The Catcher in the Eye (America's Next Top Assistant Mystery Book 1)

by Lotta Smith

  “Maybe, it might have helped if you kept some of your family members alive.” I suggested. I had my share of having dramatic stepsiblings, but in my case, as much as they gave me headaches and tears, they provided me with moral support, entertainment and friendship.

  Naturally, it had never occurred to me to hate my stepsiblings, much less offing them. After all, I knew in the deep down that every step-family things were just temporal affairs.

  “Fortunately, the college I enrolled was one of those hard partying schools, so I had access to easy distractions.” He continued without acknowledging my remark. “I used booze, drugs and sex, but none of which filled the emptiness. I got self-destructive and took on playing stock market, which only worked just fine to boost up my wealth. So I did everything somewhat successfully, but the feelings of misery just got worse. I even went to therapy, it was so worthless. I quit college, stopped partying, broke up with one girlfriend, then another, I ended up alone.”

  Even though his story sounded like a hard-partying college dropout’s cliché, I knew he was no ordinary freak. Still, I was happy to keep on listening to him. As far as he was talking, I could keep my eyeballs attached to myself.

  Unlike Mom, I’ve had no experience or aspiration much less, for a career in the big screen, playing the role of this poor girl who by the end of the movie gets slashed and axed (as in literally,) splattering Mr. Yoshida’s Gourmet Sauce all over the camera lens. Personally, I wanted to keep my gourmet sauce inside myself, where it belongs to. Thank you very much.

  So I nodded encouragingly to show him I was listening.

  “One day, I had a bad cocktail of cocaine and some mysterious substance after binge drinking, I started running around, laughing, shrieking and puking, then I lost consciousness and dropped down on the sidewalk. The next thing I know, I was lying on a hospital bed. An assistant nurse told me that technically, I had been dead for more than a couple of minutes. Good Samaritan found me unmoving and unconscious on the pavement and called 911, and when the ambulance came over, my heart had already stopped beating and I was not breathing. According to this assistant nurse, the paramedics had successfully resuscitated me at the scene but that doesn’t happen all the times. And after being rushed to the hospital, I stayed unconscious for three days.”

  “That’s dramatic,” I commented with an enthusiasm of an ex-cheerleader turned a perky reporter covering the NFL.

  “The event was mind-blowing, seriously. The near death experience made me see the perspectives of dying, and it also gave me a craving to learn about my living perspectives as well. For the first time, I found myself desperately wanting to uncover my background, my root, and the real history of me.”

  He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, as if going through a pain.

  “So I found out about my birth. It was an easy task, you know, especially since I used a private investigator. In no time I got information such as the name of the hospital where I was born, the description of my birth, and the name of the woman who tried to kill me when I didn’t even exist in this world. Maybe I should have let it go. After all, I survived as a rich guy. But I couldn’t let it go. I had to find her, and I had to meet her…I needed to ask her why she had to try to get rid of me. I got a report from the PI that she had gone out of the US and moved to Paris, so I immediately took a flight to Paris and started looking for her on my own, only to find out she had moved out of France years ago. So I continued looking for her by myself, trailing after her footsteps for years. Maybe I was a bit sentimental, but as much as I wanted to find her, I wanted to see what she saw and feel what she felt on my own way. So I went from one place to another in Europe—Paris, Nancy, Antwerp, and Amsterdam.”

  He sighed. “Indeed, it was a long way. Still, it was worth the time, money, and effort. By following her trail, I got to meet the people who had known her and talked to me about the times they had spent with her. So my expedition was not just a wild goose chase; a preparation to see her by getting to know her life was more like the word.”

  “So, did you find her?” I asked.

  “I reached London,” without admitting or denying my question, he shrugged. “After 5 years of searching. When I first came across reliable information, I felt heavenly like it was dreams came true—as if all those years of struggles and broken heart was finally coming to an end, and replaced by joy and happiness. But noooo! It didn’t go that way.” He spat angrily.

