The Bottom Feeders and Other Stories

6: The Eyes Have It

Calvin sat at his computer with his face bent toward the flat screen, watching as an arrangement of glowing dots came together in the image of a young woman. Her body jutted from a car door at a queer angle, and dark streaks marred her face. The car was inverted, flipped upside down, and resting in a patch of mud. The woman was dead, and this was merely a photograph, a digital copy of the corpse. Calvin found something intoxicating about her eyes and guided the cursor to her face, enlarging the image with a few clicks.

Those eyes were blue, electric, addictive.

The doorbell sent a quick jab into Calvin’s ear. He closed the image and hurried to the door, surprised by a visitor on a Wednesday night. Gina worked on Wednesday’s, and he couldn’t imagine anyone else who cared enough to make a personal visit to the Sentinal’s photographer at home, especially after ten. The wreck, he thought, must be the cops. He shoved his camera bag behind a chair.

Calvin opened the door, and noticed Gina’s eyes were rimmed with red. She held her hands bunched in front and shuddered slightly before opening her mouth. “I quit, Cal. The boss, Brad…he made a pass. Touched me. I pushed him and ran out.”

“C’mon.” He pulled Gina inside, glanced into the night, and shut the door with a hearty click. She crumpled against his chest, sobbing. That son-of-a-bitch, he thought, wrapping Gina’s shoulders with his arms. Calvin had never like Brad, his roving eyes and plastic smile. “It’ll be okay…”

Calvin lay awake, listening to Gina’s breath as she slept next to him. He stared at the ceiling, but thought of the blue eyes in the photo. They had penetrated his lens and pulled his camera — one of those pictures that found him. Those eyes found him; they whispered to him. He was first at the scene of the wreck; the car lay in a ditch as he made his way home from a high school basketball game. Calvin had been the first to call the police.

The dead eyes screamed from across the room. He propped his head under one arm, and turned slightly toward Gina. The thin comforter rose gently with her breath. Calvin forced his brain to conjure her face. He tried to find her cheeks, the gentle curving slope of her chin, her swollen lips, and brown eyes, but the dead girl stared back at him instead, blocking everything in her blue gaze. His head began to ache, a dull, growing pain that squeezed against his skull. The whisper rose again, something white, nearly subliminal, but a voice. He rolled over and smashed his head under a pillow, trying to chase away the whisper.

“You’ll just have to move in.”

Calvin cobbled together his world-famous omelets while Gina leaned on his kitchen counter. She wore an old t-shirt, a knock off from Animal House that simply read “COLLEGE” in block letters. After a small sigh, she said, “Cal, that’s sweet, really. But…”

“But what? I’ve got a steady job. A little too steady maybe.” He glanced past Gina to the desk and his camera bag stuffed behind the chair. “We can make this work. You could start back at school — finish your degree.” He shifted the omelet with a flick of his wrist.

Gina closed her eyes and sighed. “I’ll pay rent, okay. And clean up a bit around here…earn my keep.” She pushed a dirty bowl across the counter to the sink. “Somebody has to.”

Calvin slid her omelet onto a plate. “If you want toast, the bread’s over by the ‘fridge.” He turned back to the stove, cracking two more eggs with a swift motion. “That was me ignoring your not-so-subtle jab, by the way.”

She slid around the counter and wormed between Calvin and the stovetop. “Thank you.”

He dropped the spatula on the counter and laid hands on either side of her face, trying to burn the deep mahogany of her irises into his brain. “I love you, okay? Now move before my eggs burn.”

Before he left for work that morning, he rummaged inside the top drawer of his desk, pushing away old pens and broken pencils until he found an old pocketknife. The blue handle was scratched, and the blade quite dull, but Calvin wrapped it in his hand and pushed it into the depths of his camera bag.

As one of only two photographers on the Sentinel staff, Calvin enjoyed the freedom to roam Springdale during his on-duty hours. A quick tag over his cell phone, and he could be anywhere he was needed in a matter of minutes. The small town life suited him fine — he’d never work too hard and still carry an air of celebrity. Medium fish in a tiny pond. Not wanting any interruptions, Calvin clicked off his phone when he entered the city morgue that morning.

