Imagine having to claw out your own eyes. Good, now imagine wanting to claw out your own eyes. Imagine something so horrible, you would do anything to prevent yourself from seeing it. Now imagine seeing it every time you look up. Worse than that, every time you don't look up. Intrigued yet? If you aren't, you really haven't got any imagination. This is one man's story…
Did you know that skin is generally translucent? Well, I do and it's been my bane for twenty years, ever since the night of one sunny day in Chicago.
Yes, Chicago. That was the time in my life where everything came naturally to me. It all made sense. The move from New York to Chicago. The internship at the photography agent. The journalistic job as a free lance photographer. Everything was great and everyone around me was happy. Now everyone around me is screaming, or that's how it seems.
It was the story of my life, but not in a good way. I didn't write the story, I was just sent out to take the pictures. The story ran without me. The headline still stays clear as the day in my mind "GANJEE BOSS IN DRUG RING." My job was to go deep into the heart of Ganjee territory and get a few photographs of the warehouse containing the drugs. This time I didn't heed the warning posters on the walls "NO-ONE MESSES WITH GANJEES." The signs were wrong. People do mess with Ganjees, but they're fools if they think they'll ever take another breath.
Easy, get to the warehouse, sneak in, take a few pictures of crates leaking white powder, leave. My career begins! Unfortunately, a reporter had already been there to get the story and nobody fools the Ganjees twice. This time they were ready.
I reached the warehouse and slid into the nearby alley, to the broken window the reporter had squeezed through. I was the smallest photographer, that's why I got the job. The perspiration on my already soaking brow increased as I swung down through. I thought it was too easy to be true. It was.
As soon as I had whipped out my camera and had time to level it at the pile of split boxes, I found myself being lifted off the ground by my armpits. Two rough, bald headed men were the last thing I saw before being knocked out with what must have been a sap or a small cudgel. It was by no means the last thing I ever saw.
I woke up to see the world spinning. As soon as my viewpoint righted itself I took in my surroundings. I was in a cellar tied to a chair, facing an old walnut-skinned man with a walking cane topped with a golden vulture.
"You've been prying, Mr. Keffer", sneered the aged Ganjee, "We have something to cure you of your curiosity. We cannot stop the article from being published, I will have my revenge on the writer. You, however, just need … punishment. Creed!"
With that a broad shouldered, bald, man approached. He grinned with a mouth of golden teeth and the light glinted off the shiny tattoos on his scalp. He pulled a table over after him, covered with inks and over odd items; I recognised them, but could not fully comprehend what was about to come to pass and the effect it would have on my life forever after.
Two other men held down my shoulders as I struggled and Creed grabbed my eyelid. He lifted it up, took an item from the desk and, grinning evilly, did the abominable deed. An hour later, he moved on to the other eye.
Now for twenty years I've hated blinking. I can't eat properly and work is hell. All the time I'm wanting to put of blinking forever, making my eyes sting. Every time I want to sleep, it's like wanting to open a can of beans with an orange, it just can't be done, no matter how hard you try. The number of nights I've spent banging my head against the wall is beyond my counting range.
For I have had to live with the terrible, frightening reality of tattooed eyelids. Tattoos of the finest detail and of terrible things. The things that shape my dreams. Swirling demons and the pain of an infinite hell. I went to a dinner party yesterday and the conversation went on to dreams. Someone asked me what I dreamed of. I told them and once I'd finished, half the guests had left the room in disgust and the rest had a hounded, horrified look about them.
But not any more! No! They will say I have gone mad. I agree with them. I must have gone mad to have done such a thing. But I thought it through and finally I will know peace. I will carry them with them wherever I go. The best thing about what I did was that I got to keep my eyes … in my pocket.
