Without thinking about what he’s doing (Three Cheers for Captain Morgan!), he places his left index finger on top of his right index finger, where it joins his hand. Pressing down hard, he then pushes his way slowly up the finger.
And just like a pea being squeezed from a pod, the eye pops out of his finger.
Bob then goes into a kind of crazy spasm, his head and body rolling in jerky circles. This happens when Bob’s third eye hits the floor and rolls away. Despite the fact the eye is now detached from him, Bob can still see with it.
It bounces off the base of his entertainment center and rolls back toward him, coming to rest pupil up almost directly in front of his feet.
The dizziness returns and so does the queasy belly. He again fights throwing up.
His third eye stares calmly at the ceiling.
Bob never realized how many cracks there are in his ceiling. As the queasiness passes, he makes a mental note to contact the landlord about that.
Now that all three eyes are still again, Bob realizes he’s not having as much difficulty dealing with the visuals. That’s because of Captain Morgan. He takes a quick sip from the bottle, before setting it on his coffee table.
Bob gets up, stumbles, nearly loses his balance, then kneels down before his errant eye.
On his hands and knees, he very slowly brings his right index finger and right thumb into contact with the orb. Both fingers touch the eye (and stick) at the same time.
Again startled by the odd resiliency of the eye, Bob pulls his fingers apart. His digits break free of the stickiness. The eye rolls a couple spins across the carpet, again coming to a stop facing up, pointed at the corner.
He wonders how long there have been cobwebs up there. He never noticed those before.
Crawling forward, Bob again carefully clamps his index finger and thumb onto the eye. Barely breathing, he picks it up.
Holding the eyeball with a steady but gentle grip, he again looks at it.
It looks at him.
He shakes his head, wondering what to do now. Bob sets the eye on the battered coffee table in front of him, on top of the small stack of Playboy magazines. He positions the eye so it’s watching him kick back on the couch, like some out-of-mind webcam.
He realizes he’s horny (no surprise there; that’s another reason he likes rum) and considers exposing himself to his third eye.
That makes him laugh.
But then, suddenly, he has a wicked thought, a crazy idea that really makes him aroused.
Maybe he could use the third eye to spy on the lady in the apartment next to his. She’s a cute skinny redhead (90% of all women are skinny by Bob’s standards) who never smiles at him when he bumps into her at the mailboxes, despite the fact he always smiles (leers) at her.
He thinks about how great it would be to put the eye in her bedroom, or even better yet, in her bathroom, someplace where she’s certain to get naked.
He looks at the bottle, realizing that’s the Captain talking. He sighs heavily, then guzzles some more rum. There’s no way he can think of to get his third eye into the redhead’s apartment.
He isn’t that clever to begin with and now that he’s also drunk as a skunk, Bob is stymied about how to use his new eye to see some booty.
He damns the day he hit that tree. If he could drive, he could head out to The Milk Barn— the local topless bar— and really have some fun. He could open the door to the dancer’s dressing room and just roll his third eye in.
He chuckles, thinking about the eyeful he’d get then.
Souring quickly, Bob becomes depressed. It bugs him he can’t use the eye for some salacious purpose. He thinks he might as well shove the damn thing up his butt for all the good it’s doing him.
He picks up the eyeball, carefully sticking it equally to both his thumb and index finger.
Bob kicks back on his couch, sighing, lying down.
This has been one really weird day!
He holds the eye up above his head, so that the single eye is looking down at the two eyes looking up.
And that’s the last thing he remembers before passing out.
Bob Bodey awakens five hours later to bloody brains.
Regaining consciousness is traumatic. He can’t exactly assimilate what’s happening, he thinks the brains are on him. He sits up, flailing, brushing at his chest, his sweat adding wetness to the illusion.
Then he remembers his third eye staring back at himself from the coffee table. That recollection allows him to figure out what’s going on.
He gasps with horror.
