The Sensory Thief Part 7

The cellar was freezing, the ice crate’s lid shuttering under the Thief’s tight grip. Upstairs, the baby thing began to hum a high-pitched, lullaby as the Thief climbed the stairs. After he reached the nursery, he prepared a sterile needle with cat gut silk with careful preparation, double even triple checking his work before the surgery. Only after he was satisfied did he comfort the youth with kind praise.

“Do you see how beautiful you are? Each part of you working together to achieve what was thought impossible, possible. I hold the final piece, the key to unlock that possibility is in this case.” He opened the small tin ice chest and gazed on the eye like treasure. He retrieved the frosty orb, a milky sapphire of a human eye.

“Incredible times, and you are a part of what is incredible about these times.” The Thief held a syringe and extracted a small amount of the clear liquid into the air. “Don’t worry, my boy, nothing but joy awaits you.” He promised, and with a gentle hand, he searched along the creature’s boney spine to find a place to inject the needle. The creature fell under the spell of the syringe and was soon asleep. He kissed it with a soft, loving peck and began the operation.

The Thief didn’t hesitate; the scalpel in his hand carved a fresh, circular trench into the center of the creature’s forehead, the sound of slicing gristle like wet boots in the mud. He peeled back the rubbery flaps of skin and exposed the white, porous bone of the skull underneath. The drilling began with a shallow, visceral cavity. The hand cranked bit made blood and yellow marrow spray over the Thief’s apron in a cinematic mist that created a new Jackson Pollock painting right before his eyes. He cleared the socket to make room for the new eye, and then reached into the ice crate, the near frozen orb stuck to his warm thumb, and with a sickening tear, he freed it from the digit’s skin. He jammed it hard into the fresh, wet hole with a squelch as the optic nerve was forced to fuse with the creature’s raw brain matter. The milky pupil dilated as the ice melted into a red slush that drained down the creature’s face. The surgery was about to be a silent victory that sealed the future behind a veil of stitched meat, but then the Thief noticed a flaw.

The nursery fell silent and felt like an empty tomb that occupied the odor of copper ice melt. The eye was dull, a stagnant orb of milk that refused to take root. It was merely a glass marble in a meat socket, devoid of the spark of true vision. The Thief felt a cold dread rising in his throat it was a failure. He wasn’t a stranger to failure, but for him, it felt like a major setback he could not afford to make. He began to pace the library of his own mind, his boots clicking on the floorboards in a slow, troubled cadence that matched the beating of his own heart. He looked at the scalpel, then at the creature, then at his own reflection in the frosted window. His red eyes darted back and forth in search of the missing piece of the puzzle.

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