Eye-Catching

Children had long been warned that the Eye-Catcher was prowling the town. They knew to be careful when passing any alley, as that is where the demonic figure liked to lurk. He always wore clothing with a hood so that he could hide most of his face. But if you did catch a glimpse of his face, you would see he had no eyes, no eyes at all. Just blackened pits. This made it easier to slip any stolen eyes into his face immediately, to check them out the way a jeweler assesses prize gems. Presumably when he was just walking down the street, incognito, he had eyes like everybody else.

Children knew that he hunted by smell, that he would sniff the air for the breath of children. So sensible children always held their breath when they passed any alley. All the kids knew to pause a conversation with a friend you were walking beside when you reached the dark space between two buildings. You would simply take a big gulp of air and hurry past the alley. Then the conversation would resume…once the danger was past.

It’s not that he wouldn’t steal eyes from adults too. But adult eyes were more likely to have problems. So he mostly stole from children. He didn’t leave these children he pulled into the alley totally eyeless. He would simply switch in a replacement pair. How he managed to do such complicated surgeries within minutes, within a dirty alley, was anyone’s guess. But children would go home with a new set of eyes.

One girl was snatched and her blue eyes as lovely as Tiffany aquamarines were replaced with dull brown eyes. Her parents put her up for adoption. Another boy who was a gifted artist and colorist had his eyes stolen. On Christmas Day, no less. The paintings he did from that day forward simply lacked the pizzazz of color for which he had been previously lauded. People think everything is in the brain but there is magic in the eyes.

The alley creep was known to carry around a big bag of eyes. Children who had seen this bag open said the eyes floated in a sort of pink jelly. When the bag grazed them, they said, it was very cold. He was known to hum bad show tunes when he did the nasty deed of the switcheroo. His breath smelled of Pine-Sol and coffee. His teeth were too white to be natural. The features of his face would change every fifteen minutes into somebody else completely. This is why there were no Wanted posters featuring his face. What would be the point?

Eventually, he vanished as all things good or bad must. Some children never stopped looking for their old set of eyes. They would buttonhole strangers on the street if they thought they recognized their own birth-eyes. Some of his victims went mad. Some even placed ads hoping he would somehow read them with one of the many sets of eyes he carried around in that bag and reply. That he would be willing to return their birthright vision to them. But he never did. And nobody knows where he sold the eyes he stole, if indeed he did sell them. Some think he was just greedy and liked to change his eyes each day of the week the way some fashionistas wear different glasses each day. But nobody knows or probably will ever know.

True creeps can vanish as successfully as morning fog. And with a face that pours itself like milk, he could be sitting on a bus next to any one of us, even one of his victims sitting sadly, looking at the world outside the window with a stranger’s eyes. And nobody would ever know.