Eye of the Beholder

Jane looked the boy over through cracked goggles. He was rail thin, his belly distended from his short lifetime of hunger. The remains of his cracked lips revealed his rotting teeth, the same color as his sunken eyes. His thin yellow skin, full of bulging blue veins hung from his bones where he lay on the ground. The boy's blood still oozed from the wound on his neck, a deep gash. Jane counted to ten after the boy’s final spasm and adjusted her grip on her rusted, bloody hatchet.

One.

There were no other sounds now. If the boy had a family they would have descended upon them during their fight. Only a faint breeze played across the sun baked earth.

Two.

No movement along the endless, barren horizon. No visible shelter either. Had he been wandering through the desert as well? He was certainly small enough to wedge himself into a crevice and wait out the sun. He must have smelled her coming. Smelled the water in her body, the meat on her bones. Hunger does strange things to people.

Three.

He was small. Young. Almost too young. He had either been born just before, or during the cataclysm. Nothing had been born after. That would make him almost twelve? Or had it been fifteen years? Seasons didn’t really exist this far south anymore.

Four.

She circled him. He was mostly naked. A few sparse rags; an old shirt, a scarf. Nothing of value. All he had for a weapon was a stained rock that had been crudely knapped into a small knife.

Five.

Jane pulled her own knife from its sheath, long, thin and rusted except for the edge which she honed and sharpened to a razor’s edge. It had been Nora’s knife, her work knife. Good for cutting, but bad for fighting.

Six.

She prodded the boy’s eye with the tip of the blade. He didn’t move. Jane lowered the hatchet to the ground, never taking her gaze from the boy.

Seven.

Jane plunged the knife into the boy’s eye socket, being careful not to pierce the eye itself and worked it around the edge in one efficient motion. She darted her gaze up again, wary that she was not alone.

Eight.

She worked her index finger into the socket, scooping the wet ball and wrapping her finger around the optic nerve and pulled the boy’s eye from his skull.

Nine.

One cut separated the eye from its host. Jane held it in her gore soaked hand. Pondering the rivulets and color of the iris.

Ten.

Jane had nothing to burn. Grass was rare, wood was nothing but the vaguest memory. She had forgotten the taste of onions, garlic and herbs. All she knew now was a rubbery crunch and saline burst of pork. She chewed for what felt like an eternity. It had been days since she had last seen water and this small, perverse pleasure made her shoulders relax.

By the time she swallowed she had the boy’s other eye in her hand, waiting only for her mouth to clear. The second burst of juice sent a wave of relief down her spine.

She made to remove the boy’s shirt, to cut it free and relieve him of his heart and the blood within, but a small dented, heart-shaped locket fell from his chest pocket and splayed open on the hard earth to reveal portraits of a man and woman. The boy had had the woman’s eyes, the man’s jawline. Jane grabbed the locket, threw it over her shoulder and buried the knife into the boy’s belly.