[Writing] The Eye (Part One and Two)

This is a parody of "The Nose" by Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol.

I whipped this up about an hour before it was due for class last week. It came out pretty good, in my opinion. I'll make a parody of parts two and three of "The Nose" this week and next so that I have a full movement story to turn in.

Warning: the story contains some strong language.



   On the 28th of July, a rather abnormal event occurred on Mt. Peteraltruist. On that morning Sam Tucker, a local fisherman in Peces Forest (or at least that’s what his nick name is, since no one remembers his real name anymore– it’s been long since faded off of the wooden sign baring a pair of crossed fishing rods and the words: “Also, Boat Rides Here.”) on that morning Sam Tucker woke up early to the smell of freshly burnt bacon and exploding eggs. He rose himself from the kitchen floor that he had drunkenly passed out on the night before, and saw his wife (a dignified but gluttonous lady with an insatiable appetite for fatty foods) cooking up a meal that no man on earth would find delicious except for her.

   “Woman,” he said, “I think I’ll skip breakfast this morning and just have some of that foul coffee instead,” – though in actuality he was quite ravished and eager to have both some coffee AND some breakfast. But his wife disproved of that sort of “greedy” attitude, and when it came down to the lesser of two evils, her coffee wasn’t nearly as lethal as her bacon.

   “Oh, that fucker…,” his wife thought to herself, “Fine, all the more food for me.”

   And she slammed an old cracked mug of coffee down on the table and slid it over to him, nearly sloshing some of the mysterious black liquid that she called coffee all over his pants.

   Not wanting to actually taste the foul drink, he clamped his nose shut, brought the mug up to his lips, and drank it all in one go. For a split second he scrunched his face up into a ball, trying to pull both his mouth and eyes out onto the tip of his nose, and then as he swallowed the horrid tar-like substance down, he gently put the mug back on the table as if it were a time-bomb that would go off if he didn’t do otherwise.

   He then realized how late in the morning it was and quickly went into his back room to pack his fishing rod and usual fishing gear. Usually at this time of year, there were loads of tourists coming to the nearby lake to go boating in the middle of the day, and if he didn’t get there early there’d be quite a crowd on the lake. He opened up a large tin of bait and scooped up a big cup of juicy, slimy, wiggling worms (many of which would sometimes find their way into the food that his wife cooked).

   He was just grabbing a lid for the cup when he noticed something odd about one of the worms on the top. Most of the worms he used for bait were usually a pale brown earthly color, but the worm on top wasn’t brown. In fact, it was deep red, and unlike the rest of the worms, it wasn’t moving. He probed it cautiously with a fishing hook – then poked at it with a finger.

   “Quite strange,” he said to himself, “What in the world could it be?”

   He reached in with his fingers, and pulled out – a regular old worm. He breathed a small sigh of relief and dropped it back into the cup. It only took him a second or two to realize though that he had simply pulled out the wrong one, and that the red one, the one he had meant to pull out, was still on top. He reached in again, grabbed the red worm by the end of its tail, and pulled out a slimy, dripping eyeball!

   “WHAT THE FUCK?!” he yelled, dropping the eyeball to the floor. For a second he couldn’t believe what he saw. He rubbed his own eyes (inadvertently smearing worm slime all over his face), and looked at it again. Sure enough, there was an eyeball on his floor. A small, moist, hazil eye that stared up at him and mocked him as though it were asking “What’s the matter? Is there something on my face?”

   A second later, his wife appeared in the doorway and saw the eyeball. “You stupid fuck!”, she shouted frantically. “Where have you gone and ripped out some poor bastard’s eye?! You stupid, drunken fucker! Why, I should go sick the police on you right this instant! You goddamned fuck, you! I have already heard from countless tourists who ride in your boat that you’ve nearly poked their fucking eye out flailing that fucking fishing rod of yours around!”

   But Sam Tucker wasn’t listening, for he had realized that the eyeball belonged to none other than Ian Blythe, a fairly famous photographer whom he gave a boat ride to every Monday and Friday.

   “Stop, damn woman! Look, I'll wrap it in some tissues, leave it in some unused fishing tin, and later, when it gets dark, I'll go out and toss it into the lake.”

   “Like hell you will! I’m not going to have some slimy eyeball lying around in my house! Oh, you stupid old fuck! You might be a good enough fisherman to be able to catch something without dropping the rod in the lake, but give it another ten years and you won’t even be able to cast a line out without throwing out your entire back. You stupid, fucking, worthless piece of shit! I should go call the police! Get it out of here, you stupid fucker! Go on, get rid of it! I don’t care how, just get rid of it, or I’ll kick your ass to kingdom come!”

