Nicely Strange Stories Home

My New Eyes Anyway. I was in the back seat of Bernard's old EH Holden; he was driving. Some guy I didn't know was in the front passenger seat. We were cruising up the Maroondah highway through Ringwood, that elevated-road section that they put in to keep all the street scum out of their shops. Every building along there was at least four storeys high, the first two being burned-out shells, the third being armored doors and defense systems; anything above that was fit for Citizens to shop in and conveniently at street level. So, me and Bernie and this guy are cruisin' up along the highway when the guy offers me the open end of a brown paper bag. He has this half-concealed sly grin on his face which tells me it would be a sensible thing to refuse, and I do, Ringwood being Melbourne's home of poor quality back-yard psychoactive chemistry. He sticks his face into the bag and takes a good snort, then offers it to Bernard, who does the same. Nothing seems to happen after that for a few minutes, then they both fish around underneath their seats and take out automatic weapons. Really old, crusty-lookin' things, must be at least fifty years old. The guy knocks out his window with the butt of the rifle, somehow manages to swing the gun around and then starts shooting at the other drivers on the road. Bernard actually bothers to wind down his window (it's his car, after all) but also starts takin' pot-shots at the people walking along the balconies in front of the shops. They're both rotten shots, and they put more small holes into windows than they do people, but whatever was in the brown paper bag is working now, and their faces are red and they're screaming wordlessly, almost like they were singing along to grunge or something. It doesn't take Bernard long to lose control of the car. It bounces off a council garbage truck to our left, across four lanes of oncoming traffic and onto a shop-balcony. It doesn't hold out for very long; the car slips forward, noses down and slides down between the third-floor shop-front and the concrete road support. Bernard and the guy are a-whoopin' and a-hollerin' and still shootin' at things that only they can see, and I'm crouched down in the back seat, hangin' onto the safety belt, hoping they don't turn around and decide to start shooting at me. The balcony finally gives way completely and the car drops three storeys to the ground below, nose first. The left side of the car is mashed away by the concrete block at the foot of the road support; a long, sharp piece of balcony strut goes through the windscreen and then through Bernie and then through the back of his seat and then between my left arm and my body and into the back seat. There's a few moments of silence after this, some tinkling of glass, some wheezing as one of the people in the front seat exhales for the last time. I kick the back door open and climb out into the under-road twilight. There's no artificial lighting down here; all you can see is lit by whatever light manages to squeeze between the shops and the road. "Wau, just like them tunnel and bridge people in America," I think. I drop down to the ground - which is made up of decades of compressed rubbish - and start edging around, looking for a way back up to street level. This feels sort of like playing a dungeon game and suddenly being dropped down to level twenty-three when you're a level two fighter. I know i'm way out of my depth here, and if I'm going to survive, I'd better get the fuck back up to street level. The car's a complete write-off; I can't even get the doors open to get their guns, it's that badly crushed. So. Skulking from one basement shop front to the next, looking into the shattered window-frames, trying to determine which would be the best way up. None of them look too inviting, but that's the whole idea. I'm leaning against one, peering into the dimness and trying to spot a stairwell when there's a faint sound above me, bare feet on concrete. I freeze, trying to hear more; it stops. I open my mouth and breathe very slowly through it. Some instinct tells me to move to the right. I do, and someone leaps down onto where I had just been standing, drops to a crouch, springs up and back into the shop. I try to catch a glimpse of them; too late. I move down the rough path, pause in front of another shop; there's that feeling again. This time I look up and see her, staring down at me. She jumps out of the second-storey window and tries to land on my head. It occurs to me that, strategically speaking, she isn't the sharpest tool in the shed. She misses, jumps up and runs back inside the shop. A few seconds later and she's ready to try to jump down on me again. This time I reach up, push her feet to the side as she drops; she hits the ground very awkwardly and bashes her head against the grimy shop front tiles. She doesn't move. I grab her feet and drag her inwards, away from the shops and the edge of the road, around behind one of the concrete road supports. A single slat of light falls from somewhere above, maybe a drain-hole in the road; I position her head directly under this and brush her madly tangled hair out of her face. She's breathing shallowly. When I peel back an eyelid to see if her pupils are dilated (not that this would tell me anything about how badly she was hurt; 's just that I'd seen people do this on t.b), her eye is.. it's.. she must have stolen these from someone far richer. Her eye was a crimson crystal sphere, the pupil a night-black well glittering with reflected highlights. Her other eye was the same. I kneeled there with her head in my lap and stared down at her eyes. It didn't take me long to come to a decision. I reached up to my own right eye, worked my long thumb- and index-fingernails underneath the lids and around the eyeball, popping it loose from the socket. About an inch and a half of soft, ropey cable trailed from the back, leading to a plug set in my skull. I picked the plug out, vision fading from the right side; pocketed the old eye, reached down and removed her right eye. It felt warm, soft; a large grape that had been held close to her heart. The plug went in and I squeezed the eyeball between the flaccid lids, rubbing it with the left side of my index finger until it settled and came online. I kept that eye closed, half-taking-notice of the standard diagnostic displays it was giving me while I repeated the process with my left eye; the old eyeballs sitting snugly in my overcoat pocket, the new ones swivelling about in my sockets. They both felt a bit swollen, so I sent a command to the left eye: lose two percent fluid. It did so, a viscid tear trailing down the side of my nose. That felt about right, so I adjusted the pressure in the right eye as well. Much better. I wiped the tears away with the cuffs of my overcoat, took a deep breath and opened my new eyes.

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