The Hunted Eye-Eric




• I haven't really written in a while so I thought maybe if I do a writing excercise it will keep me from getting rusty. So I decided to write something, heavily influenced and inspired by Tess Gerristen's novel called "The Apprentice". I'll forewarn you it is not for the faint of heart. In any case I might continue it if I either get a fan base or if I just get the whim. Anyway, here it is...
  
  
  
  PROLOGUE:
  
  Here, we are sheep, herded together with the same stitched wool covering our backs. Here, we all consume the same food. I say consume instead of eat, for eating is what people do. Here we are machines-animals-watching the same TV, bathing in the same stalls, never able to leave our cages. The powers that be dictate to us when we will eat and when we will sleep. When we will rise and when we will make our beds.
  
  The only solace, the only thing to break up the monotony is to hope, and wait. You can almost smell it in the air just before it happens. There's an electric hum in the voices of those just before they do it. There's a subtle, nervous twitch to every movement they make, the quiet language of culpability, of guilt. The smells and the tastes, the harbingers of the Event, fill my nostrils and mouth and I cannot wait any longer.
  
  Right now, in the shower they are beating a man to death. They are cutting him open with a shank that was probably smuggled in or brought from the kitchen. This is happening not thirty feet away from me. His screams pierce the pod and echo through every corridor. They are screams of a mad man, a wild animal who knows he is being thrusted into the slaughterhouse. There is no hope. I only wish I could see his face, his eyes right now. If that doesn't qualify for Heaven then I don't know what could.
  
  I make my way across the peeling concrete floor, closer to the shower. On the way to the shower there are a few people who sit, muted and dumb like zoo animals in front of the television. What are they doing and where are the guards? I'm not curious as to why they are so apathetic and desensitized to murder. Rather, I'm curious, almost angry, that they do not wish to witness such magnificent beauty, however transitory. It's almost impossible for me to imagine them not wanting to watch, to vicariously take part in the fleeting miracle; watching a man's life being dangled before him like a marionette.
  
  And those eyes. There is nothing like the look in a man's eyes just before he is about to die. You can almost taste the energy. It's too subtle for most to notice, or maybe you just have to be the right kind of person. But it's there and I notice it. I live for it. If you are patient you can feel it flow through you and ripple like the tide of a quiet lake. If you're quick enough you can catch it.
  
  I edge my way around the corner, closer to the shower now. I imagine myself as a student in medical school again. I imagine I'm about to walk into a surgery. Perhaps as part of my practicum I will be asked to sterilize some part of his body with an idione rub. Maybe I will be asked to make an incision somewhere.
  
  His screams have died down almost to whimpers and moans. Several men run from behind the curtains, almost tearing them down. The curtain is suspended by a shower rod with library books squeezed between either end of it and the wall. They've managed to keep their garments mostly free of his blood. But even though it is barely visible on their hands I can see it in their eyes. Their eyes.
  
  But none of that matters right now; as I approach the shower curtain everything else becomes invisible. I pull it back and walk toward him. He is lying on his stomach in a pool of blood. I try to avoid it but it is everywhere. Water is trickling down from a leaky shower head and rolling toward the metal, honeycombed drain. It captures some blood with it, diluting it down to an almost milky white. I flip him over. His face is hardly recognizable save for his aquiline nose and gold-capped teeth. If I didn't know this was Benjamin Morden before they took him in here I wouldn't be able to recognize him now. They said that he was a child molester or had committed some other equally dispicable offense. It doesn't matter; all that matters now is that he is on the stage of a heavenly theater about to make his last performance and I'm sitting in a dress circle seat.
  
  He is looking at me now and trying to say something. There's a sparkle in his eyes. It is a magnetic sparkle of desperation that clings to me. He is locking his eyes onto mine and he won't let go. It's a sparkle of hope that says perhaps I've come to his aid. I've come to save him. He is trying to speak but instead he chokes up blood. It pours over the sides of his mouth. Maybe he is about to beg for his life back, for me to call for help. But I am not the least bit interested in anything he has to say. He tries to raise his arms to grasp my hand but he is too weak to raise them. I begrudgingly grasp his hand, only with the hope that by doing so it will keep him alive if only for a few seconds longer. A few more precious seconds that I can gaze into his eyes and see the hopeless glimmer of his life pass before me like a shooting star. Those few seconds might enable me to capture it and possess it. Every crime he has commited, every little dirty secret he has ever tried to keep streams through those eyes like a silent film.
  
