and you can go on them.”

  Tippy and I both knew Mom would get furious with her for going in the house, even though it wasn’t her fault. We both stared at the big windows in the living room, and for once I wanted to throw a chair through one and climb out. But I remembered God’s words and kept my promise.

  “I don’t see how this can ever end well,” I told Tippy as I filled her bowl.

  We sated our hunger and went on a survival walk through the kitchen. Granola bars, dried fruit, Milkbones, and some of Mom’s favorite beef jerky all went into baggies so I could stash them under my mattress. We found a few more plastic bottles in the trash and filled them with water.

  “This time pack the right things,” Tippy insisted.

  “What do you mean by that?”

  She nodded at the knife drawer.

  I agreed, it was definitely time. And this was probably the best opportunity we’d have to find a good weapon.

  I snuck over to the drawer, in case Mom was listening to the floorboards creak and knew exactly where I was. Furtively pulled it open. Almost screamed when I realized it was empty.

  “Tip, they’re gone!” I whispered.

  We checked every place in the kitchen, but couldn’t find anything sharper than a regular dinner knife. As the day progressed, Tippy and I snooped through the downstairs and never found a sign of the whole array of kitchen paraphernalia we used to have.

  So we went to the attic.

  An amazingly bold move on my behalf. Tippy stood at the end of the ladder after I pulled it from the ceiling, standing guard in case Mom came. But, for some strange reason, I wasn’t even nervous about that.

  Just the darkness and creepy crawlies that awaited me at the top of the mini-stairway.

  The chickens were back and moved through the walls until they were gathered back by the attic door. They knew it was a forbidden zone in our house, and my behavior gave them quite a bit to squawk about.