Deception of Beauty

Chapter 3: Stranded

Henrick woke up amidst the wreckage and the debris of the ship. Around him, bodies were littered on the ground, lying around him. He picked himself up and walked around, inspecting the dead or the unconscious, he couldn’t tell from just looking, unless if it was obvious.

He found Ash and the young girl together, hands connected, and he smiled. It was young love, he told himself, and checked them, not touching them, and seeing they uninjured, he left to search for the chief medic.

He looked around, and saw the arm. It was cut below the elbow, scattered into the wreckage, the fingers clamped on the handlebar. No doubt something sharp had cut the arm, leaving it hanging.

Slyvana was over a bench, his upper body hanging over the seat, his face looking downwards. He looked well, but the same couldn’t be same for the pilot next to him. His head was decapitated, the bloody stump on the neck still gathering blood. Henrick pushed the body away, and carried the limp body of the medic with him.

He reached the forest at the edge of the broken cockpit. He cleared the broken glass, metal, plastic and other rough stuff away and laid the medic on the ground. He looked at him, and looked away in shock, and threw up.

For where his left eye should have been was an empty socket. He went back to where the pilot was, and looked around, and his stomach lurched when he saw the evidence.

A dried up eyeball was on the end of a nasty looking piece of metal, scooped out of the socket, having entered, and flipped out. The hazel pupil was dilating, and the whole thing was shrivelling up. Henrick shuddered and went to Slyvana, placing the eye on a fallen tree trunk. He put an eye-patch, black in colour, over the left socket, and patiently waited for Slyvana to awaken.

After fifteen minutes his eye flickered open, and he looked at the figure near him. His hand slithered to his dagger, before he saw the straight back, and relaxed when he saw Henrick’s face as he turned.

He felt something covering his eye and as he tried to smile and wink at Henrick. He felt his left eye and flipped the eye-patch, and tried to look out of his left eye.

Nothing. Blackness.

“Looking for this?” Henrick asked, and pointed at a dishevelled object on the wood. He crept closer, afraid of what it could be. When he recognized the colour of the iris, and tried to feel his eye, he felt emptiness, and when he carefully moved his fingers closer, there was still nothing where his eye was before.

“God, no,” Slyvana whispered, before his fingers touched the end of the eye socket, the bony flesh, and the disappearing trails of the jelly-like vitreous humour.

He gave a sob, and sat down on the ground, pulling his hand out, staring at the finger with his remaining eye with anguish. Henrick knew what it was like, having lost his arm, but Slyvana was still good looking, and having lost the eye was a pain not only to him, but his senses and his looks.

He gave a scream of pain when the loss of the eye kicked in, and he clutched the socket with one hand, the other finding the grip of his pistol. People were waking up, and Henrick saw Ash stirring from his sleep.

He moved towards Slyvana cautiously, afraid of scaring him, which he did. Slyvana gave a shout and drew his gun, aiming it at Henrick. “Stay away,” he panted. He moved the gun to point at Parkerson, who had come closer. “All of you.”

Parkerson recoiled when he saw the face. The eyeball had disappeared, and he could see the hollow darkness inside, the white bones poking through the surface, shining in the dark of the removed eye.

“He’s in shock,” Henrick yelled. “Let me handle this!”

Henrick took another step and the gun wavered, before pointing at his chest again. “Slyvana, you know me. Stop this, Sly, stop the nonsense.”