“Well, well, Lenny. I can always count on my favorite minimum wage earning mortician’s assistant to be sitting on his ass.” Calvin worked up his best Cheshire grin.

Thin and pale and wearing a weak goatee, Lenny dropped his feet from the desk and eyed Calvin. “Shit. You gonna get me in trouble again?”

“Me? You’re kidding, right?” Calvin pulled a twenty-dollar-bill from his pocket and folded it in the palm of his hand. “How much laundry did you have to do at your mom’s place to save up for that jersey?” Calvin slipped the bill into Lenny’s boney grip.

“Screw you. This is vintage Magic Johnson. Got it on eBay for a steal. It’s all about timing, knowing what to look for.” Lenny smiled, a weak curling of his lips just above the beard. “Looking for anybody special today?”

“The girl…the Jane Doe…from the wreck yesterday.”

“She’s cold fish man. Tragic, she was kind of hot.”

Calvin teased him with wide eyes and a mock-shocked expression.

“Dude, you’re a freak — I’d never, you know…” Lenny popped off an obscene gesture. “You’ve got ten minutes. She’s in 14A.”

Calvin nodded and waited for the buzz before opening the doors to the morgue cooler. He wore a light jacket with a flannel shirt underneath, but the air poked through with icy fingers. The chill and a sickly lemon-lime glow to the lights really set Calvin’s fight or flight ticker humming. He had to see the body, look at those eyes again, and exercise the blue-eyed demon.

“14A. Hello, honey, I’m home,” Calvin joked to bolster his own flagging courage. With a quick click and then steady whirr, the drawer slid out. Blue Eyes was there, under the plastic. He peeled back just enough to see her icy face, an unnatural field of frigid grey. Her eyelids swelled a dark indigo in the shadows.

Calvin’s fingers quivered slightly before he touched her eyelids. Pinching one between forefinger and thumb, he pushed up gently, just enough to see the eye. It was lifeless now, drained of the hum and electricity from his photo. Curiosity worked magic in his fingers, and the thumb grew courageous, touching the cold surface of her dead eye. A hum grew around him in the cooler, a whisper that wasn’t quite the sound of the compressor or fans.

He closed his eyes for a moment and jerked from the body, quickly pulling the shroud over the young face and snapping 14A home. Calvin shivered, pulled his jacket around his neck, and hurried from the room. Later, he would remember the touch as a slight buzz — merely a pop of static electricity.

Calvin and Gina sat at the kitchen table that evening, poking at cardboard take-out boxes from The Happy Dragon, a flagging Chinese restaurant in a town where burgers and fries were considered fine cuisine. Gina tried to catch Calvin’s eye, but he avoided her, lost in his own thoughts and cringing at the growing pain in his skull — another headache.

“I interviewed for a couple of positions today. One is with a vet here in town. I thought, maybe, if it works out I could try school again. Finish my bachelor’s at least, then see what happens.”

Calvin glanced over the lid of a container, scratching the back of one hand. “Sounds great.” He winced as he spoke, and his voice was stale. His head throbbed again. “Why are we using spoons?”

Gina frowned. “The forks are dirty. Sorry, I forgot — ”

The phone buzzed, and Calvin sprang from the table before the first ring was a memory.

“Hello.”

“Hi Calvin, this is Maryann Spader. Is Gina around? I can’t seem to get her at her place.” He looked at Gina and mouthed, it’s your mom.

She shook her head.

“Um, she’s not here,” Calvin said, frowning at his girlfriend.

“Could you, um, tell her to call me,” Maryann said on the other end, her voice somewhat thick and slow.

“Alright, I’ll let her know.” Calvin clicked the receiver home and returned to the table. “You haven’t told your folks?”

Gina’s mouth crawled into a little smile. “I…wasn’t ready, yet. I don’t want them to freak.”

Calvin’s knuckles whitened as he clutched his spoon. He closed his eyes, and his neck tensed. “Are you ashamed of me, that it?” he snapped.

Gina recoiled. “No…Calvin.” Her weak smile vanished under a hurt frown. “What’s with you?”

“What’s with me? My live-in is hiding the truth — ”

The phone rang again, truncating his rant. Calvin pushed away from the table, glowering at Gina. He snapped the phone off the cradle. “What?”

