The Glass Eye Game, Chapter 1
Acting as the prologue to the novel, we meet Eddy and Gail for the first time, as younger children
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5/13/20264 min read
CHAPTER 1
Eddy and Gail, aged twelve
“Is it real?”
At this height you could feel the breeze, an almost imperceptible sway in the framework.
“Is what real?” Eddy replied.
The leaves ruffled slightly. The scent of apple blossom hung in the air.
“You know,” said Gail.
“I don’t know. My leg?” He smiled.
The tongue-and-groove platform stretched out around them, clinging to the trunk.
She tilted her head and paused, flicking her eyes to the left, checking on her younger sister, cross-legged beside her. Rhea couldn’t be much more than ten, but seemed older, thought Eddy, as she straightened the buttons on her brightly coloured summer dress, aware of him eyeing her.
“You do know. Do you see things differently?”
He looked out across the garden, the escape rope hanging down, ending high enough to scare you, but low enough to do you no harm, unless you were little Billy Bowler, that is. He closed one eye, stared, opened it, closed the other and stared again. Yes, he did see things differently.
“Not really. I can still see everything, still see clearly.”
“What’s different though?” said Rhea. She sounded the same as her sister, if you closed your eyes and just listened. He liked to do that sometimes, relying on sound alone.
“I can’t always tell how close or far things are. It’s more difficult when I’m somewhere new.” He looked at the façade of the Wendy house behind them on the platform. “When my dad first built this, I used to be scared, unsure of where the edges were. But now I’m used to it.”
Why was he telling them all this? He didn’t really know them. That was one reason: the unknown daughters of his dad’s friend turning up unannounced. Go show them the tree-house, Eddy, his dad had said. Cordy can stay here with Mr Gryff, she’s too little to be up there. And there she was now, noticed Eddy, looking back to the house, her small infant form concentrating on the grass at her feet, while Mr Gryff stood nearby talking with his dad. Had he been like Cordy when he was younger? Carefree but content, occupied? Probably not.
So they had left Cordy behind, crossed the lawn, the spring sun warming their heads and backs, and climbed the rusted steps to the tree-house’s platform in a journey to hidden heights.
“Do you bump into things?” asked Rhea.
“Not really. Sometimes, but not much. It’s more difficult when I get something in my eye, or rub it too hard. That’s when I really can’t see.”
“Why don’t you be a pirate?” asked Rhea “Wear an eye patch?”
As if it were that simple, thought Eddy.
“I’m more of a martial arts boy. Samurai, if you like.”
“Can I have a look?” said Gail, staring intently. “Please.”
He stared back. She held his gaze, as he raised his hand to his face, pulled gently at the soft skin immediately below his eye and eased the lifeless prosthetic out of its socket, dropping it into his palm which he then held out. She looked at the recess where his eye had been and then quickly looked away.
Picking the glass eye from his hand, she examined it closely.
“It’s warm,” she said.
“It can be cold in the winter. In the mornings,” he replied.
She turned his eye over in her hand and then held it up to her own.
“Can I have a look?” said Rhea, reaching out.
“You don’t look with your hands,” she shot back.
“It’s beautiful,” she continued. “It’s one of his, isn’t it?”
“You mean your dad’s?”
“I’ve seen lots of them before, but never where they’re meant to be, in someone’s eye.”
“It’s no different,” he said.
“But it is,” she replied quickly. “It feels like I’m holding a piece of you.”
He felt a wave of anxiety, with an undertow of excitement.
She brought the eye down, lifted her t-shirt and placed it gently in her navel.
“How does it look now?” she said, as the eye stared out from her stomach. She pressed her hands together in prayer above her head and then moved her face from side to side, like the dancers in that old Indian musical movie he’d once found his mother watching.
“Kinda weird,” he laughed.
“Close your eyes,” she said. He felt the breeze against his face, smelt the blossom and just caught the sisters’ low breathing. He missed the sound of seagulls.
With his eyes closed, Gail observed this strange boy, Eddy, whom she’d just met, and wondered how much he could really see.
She plucked the eye from her tummy and held it aloft.
“What about now? What can you see?”
“Nothing,” he said.
She closed her hand around the eye.
“And now?”
“Still nothing.”
She lowered her hand and held it out in front of her, down by his crossed legs as he sat in front of her.
“Can you see me now?”
“Maybe. A bit.”
“No you can’t.” It didn’t look like he was cheating: his eyes were still closed. “I don’t believe you.”
Staring hard to check for cheating, she undid the top button of her shorts and gently slid the eye inside the waistband of her knickers.
“Can you see anything now?”
“Only darkness.”
She looked again, and smiled. With eyes closed, he was no different to any other boy. She reached inside her knickers again and pushed the eye further down.
“Can you see me now?” she asked.
Eddy paused.
“I think I can.”