{"id":46,"date":"2013-09-15T02:18:33","date_gmt":"2013-09-15T02:18:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/smursh.net\/blog\/?p=46"},"modified":"2014-10-14T23:46:32","modified_gmt":"2014-10-14T23:46:32","slug":"eyes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/smursh.net\/blog\/eyes\/","title":{"rendered":"Eyes – Horror Short Story"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"eyes\"<\/a><\/p>\n

My seventh son was born without eyes. \u00a0In the place where each eye should have been, he had teeth. \u00a0These teeth were surrounded by lips in place of eyelids. \u00a0The jaws within each socket were considered fully functional by the doctors. \u00a0Each mouth had a tongue and throat-like passage which connected to the child\u2019s throat proper. \u00a0I was more amazed than horrified at this strange occurrence, having seen this child of mine born with three mouths, two of which prematurely contained teeth, having heard it cry with three mouths. The cry was of two distinct voices, not three or one as you might suppose. \u00a0One was a cry of fear and pain, a cry of being born in to a cold and unknown world. \u00a0The other was the shrill cry of ravenous hunger.<\/p>\n

My wife died giving birth. \u00a0I never really cared for her. \u00a0She was a warm, wet hole into which I spat my lust. \u00a0Nothing more. \u00a0My lust was greater than her. \u00a0Greater than anything she could have ever been. \u00a0I was surprised that she could, even given the union with my desire, produce such a thing as this child.<\/p>\n

The doctors, who I despise, who exist without any fascination or regard for anything, having no drive, no lust, had little reaction to this occurrence, save some professional intrigue at this mutation. \u00a0Of course, they suggested the course of \u201ccorrective surgery\u201d on the child if such a thing was possible, which it was not. \u00a0All veins and tissues that supported the function of the two unlikely mouths, the two unlikely throats, were connected to several other major veins and tissues of the child\u2019s face. \u00a0To alter these mouths or throats in any significant way would disfigure permanently the rest of the child\u2019s face and would put the child\u2019s life at risk. \u00a0This, of course, could not be done. \u00a0The other suggestion was to surgically alter the lips, to make them look more like \u201cnormal\u201d eyelids, and to sew them up. \u00a0I would not have it. \u00a0I wanted the child the way he was.<\/p>\n

I reared the child alone, bringing as little attention to him from my so-called friends and associates as possible. \u00a0It was a task that my wife\u2019s timely death made easy. \u00a0This was the child that killed my wife in being born. \u00a0No one had the desire to ask to see it. \u00a0My friends and associates were far too polite for that.<\/p>\n

I knew very little about caring for a child. \u00a0My first six died at birth. \u00a0I found most of it surprisingly easy. \u00a0Most of it, except feeding. \u00a0Feeding the child was a problem, always a problem, an incessant, unbearable problem. \u00a0The child\u2019s \u201cproper\u201d or larger mouth demanded fairly normal, almost less than normal, attention. \u00a0It was the other two mouths the laid in place of the child\u2019s eyes that create an intolerable nuisance. \u00a0These mouths, without end, hungered and cried for food. \u00a0 They devoured amounts the one would consider unhealthy, amounts that left the child bloated and crying. \u00a0These two mouths cried for food, always for food, and nothing else. \u00a0They knew no pain except hunger, and their hunger was eternal. \u00a0At one point they cried and cried no matter what I fed them. \u00a0They would eat whatever I poured into them and would still manage to scream unrelentingly. \u00a0I had to ignore this incessant yelping. \u00a0I knew that these mouths would consume to the point of killing the child. \u00a0So I did not feed them. \u00a0I kept all sustenance from them and ignored their hellish wails until I found out, by accident, what they had been craving.<\/p>\n

The child was sitting at the table in the kitchen when I was moving raw meat from the freezer to the counter in preparation for a meal. \u00a0Upon smelling it, the child\u2019s two mouths began the shrill screeching I had come to know too well. \u00a0Curious, I cut a few scraps and held one in front of the child\u2019s face. \u00a0His head flew forward, the two mouths snapping and ripping at the meat. \u00a0I had to drop it and withdraw my hand for fear of my fingers being bitten.<\/p>\n