“Whoa, ace. What’s up your ass?” Lenny asked on the other end.

Calvin sighed and tucked the receiver on his shoulder. He glanced back at Gina. “Nothing. Nothing. Sorry, just a little domestic squabble.” Gina walked away from the table. “What’s up?”

“Dude, the cops came in this afternoon. Crazy shit, man. They were asking about you.”

Calvin’s face flushed. A tense moment passed. He rubbed his index finger to his thumb and remembered how her eyes felt. “Me? Why?”

“Look, can you meet me later tonight, at the Idle Hour. I don’t feel really comfortable talking about it over the phone. I thought you might like to know.”

“Yeah, how about eight?” Calvin waited. “Twenty bucks work?”

“Great. See you then.”

Calvin stood at the kitchen table for a few moments, looking at the half-empty containers, and trying to remember what happened after he touched the eyes. He remembered the shock, the feeling of electricity, but then what? Calvin held his hands in front of him, examined the fingers, and scraped a bit of black dirt from under one nail. He scooped up the leftovers and stuffed them in the trash. When the kitchen was clean, he found Gina lying on their bed.

“Look, I’m sorry.” He held his head.

She looked up, her eyes puffy and rimmed with red. She nodded.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Really. I understand that you aren’t ready to tell your folks, okay?” He sat down on the edge of the bed, testing the space to see if he was welcome. “Congrats on the interviews, too.”

“I wasn’t ready…I will be, soon. It’s not just you — I haven’t even told them about my job.” Gina held out her hand. “I’m worried about that headache. You never have headaches.”

“No worries. I’ll be fine.” Calvin stretched one arm around her shoulders. “Take your time with your folks. I’m in no hurry.” He bent lower and focused on her brown eyes. “I understand, all right?”

Gina nodded.

“Look, I hate to go…that call was for work. I have something important to do.”

The inside of Idle Hour was covered with at least two generations of Coors Light and Budweiser posters, old enough that some of the women on the posters could easily be Calvin’s mom. A permanent cigarette haze floated in the air despite the public smoking ban two years ago. The building stretched half a city block with billiards tables lined up from front to back and old vinyl bar stools resting against the walls between a few upright arcade machines. A small area in front held a couple of tables for playing cards and the bar.

Calvin looked past the grizzled faces of the middle-aged regulars and saw Lenny at a billiards table under a cracked lamp in the middle of the hall. He was lining up for a shot and nodded toward Calvin as he approached.

“I thought this would be a good place.” Lenny looked at the ceiling, indicating the loud music. “Nobody will overhear us in here.” With a swift thrust, he sent the cue ball into the nine. “Join me?”

Calvin thrust his hands in his pockets and shook his head. “No. I’m terrible.” He slipped a twenty out of his pocket and folded it in his hand. “You’re getting expensive.”

Lenny sidled up to Calvin and snatched the bill. “Yeah, maybe. But this is good. 14-A, you know, Jane Doe or whatever, she was wanted for murder.” He bent to the table again and lined up another shot.

Calvin began to sweat and took off his jacket, tossing it on a chair against the wall. “Maybe I will join you.” He surveyed a collection of house cue sticks on a rack, held up a few, and made a choice.

“Arizona. She was wanted in Arizona. The car was stolen in Wichita. Sedgwick County plates.” He cleared the table, knocking the eight ball in the side. “I’ll rack.”

Calvin’s head swam, and he steadied himself using the cue stick as a crutch. He looked up, past Lenny and spotted Brad, Gina’s old boss, guffawing at the bar. Brad was short, but broad — he hit the local gym every day, mostly to work on his upper body by the look of his scrawny legs.

“Hey, zombie-dude, are you with me? Did you hear what I said?”

Calvin snapped to attention. “Murder,” he muttered.

Lenny walked around the table and stood close to Calvin. “Here’s the real crazy shit, okay? She killed this old dude and his wife. Cut their fuckin’ eyes out and left their bodies in the goddamn kitchen. The cops out there never found the eyes.”

Calvin’s eye twitched. “How do you learn all this?”

“Springdale’s finest think I’m some sort of idiot, I guess. They talk right in front of me, me sitting there with my Spiderman comic, shit. They must think I’m stupid.”