   Sam Tucker stood dumbstruck. He mulled his poor sleep-ridden mind over for the longest of times, but for the life of him he didn’t know what to think.

   “God only knows how it wound up in my tin of worms,” he said, rubbing the back of his head in bewilderment. “I’m not sure whether I came home drunk last night or not, but even in my most drunken state, I wouldn’t have plucked out a man’s eyeball and stuck it in a tin of worms. It just doesn’t make any sense at all.”

   So he finished gathering his fishing gear in silence. He was terrified at the thought of the police finding the eyeball and arresting for murder or something worse. He could already hear the sirens of the police car and see the silver badges on the men’s chests — oh shit, their guns! He couldn’t help but shiver in fright.

   When he was finally ready, he put on his favorite fishing vest and cap, wrapped the eyeball in some Kleenexes, and left under a barrage of curse words from his wife.

   He got into his boat with one thought in mind: throw the eye out into the lake somewhere without anyone seeing, and go home for the day. Unfortunately, this was easier said than done because there were already dozens of boats out on the lake, and every time he thought the coast was clear to drop it in the lake, some passing boatman would suddenly glance his way and say “G’ mornin’, Sam!”. At one point of time, he had successfully dropped the rolled up ball of tissues into the lake, but then a friend of his noticed and shouted to him “Hey Sam! Better pick up yer garbage before the commissioner finds it and gives ya a fine!” and he was forced to reach back down and bring the soggy body part back onto his boat. Meanwhile, he was starting to get nervous and desperate as more and more boats appeared on the lake for midday fishing ventures.   

   Now, before I go any further with this story, let me tell you a little about the fisherman Sam Tucker, since I have said very little about the man himself thus far.

   Like seemingly every other American, Sam Tucker was obese. The only person in Peces Forest who was fatter than him was his own wife (who could easily have given a blue whale a run for its money). Half of the fish he ever caught got cleaned and cooked by his wife for a rather large supper, usually during which he would have to be drunk so that his senses were dulled enough not to actually have to taste it (since his wife had a habit of adding way too much lard and tended to burn it). The other half of what fish he caught got frozen and stored in the storeroom to be sold to the market. His wife refused to let him sleep in the bedroom while smelling of fish though, so he usually wound up sleeping in the storeroom with the fish as a pillow. He often wore a red cap with several bleach stains on it and a vest that was a size too tight for his plump frame.

   On the rare occasion that he gave a boat ride to a paying customer, he would often get complaints of how bad he smelled. Every once in a while when someone complained, he would “accidentally” smack them in the face with his fishing rod as he cast out a line. The photographer Ian Blythe was one of the biggest whiners he gave rides to. “God man, you smell as though you sleep with pigs!”, he would say to him, not realizing that this was not far off from the truth.

   When Sam finally found a quiet corner with no one watching, he quickly stood up and dropped the wrapped up eyeball over the side of the boat. It floated on the surface of the water for only three seconds before a large fish came and swallowed it whole. It suddenly felt like all of the problems of the world had just gone away in a single stroke, and he instantly felt as light as a balloon with the heavy worries now off his chest. It was over!

   He smiled and suddenly remembered a bottle of champagne that he kept hidden under the kitchen sink. Now was as good a time as any to pop it open and celebrate. He turned the boat around was about to go full throttle when he heard “HEY YOU!”

   Oh shit…

   In a boat not too far away was the fish and game commissioner Angelo Perkins, whom everyone liked to call “the Marshal”, since he had a habit of wearing a black cowboy hat and wore a gun at his side. The Marshal pulled up next to Sam’s boat and jumped aboard with ease.

   “Good Morning, Marshal!”, Sam said with a fake smile plastered on his face and a sea of cold sweat pouring from his armpits.

   “Don’t “good morning” me, Sam. What did you just toss into the lake?”

   “Why, just a bit of bread for the fishies. It was part of a sandwich that my wife made fer me, and I wanted t’ see if it would be any good as bait.”

   The Marshal shook his head. “Come now, Sam. Don’t try to fool me. You know as well as I do that that was no sandwich bread. Besides, even the fish wouldn’t dare take a bite of that horrid stuff. Now what was it that you threw overboard?”

   Sam started to twitch. “I tell ye what, Marshal. I’ll let you have the finest pick of my catch any day that you like. Cleaned and cooked myself. What do ye say?”

   “Please, I already have more people offering me fish than I care for, and at least theirs is two times better cleaned and ten times better cooked. Now, for the last time, tell me what was it that you threw overboard, or I’ll give you the maximum fine that I can.”

   Sam then turned pale and said —

   Well, no one really knows what he said. It has been lost and forgotten over the many years. What happened next to Sam Tucker shall forever be a mystery.

