Published ’Dark Regions’ 1995
The man with the eye-patch stared at me.
The white of the visible eye was riddled with red wriggling thread-worms. Its pupil seemed a grey weeping pustule of something that I imagined to be knotted brain extruding from further back in the skull. It was ringed by hardened ridges of blackened flesh which gradually became pinker the further they reached from the eye-socket itself. Judging by the sight of this "good" eye, I wondered what could be under the patch and shuddered inwardly.
I was stationed in the Lounge of the pub from where I could barely discern him nursing half of bitter in the Public Bar—so it was astonishing that I could see the eye at all...
I must have been staring at him...
He winked...
Abrupt as that—without warning.
It was not simply a cute quick flash of the eyelid, but more a slow motion retraction of his soul behind the gnarled ribbing of a tiny wing, as if a creature lived in his head, rather than a brain. It was as awful as that, and worse.
The preservation of personal and communal sanity forces me to take half measures. So, no more of the wink.
He beckoned me from the Lounge by slowly bending and unbending his finger. I had never been in the Public Bar, so I expected spit and sawdust on the floor. I was pleasantly surprised to find the ambience almost bearable But the drinkers themselves were decidedly second-rate, a shaggy collection of human wrecks—derelicts who raised their heads in a desultory fashion as the swing-doors continued to clatter together behind me.
Their faces did have the requisite appendages such as noses, eyes, mouths and so forth, but their utter blankness could not be concealed behind such disguises. One snorted into his tankard, dislodging his flat cap in the process. Another waved imbecilically as if he and I were both long lost bosom pals. A third revealed the ugliest, most toothless grin I’d ever seen, as if I were the stand-up comic come to entertain them.
The winker by the bar did not turn. He knew that it was necessary for me to approach first. The fact that I had come this far...
It was then I spotted that his eye-patch was now hanging from one of the empty tankard hooks above the bar ... a flat spider with its legs all running into one. I noticed, too, his drink was fuller now than it was before. Surely, he had not had sufficient time to finish the previous one and order another in the odd few seconds it had taken me to go out into the cold street and back into the pub through a different door.
Gingerly, I clopped nearer to him, so close I knew he must have been aware of my presence. The floorboards seemed to soften under my touch.
Even at that late stage, I need not have tapped him on the shoulder. I could have slipped out of the Public without further repercussions.
He revolved like a clown’s head on a seaside pier with a two-way neck, his wide mouth gaping up and down—for me to toss a ball in—to win a teddy.
The face turned away without turning back ... too fast even for surprise. I simply glimpsed a tiny knife-blade sawing in and out, as it cut a raw-edged path through the gristle around the newly visible eye-socket. Some thing must have been wielding it from inside.
The second revolution of the head was slower, as it said, "I am pleased to see you again, my one and only truly love" – and the smile was even worse than the wink.
And my stilletoes were stuck fast in the floorboards, as he leaned towards me for a taste of my tongue. Love at first sight.