You’re not stupid — you took forty bucks from me this week, Calvin thought.

“Can you believe that? She didn’t look like some cold-blooded, freak killer.” Lenny chuckled.

“I need to do something,” Calvin said, almost in a trance. He drifted away from the billiard table and through the crowd. Calvin moved straight to Brad and tapped him on the shoulder.

Brad turned, “Oh, lookie, it’s Ansel freakin’ Adams. How’s your girlfriend, buddy?”

“You’re a dick,” Calvin said before blindsiding him with a right uppercut. Brad slipped off his stool, stunned by the sudden blow. Steel bands wrapped around Calvin’s arms before Brad could scramble to his feet.

Joel, the bouncer, dragged Calvin outside and dropped him on the damp sidewalk. “None of that shit, buddy. Go home, all right?” He towered over Calvin. Joel had played a few years of football in college before blowing a knee, and he still cast an imposing shadow.

Calvin nodded and started to pick himself off the ground.

Lenny popped out of the door. “What the hell were you thinking? C’mon, lets get you home before B-rad decides to come for round two.”

“Yeah…yeah.” Though sober, Calvin staggered to his feet, needing some help from his scraggly accomplice to keep from flopping back to the concrete. He felt dirty, dragged through a muddy field. Nerves pricked in his arms and legs like the tiny cuts from rolling in crisp grass.

“Look, champ. The cops were asking about you, too. You made the call the night Jane wrecked, right?”

Calvin nodded, his head swimming. “Yeah, first on the scene,” he muttered. As Lenny led him down the street, he imagined that girl — Jane Doe, the murderer — lying in the ditch with her eyes cut out.

“Shit, Cal. What were you thinking?” Gina stood in their bedroom doorway with her arms crossed, a dour look dragging her lips into a frown.

Calvin shook his head. “I just…something pushed me.” He eyed the room, resting his glance for a moment on the camera bag on the sofa. “How the hell did you know?”

She closed her eyes. “Megan called. She was at the bar, too.” Her eyes opened, looking black in the dim kitchen. “He’s a jerk, Cal, but starting a bar brawl — ”

“I didn’t start a god-damn bar brawl. I just decked that asshole, and they tossed me out.”

“Whatever. It’s just not like you.” She uncrossed her arms. “Is it the job, Cal? I was on the computer today. I stumbled on some pictures by accident…that young woman…” She shuddered. “Something like that has to…get to you. That wreck…”

Calvin’s neck burned. He shivered, feeling hot pinpricks again. Anger. “How the fuck do you know what I’m like?” His voice swelled, filling the kitchen. “Shit!” He balled his fists and thrust one through the sheetrock next to the phone. The knuckles stung, streaked with blood and loose skin. Calvin pushed the throbbing hand to his mouth and sucked on the wound. Gina disappeared through the doorway. He heard a slam and the distinct click of his bedroom door lock.

He stuck the injured hand under the tap and flipped on the cold, letting the water cool his hand and his temper. His brain swam inside his skull, lost at sea somewhere. Thoughts bounced and rocked, but he couldn’t grasp anything long enough to make sense. Calvin wiped his hand on a towel and tumbled to the sofa, kicking the camera bag to the floor. The camera bag.

He reached for the bag, but the vice tightened on his head again and his fingers wouldn’t obey. Something seemed to crawl through his veins, forcing him to lie down. He lay there, staring at the ceiling, for most of the night — not asleep, but not quite awake. Toward dawn, he drifted into a fitful sleep.

Calvin dreamed of Gina. She held the camera bag over one shoulder. Brad was in the dream too, bare-chested and smeared with oil like at a body building contest. He wrapped one well-muscled arm around Gina’s slender waist and pulled her closer. She giggled. Brad’s eyes swelled, fading to a sky blue. Watch this, she mouthed before poking her thumbs into Brad’s eye sockets, pressing until an oily black goo squirted out.

Calvin woke in a cold sweat. The clock above his mantle showed 6:30 AM. He rolled off the couch, snatched his keys from the counter, and left the house before Gina stirred. He wanted to be away; something smelled of rot and worked on his stomach, telling him to go.

