An Acorns Flash Fiction Feature
By: Ed Ahern
It was no one’s fault, really. Jason, a high-functioning ghoul, was working at the plant that produced hydrophilic acrylic eye lenses for cataract surgery, night shift naturally. It was a batch production process, sealed off immediately after the raw materials were measured in and mixed. There was the rub.
Jason wore latex gloves, a hair covering, and a mask that covered his nose and mouth. But Jason was a perspirer, and the mixing area wasn’t airconditioned. A drop of his sweat fell into the mix as he was pouring. It was, for better or worse, just enough.
The high temperature process drove off the water, but left behind a chemical essence that altered the optical properties of one of the lenses. Someone’s vision was about to be too clear.
Seymour Phillup had postponed his cataract operations until his view of the world came with fuzz. With the exception of tonsil removal, he’d successfully avoided surgery of any sort until he was fifty-five, and viewed surgeons as dissectors. He finally opted for a woman doctor in the vague hope that she had more delicate hands.
The right eye operation went without incident, except that he noticed that people were a good deal uglier than he remembered. The left eye, however, the sinister one, was installed with an unwanted upgrade. Everything seemed all right immediately post operation, good clarity, no infection. Until a nurse came in and he thrashed, then screamed.
“Get away from me!”
The nurse rushed to the bed to restrain him, and Seymour went fetal, arms and legs trying to tuck into his considerable belly. “Mr. Phillup, calm yourself, there’s nothing wrong.”
Except there was. Seymour had a double vision, his right eye showing a middle-aged beefy woman in scrubs and his left a hairy incisor-toothed humanoid, also in scrubs. The combined vision hurt to look at, and he felt a stab in his forehead, the start of a migraine.
He reflexively closed his left eye and the nondescript nurse was in his face asking what was wrong and checking readings. He peeked out of his left eye, saw fur, and slammed it shut again.
She eventually left and he cautiously unsquinted his left eye, then closed his right eye and again surveyed the room. Boringly plain and undecorated, just like the hospital administration had intended. Seymour wondered if the anesthetic had hallucinogenic properties, then wondered if maybe he could sue for malpractice. After all he was a lawyer.
But everyone else during his stay was unprepossessing, that is, normally homely. His doctor, Simplicity Sinclair, cleared him, the staff handed him a half pound of paperwork, and Seymour went outside to wait for his Uber.
His driver, an Armenian named Armen, wasn’t talkative, so Seymour idly voyeured into the side windows of cars in the right-hand lane. And almost peed himself. About every twentieth car had a driver who was grossly abnormal. Hairy or corpse pale or horned or hideously deformed. Once over his shock, Seymour studied their faces like he would a jury pool. Under their monstrous appearance, they all had that stoic resignation of beings who’d left a job they didn’t like for a commute they hated to a home they weren’t sure was worth the effort. Just like Seymour.
One of the drivers, though, a man with a thoroughly scarred face and a pig snout noticed Seymour noticing and glared back. Mr. Porcine then slowed his car and dropped behind Seymour’s Uber.
Once home, Seymour turned on his cable TV, more than a little afraid that some of his favorite actors would be monstrosities. But, maybe because of camera filtering, everyone looked normal. Not so the next day in his group practice.
Seymour was a confirmed bachelor, but his favorite fellow lawyer was Gwendolyn Kruste, an acerbic woman with his sense of suspicion about everyone’s motives. When Gwendolyn walked into his office he almost ran out of it. Gwendolyn had the spike haired stems of an arachnid, and a face with mandibles.
“Ah, ah, Gwen, urgent bathroom call. Probably something they gave me at the hospital.” He dashed out and went into a stall in the restroom, sitting on the throne without dropping his pants and trying to make sense of his life descending into one of Dante’s levels of hell.
Gwendolyn and he worked on too many cases together for him to avoid her, so Seymour cinched up his resolve and went into her office, trying to remain calm as they talked about upcoming trials. She noticed his anxiety and asked if he was feeling sick.
Seymour went home early. He was able to return to the office only because, as a defense attorney, he was accustomed to working with human dregs. But he never got over his apprehension, and discovered (on Amazon, God bless them) that he could buy apparently clear glasses with a left lens that blocked incoming light. He wore them constantly but still out of the corners of his vision or in glassless moments was shocked by the apparitions occasionally around him. Such horror story beings shouldn’t be in this world.
Eventually the objects of his revulsion noticed it. One dark winter evening Seymour returned home, entered his house, took off his glasses and was slammed against a wall by a pig-faced hulk who looked like the driver he’d seen three months earlier.
“It’s not your fault, but I need to kill you.”
The beast was about the size of a small boar, perhaps 350 pounds, and Seymour, who barely knew how to make a proper fist, also knew he had no chance to defend himself by fighting.
“Wait, please, before you commit my murder, at least tell me how it can be that so many of you exist and we never see you?”
“Ah. We’ve always had the ability to shield our true natures from you, but until Cagliostro it was of uneven quality and your kind were killing us off with gusto. Cagliostro, a great alchemist of the 1700s, was able to devise a medication that more thoroughly hides us. We’re almost never spotted now.
“So you see, even though blameless, we can’t allow you to reveal our presence and put us at risk. I’m sorry. Now I have a question. How is it that you can suddenly see us?”
Fear flushed through Seymour’s body. Then his training took over. He was pretty sure if he admitted the truth about his left eye lens, the eye would be gouged out and he’d be killed anyway. “I have no idea, but I’ve been really sick lately, with a high fever.” His lie was fluid, his body language sincere. “It’s probably a temporary aberration.”
Seymour hurriedly continued. “With so many different species, there must be serious disagreements between the kinds.”
“Of course, blood feuds even.”
“And if you do decide to settle differences, it must be hard to find an impartial judge, since he, she or it will always belong to one of the kinds.”
The porcine man tightened his hold. “Naturally, what’s your point?”
“What if I wasn’t a liability but an asset for you all?”
There was a wrinkle-snouted scowl. “What are you saying?”
“I’m a lawyer with extensive experience in both civil and criminal cases. You can verify that. What if I was to become your judge, or better still, your arbitrator. I’m not a member of any of your species and I don’t personally know anyone. I can make impartial judgements. The parties involved can split my fee so there’s no suggestion of collusion. Isn’t that worth considering?”
“But what about if you accidentally disclose something?”
“I can recant it or claim temporary insanity. At that point I’m beholden to you all for my livelihood and not likely to reveal anything.”
More wrinkles furrowed the massive brow. The sort-of-swine eased his hold, letting Seymour’s heels retouch the floor. “You may have value. May. We’ll discuss it. If we decline, I’ll make sure your death is quick.”
With quick movements that belied his size, the beast was gone. Seymour, who rarely drank, poured himself one. But just one. Then he made some preparations. Sealed notes were provided to three agencies, to be opened in the event of his death by accident or violence. Each of them specified that the lens of his left eye should be removed and used to view an auditorium full of unsuspecting people. Just a little no-fault insurance, he thought.
Then he drafted a rate schedule, adjusted to the severity of the offenses. After all, he thought, if they don’t still kill me their first question will be what will it cost.
About the Author:
Ed Ahern resumed writing after forty odd years in foreign intelligence and international sales. He’s had over 600 stories and poems published so far, and twelve books. Ed works the other side of writing at Bewildering Stories where he squats on the review board, and at Scribes Micro where he is the idle figurehead.