Your Eyes Are Being Held Captive In Your Skull

Moth spoke first.

“It was a good deal, you know. You would have done the same, in my shoes.”

Gorby drank, wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “You don’t wear shoes.”

What do you remember? Nothing. Are there bones in your backyard, or just topsoil. Is the soil old bones, bones so old that they don’t remember they used to be bones?

Moth wriggled his face bits. “I could wear shoes if I wanted to.”

Gorby sneezed. Sneezed again. He had a lot more he wanted to say, it looked like. His jaw worked up and down, he took a couple deep breaths. Whatever he wanted to say, he didn’t say it. He threw some change onto the bar, hesitated, then scooped it back up and put it back in his pocket. A quarter gave him a hard time, so he had to push it off the edge of the bar and then pick it up off the ground. Moth pretended not to watch. He wriggled his face bits quietly.

Do things remember what they used to be, what they used to mean? Are the eyeballs lodged in your skull captives? Do they scream in protest as a never-ending firehose of photons pours into them?

Moth got up and left, patting Gorby on the back. He had seen enough.