  Now I wasn’t so sure whether my keep-the-killer-talkin’ strategy was a good one or just a prelude to a total disaster.

  “It was a cold, snowy afternoon in the bad area of the city. The streets were narrow and dark. Ancient grey buildings were covered with gang graffiti all over. It was a typical ghetto, I guess. She was a tenant at one of the worn-out apartments. I was full of hope and anticipation to see the woman who made it happen for me to exist in this world. Even now I can still feel the dump air and a stench in the alley. For a while, I was standing there, holding my breath—as much as I was dying to see her, my nerve was crushing my heart. Finally, I gathered my grits, knocked the door, only to rattle the cheap plywood crap and wake up the cranky lady living right next door. She stormed out, yelled to me that the door should be unlocked ‘coz no unit came with a working lock and went back to her room, so I turned the door knob and went inside—Kelly, can you imagine the situation?”

  “I believe so,” I said, honestly. “As a person who’d gone through childhood and adult life without knowing the biological father, I can imagine it.” I didn’t mention having many faux-dads who were mostly okay to great.

  “There was no life in the room,” he continued. “She was gone.”

  “I’m sorry, but you could have continued searching for her. After all, you’d been searching her for more than 5 years. Maybe she was not that far away—?”

  “No, she was far, far, far away—in a place I couldn’t reach. Her flesh was still remaining in the room, but her soul was no longer there. It was obvious she wasn’t there anymore. Her body was sitting on a chair completely motionless. I knew she had spewed lots of blood. Brown blood was beginning to dry and cake. I couldn’t… I couldn’t believe it!” He spat.

  “She had abandoned me before I was even born and now that I had found her after all those years of intensive search and there she comes, without a word, without a hug, not even breathing. Dead! She was dead!” He demanded, “You can’t imagine it, can you?”

  I didn’t want to imagine, but the imaginary scene of his first encounter with his mother came up into my mind. I felt sick.

  “If it wasn’t the ultimate way of showing rejection, I don’t know what that was.” He muttered, slumping the shoulders. “I was heartbroken. She refused to see me when I wasn’t even born and then refused to see me when she met me for the first time. She didn’t know how much time and effort I had invested to reach her, she didn’t even bothered to care about it. I felt like dying on the spot. I went to the window, it was on the third floor so if I jumped from there, I could probably have ended everything. Then all of a sudden, a strong wind blew and hit my face with sprinkles of snow, so I looked away. It was then something incredible had happened—her eyes met mine.”

  “Excuse me?” I muttered.

  “You heard me Kelly, our eyes met. And I saw her eyes sparkle with recognition and well up with tears.” He smiled from ear to ear. “It was the first time we got to communicate with each other. At that moment, all the conflicts, wrath and resentment that had been built up inside me had disappeared like vapor. What remained was love, forgiveness and peace. We were finally united and I knew we’ll be together and we’ll get to know each other.”

  “But—” I fidgeted, “that’s so impossible. You said she was dead.”

  “Her body was expired, unfortunately. Still, her soul was alive and we’re meant to be together, forever and ever.”

  He started talking to the glass with two eyeballs. “Here we are Mom, it was a long, long journey for us. Literally, we cr
ossed the big water and I had to conceal you in a jar of cold cream. But finally, we have found the right solution. This here is Ms. Kelly Kinki, say hi to her. And Kelly, meet Mom.”

  Alan saluted the glass in my direction.

  “These are not your mom!” I said, bewildered. “They’re nothing but just a pair of eyeballs plucked out of a dead body.”

  Seriously, I couldn’t believe he was able to bring the eyeballs from the UK to the US. What had happened to this world?

  And… hello TSA, are you there? Can you hear me? Remember you had confiscated my Juicy Tube lip gloss from Lancôme as a potential weapon of mass destruction? Hey, now I know you let a lunatic slip away carrying fresh human body parts with him. Good thing the lip gloss was almost finished when it got taken away.

