They say the eyes are the windows to the soul. Whether or not you believe in souls, the eyes are at the very least the windows to our inner selves. It is because the eye is so expressive and at the same time our primary receptacles of the world around us. When two people's eyes meet they share a moment in time and space. It is a momentary mental connection. What happens inside of that space?
* * * * *
It had happened again. I thought I had left them behind when I left home for college, but they were back, hounding my trail. The false accusations. How could I be tormenting people without even knowing it?
This time it was a note slipped under my dormroom door. LEAVE US ALONE! scrawled in black magic marker wildly across a newspaper. Who were these people I wasn't leaving alone? I had been focused on my studies and acclimating to my new environment when the charge came at me like a sucker punch.
Later I would find out it was those girls down the hall--the one I had the dream about. How odd, I barely even knew these girls. I didn't have any classes with these girls or mutual friends in common, in fact I hadn't even ever spoken with them. So, what the fuck was their problem?
Later I would find out the source of their anguish. It was something in my eyes. What that the meaning of dream I had about them days earlier? In the dream they were trying to kill me and I couldn't fathom it upon waking. I hardly knew them. I didn't know them. Was there a nonverbal communication I had somehow missed, causing these wenches to lash out at me, or were they imagining things? Was there something gone unnoticed by the conscious mind but recorded at the murky subliminal haze level, to be introduced in the unconscious dreamscape of my slumber? I barely even noticed them, let alone stared and let me tell you, there wasn't much to stare at.
"Keep your little dog-faced bitch on a leash," was what my buddy John Polarski had told them, confronting them in the cafeteria. He was pissed, "A giant eyeball chasing them down the street, that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard of!" Me, I was just embarrassed about the whole thing and tried to put it out of my mind and get back to my college life. I looked at the movie poster taped up to John's wall. It was a science fiction classic, The Day The Earth Stood Still, the one my old man was always talking about. There was the giant robot character Bort carrying a damsel in distress in his arms and shooting a laser beam out of his eyes. Sweet.
I drew a picture of a girl I did like in the dorm. I made her into a catwoman in outer space. In the background there were hunters slaughtering a mammoth. Its horns were dipped in the river. When I drew her eyes, I drew them looking away. Afterwards I wondered why.
I made sure to steer clear of the two bitches I had "accidently cursed." Was I really so scary that I could actually traumatize, injure, and all together devastate people just by walking past them? I looked in the mirror. Was I really that ugly? I thought back to the story of Medusa. Her hair was a mess of snakes, the result of a curse put on her by a jealous diety.
So ugly, she turned people into stone when they looked into her eyes.
How could it be? Flesh turning into stone? Was this some sort of alchemy or just an old myth? As the child of rational skeptics I wasn't raised to be superstitious--I wasn't superstitious. Growing up in a Jewish neighborhood I knew there were those in my community who strongly believed in the Eye, but I never gave it much thought. Curses were fanciful thought to me, childish magical thinking.
Still it was hard to ignore experience. Seeing is believing. I had heard it my whole life, people getting scared of my eyes, misreading something that would send them into a tailspin. "Dangerous," "Menace to society," "Monster."
Have you ever seen someone's eyes "flash" right before they are about to have an emotional outburst?
This wasn't the first time. There were the people at the mall. They were afraid to face me and so their friend approached me. They believed I was threw the Evil Eye on them, just like the dog-faced bitch. I apologized and tried to assure them no harm was intended. That's when I learned about "accidental cursing," that my motive was envy and as much as a tried to convince them otherwise, I was told I couldn't have known about my envy because it was unconscious, hence the "accidental" portion. I can't argue with that logic.
When did it all start? I thought back to high school. There was little Tommy Schermerhorn who had committed suicide in his parent's garage. When they found the body, I was questioned. I barely knew the poor soul! I might have had one conversation with him in my whole life and it was probably about five minutes and unrelated as to the best ways to off yourself. His parents were the ones they should have questioned. I heard the rumors about abuse in the home. Somehow my name came up and they were all looking at me.