The phone nearly knocked Calvin out of his chair when it rang. He had been dozing at his desk in the newsroom, but now he recovered, wiped some drool from his lips, and grabbed the receiver.

“Sentinel. Calvin Morris speaking.”

“Calvin?” Lenny’s voice questioned. “Shit, Calivn. I figured they’d probably locked you up by now.”

“Who?” Calvin shook his head to break the cobwebs loose.

“The freakin’ cops, dude. They just called. They want to question you about the girl. You know, 14-A, murderous Jane Doe?”

Calvin glanced at his cell phone, noting a missed message from the Springdale Police Department and one from his house. “What…did you — ”

“No. Shit no. Security told them you had been here. Crazy shit, man. Her fucking eyes were cut out. Rough job too, somebody must’ve done it with a dull butter knife or something.”

A ball of ice grew in Calvin’s stomach. The memory grabbed him, and he steadied himself against the desk. “What?”

“They want to ask you about it. They’re looking for something else, some evidence. A jar I think.”

Calvin scanned the area for his camera bag. Not here. When he glanced up, he spotted two police officers skirting around desks in the newsroom. “Look, Lenny…I gotta go.” He dropped the phone on the cradle.

“Calvin, what’s the good word buddy?” It was Jimmy Mann, cocky and ignorant, the cheese of Springdale’s finest.

“Just catching up on some paperwork. I’m sure you guys know all about paperwork.”

The other officer chuckled. Jimmy glared at him and faced Calvin. “Look, we had a little talk with your friend at the hospital…Lenny? Anyway, I’m sure you had nothing to do with defacing the body.” A moment passed in awkward silence, a verbal game of chicken. “Although I am a little curious as to why you had to go see her in the cooler. We would also like to know if you saw anything funny at the scene of the accident, before we arrived. Anything you didn’t tell us in your statement that night.”

Lenny, you lying bastard. Calvin straightened in his chair, meeting Jimmy’s gaze. “No. Why would I go and withhold evidence from you fellows.”

Jimmy smiled, trying to pull off some Hollywood-tough demeanor. “I dunno, Calvin.” He leaned forward. “But Jane was wanted for murder, and anything in that car could’ve been related to the case, and if you did — ”

“I took something from the scene — that’s what you’re implying, right? If I did, I’d be dumb enough to be a member of the Springdale Police Department. Hell, I cut those fucking eyes out with a spoon. Is that what you want?” Calvin stood up, his heart rattling inside his chest, pushed past Jimmy, and turned. “Look, I’m busy, got it? Play Sherlock Holmes on somebody else’s time.” He held his head against the mounting pain as he hurried into the afternoon sunshine.

Gina sat at the kitchen table, pale and washed like a sheet of clean paper. A mason jar rested on the table in front of her. It was filled with something, a clear fluid like water. Six eyes floated in the water like bleached grapes, bits of flesh clinging to each and clouding the fluid. Calvin took a few steps into the room and noted that two of the eyes had electric blue irises.

Gina tilted her head toward him. “I found this in your bag Calvin.” Her hand shook as she pointed at the jar. “I was going to call you. I thought maybe you needed your stuff for work.”

The burning started in his toes this time, slashing through every nerve in his body. He stepped closer to the table, Gina stood, and the jar seemed to grow. “I–I’m fine.” One finger touched the glass, and six eyes spun to meet his gaze. He remembered the whispers. Those eyes had told him what to do the night of the wreck, they told him what to do that day in the morgue, but they were quiet now.

“I found this, too.” She held out his pocketknife. “I–I think I know why you did it.” She moved behind Calvin and gently pushed him into a chair. He didn’t resist. “She had such beautiful eyes — such blue eyes. Electric. Intoxicating.”

“Gina …”

Her fingers brushed across his cropped hair. “When I found the jar…it was like they were talking to me, Calvin. Whispering, telling me what to do.”

Calvin’s car was gone when the police arrived. They entered through the open door and found his body slumped against a wall in the kitchen. A dark stain swallowed the front of his shirt, a thick run of blood from his throat. Both eyes were gone, gouged out, leaving two rough wounds in his face. His old pocketknife sat on the table, alone, smeared and sticky with blood. The jar, the eyes, and Gina were nowhere to be found.