The Death Sculptor

Seventy-Two

Hunter sat alone in total darkness facing the pictures board in his office. It was late and everyone had gone home. In his hand he held a flashlight, which he kept flicking on and off at uneven intervals, in an attempt to trick his brain.

As light enters the eye and hits the retina, the eye’s photographic plate, the image that is formed is inverted, but is interpreted the right way up by the brain. If you allow that image to be projected onto the retina for just a split second before cutting off the light source, the brain then has to interpret only what it can remember, drawing from what modern medicine calls the ‘immediate’ or ‘f ash’ memory.

If the image is a shape well known to the brain, like a chair, the minor details the brain failed to register due to the short light exposure, are automatically compensated by the long-term memory – the brain thinks ‘it looked like a chair’, so the brain pulls a chair image from its memory bank. But if the shape is unknown to the brain, then it has nothing to fall back on. It then compensates by working harder in trying to identify details from the original image. That was what Hunter was trying to do, force his brain to see something it hadn’t seen before.

So far, it hadn’t worked.

‘Is this your idea of disco lights?’

Hunter turned in the direction of the voice and switched on his flashlight. Alice was standing by the door, holding her briefcase.

‘I didn’t know you were still here,’ he said.

‘What, you think you’re the only workaholic in this place?’ She smiled.

Hunter shifted in his seat.

‘Do you mind if I switch on the lights?’

‘Go ahead.’ He flicked off his flashlight.

Alice hit the light switch before nodding at the board. ‘Got anything new?’ She knew what he was trying to do.

Hunter rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger while shaking his head. ‘Nothing.’

Alice placed her briefcase on the floor and leaned against the doorframe. ‘Are you hungry?’

Hunter hadn’t thought about it the whole day, and as he did his stomach rumbled. ‘Starving.’

‘Do you like Italian?’