In high school they would stop and stare. In college, even more so. I was in the back of the dormitory cafeteria, gorging on grilled ham and cheese sandwiches and glass after glass of orange juice. Annie was a sweet girl. Pretty face, night, tight body, and a sparkly personality, that's how I remember her. I saw her from across the room looking deep into my eyes. Was she flirting with me? I waived hi but she didn't even seem to notice my hand. If she did, she didn't return the wave. She couldn't. She seemed transfixed on my supposedly piercing blue eyes. Was she "lost in them," whatever that means? She wasn't falling in love, she was stopping and staring. It's always "stopping" and staring. She did appear to be frozen in place. Entranced.
It was always like that. Not every person and not every day, but for the most part, they would either avert their gaze from my toxic eyes or stare into them as if being pulled into a black hole. In the mirror I was above average looking, but above average is still average. I had to apologize constantly for scaring people, both men and women. These were people I barely knew or even noticed, to even give them a second thought, but they noticed me alright. Did they ever. At the very sight of me, they became disturbed. Unglued. It was as if their minds were being pulled apart at the seems and their internal worlds were crumbling. In my mind's eye I saw castles rumbling like an earthquake with pillars collapsing and chunks of ceiling raining down. Like in the old war movies when the bombs would hit.
Maybe Annie was staring at me because she thought she was looking into a bottomless pit. I would spend hours in the cafeteria making multiple return trips lunch line. The kitchen staff all knew me by name and would check with me before closing down. I was their best customer. I ate so much I would sit with groups of friends in shifts. One clique would enter and I would eat with them for a while. Then they would go to class and I would stay and move to a new table, still feeding my face. Rows of fruit juice and milk glasses lined my tray. On an average day I would put away four pounds per feeding, like it was nothing at all. All the while, I never seemed to gain any wieght. "Maybe you're feeding for two," postulated my cousin Jeremy, "You know, like a tapeworm. That would explain it."
Could it be that these people really thought I was born of a different species? Was I born of a different species? Was I destined to go through life lurking the streets, like a mutant freakshow, to be gawked at like a geek, as a monster, scaring the normals? I would run through water, too, getting funny looks when I guzzled two liters dry in fell swoops. Then there was the barber shop incident. "I've never seen anything like this before. I keep adding water and it keeps soaking it up, absorbing it instantly."
"I'm a walking sponge," was my reply and then I paid the man and walked out the door. There was some truth to it. Girls would give me a massage and repeatedly have to drench my back. My back would just eat up the oil. Picture a slather of slick, glistening in the moonlight, seemingly evaporating in a matter of seconds.
Then one day I saw something that changed my mind. Two men were having an argument on the street. One was a husky young guy with a pony tail. The other was a little old man. Then it happened. The little old man threw Mr. Pony Tail half-way down the block. What struck me as peculiar was his reaction. Mr. Pony Tail didn't fight back--he couldn't fight back! He appeared to be frozen in place, paralyzed with fear. He didn't run away but at the same time, did not move his arms up to defend himself or block his face from getting punched. He just stood there like a hunk of soggy roast beef. So, I wasn't the only one! The wheels started to turn.
Maybe all the people who called me a monster were right about me. Maybe some people could freeze others with a petrifying glance, like Medusa. Maybe this was the meaning of being "turned into stone." Maybe there were jettaturs beholding Evil Eyes. No wonder they are so afraid of me. I've had paralysis nightmares before and they were horribly terrifying. "I can't move my legs!" It's not exactly a good time.
After Mr. Pony Tail got frozen in place with fear, people gave the little old man his space. They would approach him and when their eyes met they would stop in place.
It was during this same time that I met Gus Patches. The slug sidled up to me at local watering hole with a message to deliver. I didn't like him, that one, but he was one of us. He had the Eye. Two giant saucers of dewy baby blue, shiny and bright. He had the enlarged pupils. He had the pedigree. He had the tell tale voice.
"Your friends today, those aren't your real friends."