Last night, Bob passed out holding the third eye. At some point while he slept, he must have rolled over on top of it and it slipped inside his head. How it got so deep he isn’t certain but he knows the eye is now at the core of his brain.
He finds it terribly difficult to breathe, almost as if the view coming from inside his skull is reaching down his throat to choke him. His brains look almost like cherry Jell-O to him, he can see right through them. Unfortunately, however, he can’t see through his skull.
He wonders how he can see anything at all inside his light-proof cranium!
It makes no sense to him. How can he possibly see his brains with no illumination inside his head?
He groans, grabbing his face. He tries to punch his fingers into his head to retrieve the eye and succeeds only in hurting both his fingers and his forehead.
Seeing brains, Bob gets up and goes into the bathroom, grabbing a bottle of Bayer from his medicine cabinet. Seeing brains, he fills a Dixie cup from his Superman dispenser with tap water. Seeing brains, he washes down four aspirin.
Seeing brains, he spends about ten minutes on the toilet.
As he sits on the commode, he repeatedly tilts his head to one side, slamming the side of it with his hand, as if he’s trying to dislodge water from his ear after swimming. The view of the third eye doesn’t even jiggle.
Seeing brains, he realizes he can’t get the eyeball out of his brains.
Seeing brains, he realizes if he doesn’t get it out and continues seeing brains, he’s going to go insane.
He wonders for a moment if he’s already insane but then decides a lunatic would never feel this kind of stress. A psycho would embrace the eye and live happily ever after seeing brains.
Despite the pain it causes his head, Bob suddenly roars with frustration and a desperation that’s nearly panic.
He must get this eye out of his head (brains)!
Bob knows he needs to get drunk again but also knows if he doesn’t eat something first, he’ll just throw up the rum. When he goes to his refrigerator, however, he keeps seeing brains and nothing appeals to him. He decides to force a couple slices of unadorned bread into his mouth, washing them down with water.
He must get the eye out of his head (brains)!
He tries to calm himself so he can think. Seeing brains, that’s not easy.
He recalls the machine that got him into this bloody brain predicament in the first place, the one advertising REAL BODY PARTS.
Seeing brains, Bob hatches a crazy idea.
Seeing brains, he straightens his clothes, slips on his shoes, grabs a jacket and his keys and his wallet and leaves his apartment. For the first time since he lost his license (and his car) Bob is glad to be walking. Today, he’d be a dangerous driver, seeing brains all the time.
The strip mall where the barber, grocery, and laundry mat are located is six blocks from where Bob lives. He hurries along the sidewalk beside the busy street, his head down, seeing brains.
When he comes to an intersection near the strip mall, sure enough, he almost steps out in front of oncoming traffic, because he’s so distracted seeing brains. If he’d been driving instead of walking, an automobile accident might result in a lot of people seeing brains.
Finally, he returns to the laundry mat.
Realizing he has no change, he takes out a five dollar bill and feeds it into the change machine. Gathering up his quarters, he th
en rushes over to the dispenser displaying Real Body Parts.
He wants the chattering teeth.
His idea depends on him getting the chattering teeth.
Holding his breath, Bob feeds fifty cents into the machine and turns the crank.
He gets a SuperBall. That confuses him.
A SuperBall isn’t a body part.
He feeds fifty more cents into the machine and cranks out another prize. . .
Which turns out to be a miniature pair of handcuffs.
Definitely not a body part.
Bob assumes some prizes are fakes and there are only a few real body parts mixed in.
Fifty more cents gets him a cheap plastic medallion on a cheap chain. Another non-body part.
Seeing brains, Bob is frustrated. He wonders what’s different. Why isn’t the machine giving him Real Body Parts?
Then he realizes the warning has changed.
When he got the eye last night, the warning was REAL means REAL!.
Now the warning is like all the normal junk dispensing machines: SMALL PARTS AND SMALL BALLS NOT FOR CHILDREN UNDER 3 YEARS OLD.