  “Kelly, don’t be rude to my mother,” he shushed me. “Just because she doesn’t have a body doesn’t mean she has no feelings.” Then he talked to the eyeballs sweetly. “Mother, don’t worry. I’ll soon settle you into her body.”

  My jaw dropped.

  “Y-yo-you,” I gasped. A lesser woman would have fainted on the spot and a better woman would have started giving out a badass rant. I was only myself, so I stuttered. “Yo-you’ve got to be kidding.”

  “No, I’m serious.” And his face was serious. “I told you, after all, it was quite stupid and unjustifiable the media called me Eyeball Snatcher because stealing eyeballs has never been my purpose. And those lying schmucks in the media call themselves journalists. Talk about an irony. They don’t give a damn about the fact that I was merely looking for a body to host my mother’s soul. It’s just that in order to bring my mother’s soul back to life, the body’s previous occupant’s soul is not welcome.”

  He took the knife and grasped it. “So, Kelly, I need to remove your eyeballs out of your body.”

  “Come on, Alan. Don’t tell me the victims were killed because of your ridiculous attempts to bring your dead mother back to life.”

  “Unfortunately, I have my share of disappointment in the pursuit to bring Mom back to life.” He said nonchalantly.

  “Oh my God. Killing people in order to resuscitate a dead person from death? That’s the most ridiculous excuse for committing mass murder.” I shook my head. I would have added dramatic hand gestures for emphasis, were it not my hands being restrained.

  “Kelly, I strongly disagree with your calling my project ridiculous. You’ve got to invest lots and lots of time and effort in order to successfully obtain the desired outcome.” Alan shrugged. “So it was unfortunate that there were casualties, but nothing goes without experiencing losses and failures. Take medical technology, the current medicine saves lots of people from diseases and injuries, but in the process of developing the technology now we enjoy, the whole lot more people had suffered and died. Some from shaky techniques and others from experiments that didn’t go so good as the initial hypotheses. In short, everything we do is a certain kind of experiment.”

  “But Alan, look at the other eyeballs.” I pointed out. “So you’ve tried your resuscitation routine with multiple victims of your crime in the past, and look what happened; you failed on all the attempts. If I were you, I’d definitely conclude that plucking eyeballs out of strangers and replacing them with the ones from your dead mother wouldn’t resuscitate your mother. It’s not resuscitation but just killing the innocent strangers.”

  “But this time, it works. I know it.” He said. “And it’s reincarnation, rather than resuscitation.”

  “Get real.” I said, trying to be persuasive. Oh yes, I tried. “Okay, so, to err is human. Then again, making the same mistakes of killing people and having no regret truly seriously ruins your karma, you know. That kind of sins really whack out your karma to the point the judges in the afterlife divvy into smaller pieces and you’ll be an ameba in your afterlife. You don’t want to be an ameba in the afterlife, do you?”

  “I don’t care about my afterlife,” he shrugged. “What’s important is that you share some critical personal traits with Mom, Kelly. You used to be called the poisonous bitch, for instance, and you had this nickname Dragon Lady. My mother used to be called with those names. Oh, did I mention her name’s Kelly as well? Just like you. So I had picked women sharing some physical features like hair and eye color with mom but they didn’t work well. Then again, you have more things in common with Mom. Guess what? My mother has had her time called a bitch.”

  “In that case, Patricia Warshawski, the congresswoman seems to work magic for your needs.” I said, crossing fingers of my hands tied behind. Screw karma, I needed to buy time. “Believe me, she’s a real bitch. And considering she craves for media attention more than anything, she’ll definitely accept meeting you one-on-one, trying to score and prove she’s better than everyone in law enforcement.”

  Desperate times call for desperate measures. I didn’t feel bad at all about urging him to get Bitchtricia.

  Alright, so maybe I too have some bitch personality myself.

  “I don’t think so. Her eye color doesn’t meet my requirement criterion.”

  He shook his head nonchalantly, as if it was a job interview or something.