How did he know about the prank my dormmates played, when they tried to gaslight me? It's college, that's what we do. It was all in good fun. Was this strange person spying on me? Dressed in all black he stood out like a sore thumb in the preppy college bar which was a sea of Ambercrombie and white baseball hats.
"You're not like the others. Some people look at a picture and they only see one part of it."
He wore the talisman.
"When I want to stab somebody in the belly, I just think it in my head and the knife goes in their belly. It goes right in their gut. I just think it in my head."
I didn't trust this person, this Gus Patches, but I heard him out. He had had a few too many back at the Shark and tried to pick up some young chickadee with blonde hair and blue eyes. She couldn't move at all and was frozen in place, until he let her go. She had a look on her face like she desperately wanted to get away but her body wouldn't let her. Her movements were stilted and her feet glued down. That's why I don't think it's a hex or has anything to do with fortune. When Patches let her go, it was over. This would suggest that there was no delayed reaction to the look. If the freezing spell passes as it appears to, this would suggest that anything else to happen to that person at a later date, such as, say, disaster befalling them, is unrelated to their momentary paralysis.
I always took the fear of bad luck, the whole concept of luck, in fact, as a cop out. An assumption of cause and effect where there is none. A gambler spills coffee on his shoe just as his horse comes in. That same idiot will be out there the next time ruining a perfectly good pair of loafers to see if he can get a repeat performance. It couldn't have possibly been the horse itself winning the race.
I do believe in petrification. It has two meanings. One is to turn to stone, as in fossilization. For those of you who slept through science class, a fossil is an imprint made on a stone that indents the shape of an animal skeleton, used by scientists to study the biology of other species by looking at the negative impression. Some fossils are animals which have been turned into stone by sediment. Large deposits of sand flood the organism at the same time, which is why it happens to sea creatures. Under water, there are waves of sand. It does happen on land.
Sand is created by the dead cells of the living, such as in "Ashes to ashes, dust to dust," the common funeral refrain. It is more than just a figure of speech, when we die our bodies dry out and we really do turn into dust. How do you make something dry? Put something super absorbtive next to it.
Entire forests are petrified, turned to stone inexplicably. It is an anomaly.
Petrification also has another meaning. To be "scared half to death." When deers look into headlights, they freeze up. It is counterintuitive, a natural reflex that contradicts what we know of nature and evolution. It is a self-destructive instinct, like moths being drawn to an open flame. In both cases, they are staring into bright light.
That was the beginning. I would have to learn to use my powers the cause of justice in the world. I thought back to my friend's poster of Bort projecting lasers from his eyes.
* * * * *
Think I'm bluffing? There is photographic evidence out there to support my theory. I was in New York CIty. I was walking down Broadway towards the Loew's Theater cinema on 84th Street. There was a crowd of people gathering around. It appeared to be a movie premier of some sort. Robin Williams was getting out of a black limo. The crowd was the paparazzi and press, all circled around him like vultures on a gazelle carcass, snapping away. I was exactly four blocks away and I noticed he was looking in my direction. Robin Williams was staring at me!
At first I thought maybe he was watching because he was wondering why I wasn't rubber-necking him like the other passers by. I've never been one to be star struck. I did that thing where you look away, look back, look away, look back, and still he was fixed on me intently. He was not moving. For four blacks I noticed it and for four blocks he gawked and gaped. If you've caught his act, you know freezing him is no small feat. They say a picture is worth a thousand words and this picture is worth a thousand times more. See for yourself and you be the judge. The look on his face says it all. He looks like he saw a ghost.
Now, I have nothing against the man--I think he's funny. It's kind of hard to dislike funny people and I don't even know him. It was an accident. I "accidently cursed" Robin Williams, the first kind of Evil Eye. I would like to get my hands on the picture, though. It demonstrates the effects of petrification.
There is even a sexual fetish for this. They call it the ASFR community. ASFR stands for "Alternative Sexual Fantasy Robots." Yes, some people get aroused, very aroused, at the sight of people frozen in place -- enough for an entire community. They love "beautiful human statues."