It became apparent that it would be impossible for me to raise this child without letting the outside have any contact with him. \u00a0I invited only the most intimate of my friends to come over to see him. \u00a0There was an initial shock and curiosity regarding these two mouths in place of eyes. \u00a0The apprehension and interest ended quicker than one might expect, almost unnaturally so. \u00a0The child was beautiful, despite the mouths… or perhaps because of them. \u00a0He was pleasant to be around and play with when the mouths were satiated. \u00a0I always fed the two mouths well with blood and meat before guests arrived and always had the guests leave at the slightest sign of hunger. The way the child devoured his food was not a sight for guests to behold. \u00a0The two mouths had long tongues which would flick and curl around the child\u2019s face, searching for blood and pieces of meat which always slid down from the gnashing teeth and over the lips. \u00a0The teeth would snatch and rip and gnaw. \u00a0Blood would often splatter over the dark wooden table at which the child ate and on the cold white shiny tiles of the floor. \u00a0I would spend hours caring for the child\u2019s mouths. \u00a0In fact, the child and his two mouths seemed to be two separate entities. \u00a0The mouths required more care and attention than all the other parts and needs of the child put together.<\/p>\n

Soon the child learned to feed himself. \u00a0He could not feed his two mouths with his hands. \u00a0The mouths would devour his fingers as soon as they would anything else. \u00a0Great care had to be taken, but the child learned quickly. \u00a0 The child learned everything quickly.<\/p>\n

The were no difficulties until he learned how to speak. \u00a0It was after he learned how to speak through his normal mouth that the two mouths began making strange and vulgar noises. \u00a0clicks and groans and screeches began to pour out of these mouths like blood from a deep wound. \u00a0Shortly after the child became verbal, these mouths began shrieking vulgarities with the voice of a sick old woman. \u00a0This voice was, perhaps, more abrasive and sickening than what was actually being said, which in itself foul beyond description. \u00a0The voices were unnaturally loud and caused the child to cry. \u00a0They became so unbelievably loud that they caused the child\u2019s ears to bleed and the neighbors to complain. \u00a0It became necessary to control them and their incessant squawking as well as their appetite, which was growing at an alarming rate.<\/p>\n

I explained to the child that he must control both his appetite and these voices. \u00a0Remarkably, he was able to gain some control over it. \u00a0The vocal outbursts became less and less frequent, and the cries for food were controlled if not abated for some time.<\/p>\n

After the neighbors had grown accustomed to the fact of such an unusual child lived nearby, I allowed him to play in the back yard. \u00a0 It was by his own accord, however, that he avoided other children and playing in the front of the house. \u00a0When I asked him about this, he merely replied that \u201cIt is safer.\u201d \u00a0I never asked him to elaborate on that statement, for I always respected him and his stated wishes, which were few but succinct.<\/p>\n

Around the age of five, his mouths began to change their appetites. \u00a0They refused to eat the raw meat which was offered to them. \u00a0I had encountered this problem before and had solved it by changing the kind of meat that I served. \u00a0It did not, however, work this time–perhaps for the better, for I was running out of alternatives, alternatives withing so-called legal and moral bounds by any rate.<\/p>\n

It was about this time that I found a variety of dead animals in the back yard. \u00a0First it was birds, then squirrels. \u00a0These animals always had particular parts missing from them and other portions left intact or semi-intact. \u00a0In the initial period, these portions were cut off nearly, apparently with a knife. \u00a0 After a while, it appeared as if they were ripped apart by teeth. \u00a0I found blood from this on the child\u2019s clothes. \u00a0I discussed this situation with the child. \u00a0He silently listened and nodded. \u00a0He said he understood but admitted that he could no longer control the appetites of his mouths anymore and that if he tried to deny them what they wanted he would experience a pain he found unbearable. \u00a0He apologized for the mess and said that he would find a way to manage. \u00a0After this, there were no more animals in the yard or messes on his clothing.<\/p>\n