This pretty much combines parts two and three of the original story and ties it up differently. I almost forgot to submit this when I finished it.




   Now then, on that very same morning, renowned photographer Ian Blythe also woke up early (well, at least early for his usual time). The annoying ringing of his old-fashioned alarm clock chimed throughout his bedroom at exactly 11:30 AM, and rang for nearly fifteen minutes before its sleepy owner reached an arm out and bashed his hand on the noisy appliance so hard that it was in danger of being broken for the umpteenth time. He wrestled his sheets off of him and just laid back in his bed with his eyes closed. “Fuck”, he said to no one in particular, “I really don’t want to work today.”

   Ian Blythe had lived in a small but cozy city at the base of Mt. Peteraltruist for the past ten years, and had grown quite tired of the hassles of his daily life. Every morning he would wake up, shower, get dressed, and go out with camera in hand to capture the best artistic picture that he could so that he could sell it to whoever offered the most money for it (usually to some local magazine company). He was a good photographer and was highly experienced, but he was constantly scrounging to sell his work and was almost always broke. What he wanted more than anything was simply to have a good, consistent supply of cash so that he could stop having to hunt for bargains when he needed something, and possibly even have enough money to buy something more than just bread and packets of Ramen. Ah, but that was just a dream, and unless he hit the lottery or by chance found some wealthy old geezer who loved looking at nature photos, it was a dream that just wasn’t going to come true.

   He sighed and stretched his arms, opening his eyes to finally take in the morning light. But almost instantly he noticed that something was wrong. You see, he was a proud photographer who always went and framed his best photographs and hung them on his bedroom walls. His bed was situated in the center of his bedroom, and he had aligned the pictures on a wall in such a way that every time he laid down in his bed he’d be able to see a sea of his best works to both his left and his right out of the corners of his. But today, he could only see the left wall. He had to turn his head to see the right wall.

   “That’s odd…” he said to himself. He brought his hands to his eyes and rubbed his knuckles gently across his closed eyelids. But no sooner than he pressed, his right knuckle fell into his socket with a soft ‘squish’. For a second he stood in shock as it dawned on him that his finger was in the space that his eye should be. “WHAT THE?!” he shouted suddenly as he quickly yanked his right hand away from his face, unknowingly drawing a small bridge of clear, fluid slime from his socket to his hand.

   He paused for a moment and shakily pointed his index finger toward his right eye socket. Very slowly, he brought his finger to it again, inch by inch, until at last he could feel the moist inside of the empty hole where his right eye used to be. With great alarm, he rushed into the bathroom, threw some water on his face, and looked into the mirror. Sure enough, only his left eye stared back at him in the reflection. Where the other eye should have been was now an empty black hole. He smacked himself a few times to make sure that he wasn’t just dreaming, but to no avail: he was indeed awake, and his right eye was indeed gone. “How the FUCK did that happen?!” he shouted to his reflection, which seemed to merely shrug as if angrily saying “I don’t know, why the hell are you asking me?!”

   Ian ran around his apartment a few times trying to think of what to do. He picked up his phone several times, but put it back down quickly each time when he realized that he didn’t really know who to call. He couldn’t very well call the police on the phone and say “Hello, I’d like to report a missing eye”, because they’d probably think it to be some joker and sarcastically tell him something like “It’s right next to the H and the J where you left it”. At the same time, he didn’t want to call the hospital because he had an extreme irrational fear of needles and things, and the sudden mental image of some strange doctor holding a giant syringe near his empty eye socket made him instantly drop the phone in fear every time he thought to call them. He had to do something though, because there was no way he was just going to go about his life missing one eye without even doing something about it.

   After a bit of thinking and pacing, he pulled on some clean clothes and ran out the door to go to the police. Having them see this humongous hole where his eye should be in person should be enough to convince them that it was a serious matter, and perhaps then they’d help him go to a hospital. He took a deep breath as he stepped out on the street, praying to the powers that be that he could just catch a taxi to the station without anyone seeing him.

   Unfortunately, he had no such luck. Not only was there not a single taxi in sight, but the entire street was crowded with people walking to and fro. It seemed impossible that he’d be able to travel without someone noticing his distortion, but he had to try. He quickly pulled a spare Kleenex up to his empty eye socket (as if he were merely trying to get a speck of dust or something out of his eye), and started to head to the police station on foot.

   As he walked along to the police station, he began to wonder if perhaps it was only his imagination playing games with his senses. He could imagine nothing worse than going to police, only to find that he really isn’t missing his eyeball at all. So, he stopped for a moment to look at his reflection in a nearby store window. Hesitantly, he removed the Kleenex from his face and examined the face of the figure in the window before him. But still, only one hazel eye stared back at him. He stood there for a moment, wondering how someone could have removed his eye without him even knowing, before he heard someone scream from behind the window and was painfully reminded that he wasn’t alone.