Bob goes cold, thinking he’ll never get what he needs. He’s going to be doomed to see brains forever. But then he looks around the laundry mat and realizes two other things have changed, along with the warning in the Real Body Parts dispenser. The most obvious difference, of course, is when he bought the eye last night, it was pitch dark outside, whereas now the sun is shining bright through the plate glass windows. The other change is last night he was here alone and right now the laundry mat is fairly busy. There are two women here, three kids, and an elderly couple.
He doesn’t know how he knows and yet he does. Real Body Parts are private parts. He can’t buy them in public, with other people watching. Paying your fifty cents, turning the crank, and taking out a Real Body Part is a secret act you must do alone.
The idea of spending an entire day seeing brains, just waiting for night, for a time when the laundry mat is empty— it’s almost more than Bob can bear.
He walks home and microwaves a Hot Pocket, flushing it down with Captain Morgan. He turns on the television and tries to get interested but that turns out to be laughable since every one of his 160 channels is showing brains.
Shortly after three o’clock in the afternoon his phone begins to ring and he remembers he was scheduled to work tonight. He decides not to answer the phone, even though he doesn’t have either voice mail or an answering machine. Bob doesn’t really think his boss will accept seeing brains as a legitimate excuse for not showing up to work.
Not three minutes after the phone stops ringing, it starts ringing again. Bob is certain it’s his boss and he knows his boss is furious, but he still has absolutely no intention of picking up the phone. It rings so many times, he loses count.
The ringing phone begins to get on his nerves. Bob drinks more Captain Morgan. The ringing is almost as bad as seeing brains.
Almost.
Finally, his boss gives up. Bob wonders if he’s fired.
If he is, considering he’s currently looking at his own brains, he sees that as the least of his worries.
Bob sets his alarm clock for one a.m. and lies down. Seeing brains, he passes out.
He awakens hours later, seeing brains. His third eye hasn’t shifted one bit inside his skull (brains). He looks at the clock with his other two eyes and sees it’s almost 2:30 am. Either his alarm didn’t go off or he didn’t hear it.
Groaning, a terrible taste in his mouth, his head throbbing with pain and bloody brains, Bob gets up and goes to use the bathroom, then takes six aspirin with two full glasses of water.
Seeing brains, Bob grabs his coat and his things, leaves his apartment, and walks down the street to the laundry mat.
This street is quite busy during the day but it’s dead at this time of night. The only two cars he sees on his walk are both police cars. Seeing cops and bloody brains simultaneously makes him nervous.
Back in the laundry mat, Bob looks at the machine dispensing REAL BODY PARTS and, to his great relief, the warning has changed back.
Again it says: WARNING: REAL means REAL!
He’s so nervous, when he pulls out his quarters, he promptly drops them all on the floor. The coins jingle, spin, and roll.
Bob is alone, no surprise at this time of night, and he’s so eager to get more body parts, he doesn’t care about his money. Instead of picking up all his coins, he just snags two and cranks fifty cents into the machine.
He unconsciously holds his breath as he pulls out the plastic egg.
Bob peers into the little capsule without opening it and for a bloody brain moment he can’t tell what the hell he’s looking at. Finally, he realizes the dangling drop of flesh is a human uvula. For some reason— in a way the eye did not— the throat flap gives Bob the creeps.
He throws the uvula in the trash, its container unopened.
He picks up two more quarters off the floor, puts them in the machine, and cranks.
When he sees what’s inside this egg, he feels like he hit the jackpot.
He scored exactly what he needs: a set of the wind-up teeth.
He almost leaves right then, not even caring about the quarters still on the floor. But five dollars is a lot of money to him, particularly since he lost a day’s work today (and may have lost his job.) So Bob takes the time to gather up the coins.
He ends up feeding another two dollars into the mysterious machine, buying four more body parts he stashes away in his pocket. He’s in a hurry to get home. He has a plan for getting the eye out of his head (brains) and he wants to do it now.