After I learned that he could satisfy his hunger in secrecy, I hired a professor from the local university (a dear friend of mine) to home school the child. \u00a0The professor was a dynamic individual of various interests (a mortician and occultist, among other things) who held a great capacity for enduring the bizarre without the slightest flinch. \u00a0He was perfect. \u00a0He schooled the child and was amazed by him. \u00a0The child\u2019s scope of interest was broad and his hunger for learning was without parallel. \u00a0The good professor did not question the strange hours and being required to leave once the child began to exhibit changes in behavior I had learned to detect which indicated hunger or an oncoming fit. \u00a0The professor, being a good friend, merely accepted the fact that when I indicated it was time to leave that he must do so and as soon as possible.<\/p>\n

During the child\u2019s sixth year, I looked into the refrigerator and found what I thought were several marbles, smooth, shiny, and white as milk, lying between the gleaming rods of metal that made up the shelves. \u00a0Three rows sat, containing 27 spheres of different sizes. \u00a0Looking closer, I realized that these were not marbles at all. \u00a0Underneath, on the almost glowing white bottom of the cold interior of the refrigerator were cakes of reddish brown. \u00a0Coagulated blood. \u00a0They were eyes. \u00a0The child must have procured them and placed them there for safe keeping. \u00a0They were apparently those of small children and animals, for in the neighborhood several had been reported missing in the past few weeks. \u00a0I began to worry for the safety of the child. \u00a0But if this sort of thing was necessary, then it was necessary. \u00a0The child had appetites. \u00a0He had needs. \u00a0And he was clever. \u00a0 He had not been caught so far. \u00a0Wherever the bodies of the victims were, they had yet to be found.<\/p>\n

I installed the basement freezer and brought the child down to show it to him. \u00a0I looked at him and said, \u201cThis is for you, do you understand?\u201d \u00a0He nodded. \u00a0After that, I found no more surprises in the kitchen.<\/p>\n

My friend,. the professor, soon gave me notice that he would not be rendering his services anymore. \u00a0He admitted to me that the child had begun to disturb him long ago, but not unbearably so. \u00a0It was only recently that the teeth of the child\u2019s mouths began grinding audibly in the most unnerving way during lessons and that the child began making obscene noises through the mouths in his eye sockets. \u00a0It was when they started grinning and cackling at him that he decided that he should leave. \u00a0He went on about the impression the child had left him with; the child sitting in the room, his smiling teeth glinting in the darkness, making shrill laughter-like noises and making predictions about the deaths of the professor\u2019s loved ones, of whom he never spoke about to the child and of whom I had never spoken of as well. \u00a0I paid the man generously and gave him my thanks, and apologized for any pains he had suffered in doing his work.<\/p>\n

The two mouths had begun to control more and more of the child\u2019s behavior. \u00a0After accepting my friend\u2019s resignation, the two mouths began to screech the words, over and over, \u201cKill him! \u00a0Kill him!\u201d to me, and described scenarios in which I could cause his death and make it look like an accident. \u00a0I cannot describe the number of times they related such things to me, nor can I account the variety of ways in which they contrived his death. \u00a0It unbearable. \u00a0The mouths only stopped when I threatened surgery to have them removed.<\/p>\n

On the morning of what would have been the child\u2019s seventh birthday, I found what was left of his body in his room. \u00a0The child had eaten himself. \u00a0Every part of the child that could be consumed by the mouths in the eye sockets had been eaten, and what I found was a mass of gore, atop of which sat the child\u2019s uppermost torso. \u00a0The one mouth was in a grimace of agony, the two others, bloody and smiling. \u00a0His appetite had groped in every direction until it found what it had been craving. \u00a0All his life, the child\u2019s two mouths had been hungering for himself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My seventh son was born without eyes. \u00a0In the place where each eye should have been, he had teeth. \u00a0These teeth were surrounded by lips in place of eyelids. \u00a0The jaws within each socket were considered fully functional by the doctors. \u00a0Each mouth had a tongue and throat-like passage which connected to the child\u2019s throat […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-46","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction"],"yoast_head":"\nEyes Horror Short Story<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Eyes Horror Short Story\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/smursh.net\/blog\/eyes\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Eyes Horror Short Story\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Eyes Horror Short Story\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/smursh.net\/blog\/eyes\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"smursh\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2013-09-15T02:18:33+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2014-10-14T23:46:32+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/smursh.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/7.jpg.CROP_.original-original.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"S. 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