FICTION?
a skater's EYE
The sky had an ominous look to it that day. It's hard to
qualify, but that's how it looked. There was no way it would
rain or anything like that, just a feeling in the air. So it was
off and down the hill to skate some banks. The hill wasn't
so big anymore. Not that it had ever changed, but memories
still lingered of the first time the hill was conquered on a
skateboard back in grade school..."chickenstep"pushing
into what felt like unbelievable speed until...
All of the internal ramblings of his mind faded into the
reality of shooting the hill. The brain switched into the
"music mode," this time playing back parts of a good song,
a request of sorts, and not one of those stupid tunes that
gets stuck in your head all day. In either case, the song
never really gets played back in its entirety-just repeated
segments.
To the horror of the skaters riding the banks near the bot-
tom of the hill, a car ran the stop sign just past the fastest
part of the slope, killing the skater as he barrelled into the
auto's path. The last thing he ever did was glance over to
the banks which were now riderless.
"Damn skateboards," the police officer exclaimed as he
noisily ripped open the dead skater's velcro wallet to get
some I.D. On the back of the license (expired) was an organ
donor card. The deceased soul, vaguely remembering peo-
ple claiming they had had "out of body" exper-
iences, shined the accident scene immed-
iately, to float away (with his skate) on
to better things.
She was on way too
heavy drugs to
By Don Redondo
anything at all, but it was a vivid nightmare. She saw the
foggy image of her mother in the recovery room of the
hospital, still seeing out of only one eye. "Mom..." she
groaned, "It didn't work..." "Don't try to talk honey," her
mother interrupted in a soothing voice," you're still under
sedation, everything went just fine, you'll be bandaged up
for awhile...now go back to sleep...I'll be right here."
Weeks later, when the doctor removed the bandages, she
could see out of her right eye for the first time in her life.
That's when it started.
After the initial shock of being able to see out of both
eyes instead of just one, and the persistent, creepy feeling
of knowing she was really looking out of someone else's
eye wore off, she began to notice weird lines. She only saw
the lines out of one eye, her right eye. The lines criss-
crossed the sidewalks she walked and went
up and down banked walls and
driveways, like in front of the
cleaners or the asphalt
banked parking lot
at her school.
They
scream, flinch
or really
do
even
went
up sheer
vertical walls
and came back
down. She found
herself staring at
painted curbs and look-
ing for small things to jump
"on" or over, though she
didn't.
The weirdest incident happened
near a vacant house with a "pool"
sign out in front. She had walked by a
million times before and hadn't really
noticed. Her right eye saw the pool sign out
in front almost independently of the other eye and
actually looked over the fence behind the house, forcing
her to become cross-eyed for a moment. A police car drove
by, and even though she had been doing nothing wrong,
her eyes snapped forward again and she continued
walking. "Too weird," she thought, as she hurried home.
At night, she would have unusual dreams. For one thing,
it seemed like she could only see out of one eye again,
but she couldn't really remember which. It was like flying
or gliding, standing up, but close to the ground. Well, kinda
close to the ground...more like terrain-hugging, like a
cruise missle. In one dream she would glide back and forth
in a giant, white, smooth cylinder, sticking to the walls. She
would get up to 10 or 11 o'clock, perhaps twenty feet off
of the deck and work her way down the cylinder. She got
going so fast and so high, she went for a complete loop
(an "el rollo") but woke up.
In another dream, she was at her best friend Madge's
pool, but it didn't have any water in it. She would start at
the shallow end and carve over the light, then up and out
at the hip to glide around the deck and back into the deep
end. She never thought to look at her feet, she just looked
where she was going. It felt like flying. She drew any line
she wanted, even slow-motion excursions into the air until
waking up late for school. She told her mom she was sick
and fell back asleep into the same dream.
Along with the dreams came the nightmares. Not like
the ones she used to have, like showing up naked at school
or being chased by monsters. No, this one was different,
and it kept coming back. Speeding down a big black
asphalt hill, not in a car or anything, but way too fast. Way,
way too fast! One night she made it all the way to the bottom
of the hill and then a car pulled out.
She screamed.
"It's O.K. now Suzie," her mother said clutching her, "It
was only a nightmare...you've been under a lot of stress
lately with the operation and all, plus cramps and
everything when Kathy Rigby comes to visit your body,"
her mother said in a soothing voice. "Oh mother," she
screamed, "why can't you believe the things I see and the
dreams I have are too real...it's not my imagination...it's
this eye!"
Later that day she went to visit her grandma. She had
to kick a skateboard out of the way to climb the stairs to
her grandma's apartment, thinking to herself, "Skaters are
scabby, immature geeks!" She had to stop halfway up the
stairs to clear a tear out of her right eye. "I wonder if I'll
ever fly like in my dreams," she asked to no one in particular
as she walked inside. ■
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