   Ian hurried along away from the window, making sure not to look at anyone or smile at anyone. He walked for seemingly forever when he finally arrived at the steps of the police station. But just as he was walking up the steps, he by chance looked across the street and saw something that took his breath away.

   Across from the police station was a gigantic, elegant mansion that he had never noticed before. It was a large old Victorian house that was three times as long as it was high, with red mortar bricked walls and white framed windows. Beautiful balconies adorned every second floor window (upheld of course by giant marble pillars from below), and spires and chimneys decorated the roof in a way that seemed to just shout “I got money to burn”. Towering green trees surrounded the estate in a way that added to the beauty without obscuring the view, and flowers were planted anywhere and everywhere along the sides of the house. A vast lawn, mowed smoother than an army mans buzz cut, covered the distance between the house itself and the tall iron fence that separated the property from the outside world.

   What took Ian’s attention the most, however, was the large pool to the one side of the mansion. For lounging in a deck chair by the side of the pool was the wealthy owner of the house: his own missing eyeball! Ian rubbed his remaining eye and blinked a few times to make sure what he was seeing was real. Sure enough, his eyeball really was there, lounging by a pool with a pair of sunglasses on its head and an empty bottle of suntan lotion by its side.

   Without a moment’s thought, Ian turned from the police station and ran out to the gate of the property. It was locked tight of course, but he climbed over it in a heartbeat, determined to but unsure what he was going to do. He sprinted out across the yard and ran around to the pool where the eye lay sunbathing. It didn’t seem to notice him approach.

   When he was finally only a few feet away, he stopped and panted for his breath while trying to think of what to say. “Um, excuse me, sir?” he started. The eye turned toward him and peered over its sunglasses.

   “Yes, who are you? Are you delivering a package or something, or are you another one of those crazed fans who want my autograph?” it replied with an annoyed tone. Ian shook his head in confusion.

   “Erm, no sir. This, uh, this might sound a bit weird, but, uh… you’re my eyeball.”

   The eye stared at him as if it were some joke and was merely waiting for the punch line. When it realized that no punch line was coming, it scoffed and said “Me? Your eyeball? That’s a laugh. You’re nothing but a petty commoner with no money. The very idea that I have anything to do with you is absurd. Now, be on your way before I have you thrown out.”

   Ian stared in disbelief. “But… but I tell you, you’re my eye! Only just yesterday you were right here on my face! This… this has to be a dream. How did you go from being a fucking part of my face to being here in someone else’s mansion? Why did you leave me? And for that matter, how the hell are you able to walk and talk with no mouth or feet?!”

   The clearly annoyed body part glared at him with anger, ironically giving him the meanest evil eye that he could, and it retorted “First off, this is MY mansion, not someone else’s. I bought it myself only recently. Second off, I was never a part of anyone as mundane as you. I am only who I am: a completely separate person from you.”

   Ian’s legs shook and he slowly feel to his knees, a tear coming to his remaining eye. “How is this even possible? I don’t understand…”

   The eye looked reproached and it lessened its gaze upon him. “Here here, don’t cry. Look, I wasn’t all that much different from you not too long ago. I had a lucky break when some sop from up in the mountain tried to drown me in the lake and I got my beautiful face plastered all over the news. I was able to use the publicity of the incident and become a fabulously wealthy actor. You might be able to do the same if you keep trying hard enough.”

   The eye pulled itself out of the chair and slinked its way into the mansion. “Now then, if you’ll excuse me I really must ask you to leave now. I have a shooting to be at in less than an hour.”

   And with that, the eye left Ian alone by the side of the pool. With nothing left to do, he pulled himself to his feet and walked home, despite the number of stares and comments he got from people looking at the empty gap on his face. When he arrived at his apartment, he plopped down on his bed and thought long and hard about what he could do about the situation. He didn’t leave his apartment for nearly a week, until one day he made a decision.

   From that day forth, he wore an eyepatch over his head and he strived to better his work. He lived the rest of his life trying to take the best pictures that he could, so that he could gain enough notoriety to become famous and wealthy enough to rejoin with his eye again. If just his eyeball alone could do it, he figured that he could too. Anytime someone asked him about his eyepatch, he would merely shrug and tell them that he had lost his eye a freak photography accident, and that it was just good motivation to make the best use of his other eye that he could.

   Now, you may say that this tale is absurd and impossible, and you may well be right. But I tell you this; these things really did happen. For no matter what people might say to the contrary, such things really do happen in this world — rarely of course, but nonetheless they do happen.