Bob runs most of the way home (and luckily doesn’t see any more cops).
He doesn’t review his plan or think too much about it, preoccupied as he is with keeping an eye on his frontal lobes.
When he gets home, he snags himself a beer. He’s suddenly of the opinion that Captain Morgan is a bad influence and he should drink something a little less potent. He has no trouble at all blaming the pirate for his current bloody brain predicament.
Plus, he realizes what he intends to do almost amounts to amateur surgery and therefore decides he shouldn’t get too drunk. He guzzles most of his first beer, however, in a matter of minutes.
Bob has a junk drawer in his kitchen, beneath the drawer where he keeps his silverware, and he thought he had a needle and thread in there but when he looks for thread now, he can’t find any. That annoys and frustrates him for a couple minutes until he remembers his dental floss.
Sitting down on his couch with his beer and his floss, Bob opens the plastic egg containing the teeth.
These are supposed to be Real Body Parts but the little wind-up crank on the side destroys the illusion.
And yet, when he touches the teeth, they stick to him exactly the way the eye did, the gums trying to merge with his finger flesh.
Bob pulls the dental floss from its spool, cutting off a piece about three feet long. He ties one end of the dental floss securely around his right wrist. Carefully, meticulously, he then ties the other end to the crank on the chattering teeth.
One of the teeth has a cavity. Touching it causes the twinge of a toothache in his fingers. These teeth are definitely Real Body Parts, despite their wind-up crank.
Bob Bodey looks at the chattering teeth and asks himself if he actually intends to go through with this.
Seeing bloody brains, he cares only about shutting that third eye.
He doesn’t know if this is going to work or not but it’s the only idea he’s come up and he’s determined to try.
Bob holds the teeth very delicately, not letting them make a mouth out of his fingers. He winds them up, as tight as he can.
When he lets go of them, the teeth immediately begin bouncing up and down as they chatter.
There is no hum of a little motor, the way Bob would expect. The only sound is the teeth themselves, clicking like the chattering teeth of a child who’s bitterly cold.
Bob doesn’t hesitate. He raises the teeth to the right side of his head and throws them, aiming straight (hopefully) at the eye inside his skull (brains).
He misjudges entirely, using too much strength. The chattering teeth fly into the side of his head, passing through his skull like it’s made of shadow. He sees the teeth with his third eye as the chattering zips past, through his brains, only to come out his head on the other side.
The dental floss string goes taut in Bob’s hand, now stretched directly through his head, the teeth dangling on the other side, chattering below his left ear.
Startled by this outcome, Bob lets out a little yelp as he gives the teeth a vicious yank, pulling them back through his head again. This time the teeth come so close to the third eyeball they almost hit it, which is exactly his intention.
He hopes to catch the eye in the jaws of the chattering teeth so he can drag the orb out of his brains.
Barring that, he doesn’t care if the teeth crush the eye, so long as they make it stop seeing brains.
But the teeth only come close and don’t even leave any kind of wake in their trail as they fling through the bloody gray-matter.
The chattering teeth come free of his head, with not even a drop of blood on them to mark their flight through his brains.
Bob is encouraged. He saw the teeth twice, he was close, and if he just throws the teeth with a little more care, he believes he can hook the eye.
And so Bob Bodey prepares to again go fishing with teeth for an eye in his brains.
First he winds the teeth up again.
Then, gently, he gives them a little toss, lobbing the chatter into his skull.
The teeth drop into his head, causing a hint of electricity strong enough to make hair stand up.
The chattering teeth land far behind his third eye, at the back of his brain.
Frustrated by his bad aim, Bob gives the dental floss an angry little yank . . . only to have it break with a snap of pain.
Bob holds a strand of dental floss still tied to his wrist and the end of this piece is bloody. There’s a painful spot near his right temple, now oozing blood, where the floss broke.
Fishing in Brains for an Eye with Teeth (Thirteen Tales of Terror) Page 25