  It worked. Grasping his hand has inspired some primal part of him to keep going. He tries to speak again. He half mutters something, a name I think, but I am too enraptured to care. My hair is standing up on the back of my neck. My eyes are locked into his in an inpenetrable dance and as he speaks, he finally realises I am not listening. The flicker in his eyes fades and at this point I'm almost willing to do anything to keep him alive for just a few more seconds. His face softens and his eyes squint closed.
  
  I hear boots clopping somewhere behind me and I hear someone yelling, "What's going on?".
  
  I pull out my homemade scalpel and use it to pluck his left eye out. I do this swiftly but with absolute precision, as if I'm mining a precious jewel. What years of medical school can do for you. I turn around and walk away but not before the guards arrive. They run past ignoring me, muttering things to each other. They will not talk to me. That's too much paper work. They are probably angry their dinner got interrupted. I walk out of the shower like I just returned from a trip to the museum.
  
  
  CHAPTER 1
  
  "That's the fourth one this month," says Seargant Steen. Her hands are clasped behind her back. She stands with her shoulders straight, almost in military fashion, facing away from Detective Hash. Her gray pant suit is perfectly starched and pleated. She stares out of the window as if someone out on those busy streets might be more receptive. If anyone out there even has a heart beat they would be more receptive than he, she thought.
  
  Detective Hash swivels in his leather chair languidly, almost leaning on his desk. He is eyeing an onyx name plate on his desk that reads DETECTIVE LYNDON HASH 3RD PRECINCT.
  
  She doesn't turn around or glance at him. She knows what he's looking at. Why would someone have a name plate engraved with the precinct they worked with as an officer? Did he want everyone to know that he wasn't soft, that he worked the beat once too? Or was he using it to rub it into the faces of the other officers he had worked with for the past five years? He had been promoted almost two months ago, and much to Steen's disapproval he had been assigned to work with her homicide unit in Ashville.
  
  She cleared her throat loud enough to break his spell.
  
  "Detective Hash?" she said. When he didn't reply her shoulders sank slightly. She sighed coldly.
  
  "What do you want me to say, Kare-"
  
  At that she turned to him.
  
  "I'm sorry, Officer Steen," he said, with a subtle flair of sarcasm, "but what do you want me to say? Miller's been in prison for ten years now. Do you want me to say this isn't some copy cat? Oh, no, it can't be. It's some sick fuck he somehow took under his wing while in prison...a fan of his, a penpal? Do you know how ridiculous this sounds?"
  
  Finally turning around she said, "It happens all the time. Do you know how many mass murders and serial killers get fan mail? Hell you can buy a Charles Manson T-shirt on ebay for five bucks."
  
  "What's your point?"
  
  At this the volume of her voice raised, it became more punctuated, more cutting. She said, "My point is, Detective Hash, that we're not looking really good on the ten o'clock news right now. And if there's some information, any, tying this to him then we better just look into it."
  
  Detective Hash finally sat up straight and looked her in the eyes. He paused for a moment, and looked out the window. "He's in Brushy Mountain right now, awaiting another trial. And yes, we've looked into his mail and yes there were several letters sent to some crazy bitch in Ashville. But they decided it wasn't a threat. She's just some burned out hippy that can't keep her legs closed."
  
  The look in her eyes was one of pure disgust, so sharp he had to look away.
  
  "He's already doing life without parole, what more can they do to him? Listen, I need you to sign these papers so that I can investigate. That's all I'm asking. I'm sick of knowing there's women out there ending up in little pieces inside refridgerators. I'm tired of finding eyeless corpses in public parks. I don't want to have to go to a judge and get a search warrant. And I'm going to ride your ass until I get those papers!"
  
  He sighed, half afraid of her. He acted as if he were doing her some huge favor and pulled out some forms from his drawer and shot them across his desk.
  
  She took the papers and left without thanking him.