The Deputy raised his hand and gave a wave in the air.
Jarvis turned his head and realized it was creakier and slower than usual. The movement made double vision and, indeed, he was feeling drowsy, what the attendants at the home called “heavy of lid” as though none of the oldies-but-goodies could figure out that meant they’d replaced someone’s OVOL. He saw two men walking towards them from a dark grey van that was parked at the curb. One was older, in his sixties maybe but it was hard to tell for certain at this distance and in the darkness of the coming eclipse. The other was much younger and he was pushing an empty wheelchair through the short, prim green grass. They waved, presumably back at their dad and granddad, but it was probably more for Jarvis to see since Deputy’s eyes were dead white stars behind thick black shades.
“My proposition is that you don’t shout and we won’t do anything else to you.”
Anything else? Jarvis started shaking. What did they intend to do to him? He was straining to move but his muscles would not obey. He’d had this happen before—at his age, getting the bus to round a corner was harder than ever and sometimes the hydraulic brakes just screamed and would not budge—but this was different. This was artificial. He believed Deputy Dog with his talk of an anesthesiologist's cocktail. He’d had heart surgery seven years ago and vaguely remembered the feeling of slowly going under, then slowly coming up moments later. Only it wasn’t moments. It was nearly a day and a half.
He thought of that tiny, sharp dart in his hindquarters when he’d sat down on the bench. He knew it was true. This old meat eater was out to get him and, by God, just smart and resourceful enough to do it.
“How did you—?” he spat out.
“—find you? Easy enough, Schloss. They bring you here three times a week and you watch the birds and the kids. I wish I could watch the birds and the kids. Before that? My kids did the digging. I couldn’t, could I? Starting in 1951 all pawn shops in the townships had to keep records. Some of that woman’s jewelry was found scattered to pawners all over and you’d sold some of it to the shops...but there wasn’t anyone willing to testify so the cops never came a callin’, did they? It had been dark that day, after all, hadn’t it, ol’ mongrel?”
“I do hope you had a good life. Mine was good. After a while. I had a good, strong family. Got me through the worst of it. It’s funny how dead eyes can keep the waterworks flowing though, know what I’m sayin’, Schloss?”
Not saying anything, but smiling like the attendants at the home might if they were picking him up and taking him back for the evening, the son and the grandson arrived with the wheelchair. In what seemed like a hell of a hurry, the old Deputy, with his white and yellow eyes broke forward, leaning in at Jarvis Schloss, right up to his face against the blighted day. He knocked Jarvis’ sun glasses off with one old hand and stared right at the other old man, as if he could look him in the eyes. “Did I mention my grandson is also an eye surgeon, ol’ mongrel? Took after his pop. They’re developing new techniques all the time. This new one, it’s called ‘genetic corneal reconditioning’. He’s perfected a technique for un-grafting the main optic nerve and the corneal core—”
Shaking violently as he tried to get his body to follow simple commands, Jarvis Schloss blurted spit with his words, a last ditch effort for these three men to see some form of reason. “But I’m old! My eyes are—old!”
“—Yeah, ol’ mongrel, you are old. But your genetic material is as young as we want to make it. Yer nerve and corneal bits are gonna get blended with some chemicals and bombarded with lasers in a tank of saline. Think of it as re-growing your old set of peepers into a handsome young pair that gets re-grafted into my new set of peepers. Don’t use a scalpel no more, mongrel, not like they would have in 1954. Nope, lasers, nowadays. Reconditioning and lasers.” Then he giggled. “Everything is goddamned lasers!”
The old Deputy was smiling wider now, all teeth and elation. He thumbed a finger in the direction of the younger men as they put their big hands under the crooks of Jarvis Schloss’ numb arms and leaned his weight towards the wheel chair. “His dad was the best optometric surgeon in the country. Now he is.” He said the next bit with fatherly pride: “Two o’ them make a great team.”
The eclipse was full in the sky now and Jarvis heard the mutterings of people watching behind their gadgets or their goggles, chattering across the park in the bleak light, just as they had done on the boardwalk in the town of Medlin in the spring of 1954. It was calm today, windless. Only his eyes were behaving now. The rest of his body didn’t listen to commands to move, to run, to shout. His shaking had eased and he felt nearly nothing as the two men hoisted his limp body into the wheel chair. He stared at the eclipse, a small black hoop in the dark sky shimmering with rainbow colours, maybe the last thing he’d ever see. But he didn’t see the shimmers as beautiful. He hated them. And he was hoping to kill his own eyes and turn them into two new white stars so Deputy Dog and his ‘optometric surgeons’ couldn’t have them, wouldn’t even want them anymore.
The Deputy said, “You’ll miss ‘em. You will. No doubt. But you’ll adjust. You’ve always been a resourceful sort, Schloss, still are...” But Jarvis Schloss heard Deputy Dog’s voice from a hazy distance now. “Don’t bother starin’,” it said to him now, foggy and far away, “You can’t burn your retinas when the eclipse is full on. That’s a wives tale. Only when it’s approaching or receding. Trust me, I know...”
fin
About the Author
Jason McIntyre has lived and worked in varied places across the globe. His writing also meanders from the pastoral to the garish, from the fantastical to the morbid. Vibrant characters and vivid surroundings stay with him and coalesce into novels and stories. Before his time as an editor, writer and communications professional, he spent several years as a graphic designer and commercial artist.
McIntyre's writing has been called darkly noir and sophisticated, styled after the likes of Chuck Palahniuk but with the pacing and mass appeal of Stephen King. The books tackle the family life subject matter of Jonathan Franzen but also eerie discoveries one might find in a Ray Bradbury story or those of Rod Serling.
Jason McIntyre’s books include the #1 Kindle Suspense, The Night Walk Men, Bestsellers On The Gathering Storm and Shed, plus the multi-layered coming-of-age literary suspense Thalo Blue.
Learn more about the author and his work at:
www.theFarthestReaches.com
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