  Some women land on with high paying positions with Goldman-Sachs and here I was, a candidate to be brutally killed!

  Talk about an opportunity of lifetime.

  “Kelly.” Alan told me with a stern face. “You were not paying attention to my words, I’m afraid.” Just like Mrs. Halliday told me when I was in third grade.

  “Try concentrating when you’re being stun-gunned, kidnapped, tied-up, and threatened to be killed with a giant knife, you will have an attention problem.” I spat out.

  “Don’t get me wrong, Kelly.” He shook his head. “I’m not killing you.”

  “If that’s the case, can’t you at least ditch the knife?” I suggested.

  “I don’t think so. This baby is necessary for the procedure.”

  “Forget the procedure. Remember? It’s not an organ transplant. Also, speaking of a baby, why did you do your sick trick on that baby of Dr. Julia Stewart’s? The baby wasn’t even born. So, tell me. What had she done to deserve that kind of cruelty?” I demanded.

  For the first time, he was silent.

  “Tell me.” I pressed. “Why did you have to yank her out of the mother’s womb? She was no threat to you and considering you’ve brutally murdered her mother, she would have died without your sick procedure.”

  “It was not my fault.” He said through gritted teeth. “It was her fault. That woman, the coroner was so persistent—desperate even, begging and pleading me to help the baby, not to touch the baby, do no harm to the baby. Baby, baby, baby! That bitch! Her rapping about the damn baby, that was so sickening! So she was oh-so-keen about protecting that fucking baby, guarding her belly with her bleeding hands, even when I poked the eyeballs out of her. How could she do that when my own mother had tried to kill me when I wasn’t even born? That’s not fair!”

  “For your information, life never has been fair.” I said. “Especially, when an unborn child gets brutally yanked out of the mother’s belly by a jealous headcase so that the fruitcake can play a goddamned sick trick on her by poking out her eyeballs. Talk about unfairness. Stop victimizing yourself already!”

  “Stop judging me!” He shouted. “I didn’t do it just out of jealousy. As they say little babies have lots more potential for everything than adults, I thought maybe a baby could bring Mom back to life. Though the result was disappointing.”

  Shaking his head as if to shrug off some kind of a burden, he continued. “But considering killing the coroner and the baby had brought the chance to take a glimpse of you on TV along with an opportunity to know you. Maybe that was time well spent.”

  “I’m not quite seeing your point, I’m afraid.”

  “Oh, Kelly. You would never imagine my excitement when I caught you on the TV for the first time. It was just a moment or a half that the camera captured you for the nine o’clock news. It
was one of the old, boring news regarding this Eyeball Snatcher bullshit. Then again, can you imagine how excited I got when I caught a glimpse of you? When I was lost, clueless and frustrated, then all of a sudden, you popped out in front of me.”

  I couldn’t imagine his excitement, and I wasn’t all that keen on knowing more. Too much information. Still, he continued anyway.

  “Your hair, body shape, your face, the way you walked, how you looked away from the camera…everything was brilliant. No, perfect is more like the word. On top of all that, it was your eyes that was screaming perfect…the shape, the width, the color. Especially, the color. The splendid shade of brown was true something other women didn’t possess, and maybe it was your attitude that added some kind of sparkling fire to your eyes. I had the feeling you’re the one. So I did a research on the web and found out about your past. How you obtained the Vicious Bitch and Dragon Lady status and all.”

  He sighed contentedly. “It was just a brief moment, but that was enough for me to know you’re the one. Besides all that, take a look at this.” He took out something out of the breast pocket of his shirt.

  It was an aged, fading photograph of a young woman. So she had brown hair and big brown eyes, bearing some resemblance with my physical features. But that doesn’t necessarily mean I was the one to replace her. Besides that, I would sacrifice just about anything to welcome the baby and for the happiness of the baby.

  “Alan, so I may have similar hair and eye color with her, but we have nothing in common. Whatever you say, carrying out your demonic scheme will just increase the body count without bringing what you want.” I said firmly.