With a Demon's Eye Read online

  WITH A DEMON’S EYE

  A SHORT STORY

  J. F. PENN

  CONTENTS

  With A Demon’s Eye

  Enjoyed this story?

  Author’s Note

  More Books and Audiobooks by J.F.Penn

  About J.F. Penn

  WITH A DEMON’S EYE

  “If you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.”

  —Friedrich Nietzsche

  The desert shimmered in the heat as the sun beat down, punishing a land that had seen over a thousand years of suffering with no end in sight.

  Sara Miles stared out from the back of the Humvee, her legs cramped from sitting for hours on end. The heat of the desert was like a furnace blast, even through the protective window glass. Her lips were cracked and peeling, the back of her neck blistered from months embedded with the military battalion.

  She gripped her camera more tightly, anchoring herself as images from yesterday’s mission resurfaced, like a twisted mirage over the sand.

  Snapshots of bodies in the rubble. What had once been a family reduced to mangled corpses covered in dust and ash.

  Another drone strike. More collateral damage in a never-ending war.

  On her first tour, Sara had found it hard to capture the brutality and destruction, her breath catching in her throat, her tears obscuring the viewfinder as she tried to focus. Now her pictures were crisp and clear, the images telling a deliberate story, her sentiment locked deep inside where it couldn’t cloud her vision.

  Mags leaned over from the front passenger seat, holding out a wrapped mint sweet in his outstretched fingers. “Want one?”

  For an officer in the Medical Corps, in charge of other people’s health, Mags sure had a sweet tooth.

  Sara shook her head.

  Mags always offered. She always declined. The comfort of a familiar routine, perhaps even more precious so far from home.

  Their patrol was heading for an encampment on the far reaches of the territory. The military provided the settlers with essential supplies, and the people had proved friendly, but were understandably cautious. Today they were delivering medical supplies and food rations — and hopefully returning with a little more good will. Sara had jumped at the chance to join Mags and Harvey, their driver, on the run north, hoping to take photos of something other than misery.

  Even with the faltering air-con in the Humvee, it was still unbearably hot and the vehicle stank of stale sweat. Sara opened the window for a fraction of fresh air, but it only let in a wave of heat and dust. A bead of sweat trickled down her back, pooling at the base of her spine.

  It was impossible to stay dry and clean out here in this land of blood and dust, but when she returned to the sterilized world of her London flat, where she could be freshly showered and sweet smelling, Sara missed the desert with every fiber of her being. This was real life, and what she did as a combat photographer mattered.

  She was nothing in the bustling city — but out here in the desert, she captured the truth of war. Her photos shone a light on those who fought, suffered, and died for their freedom, for their country, and for their family. Some were soldiers, some were civilians. All were caught up in a maelstrom beyond their control.

  Her images could sway public perception and damn a government to hell for their actions. Once, she had even managed to quiet the drones — at least for a few days. But war had its own impetus, and its hunger was not assuaged here.

  A boyfriend — one of the many who passed briefly through Sara’s life — once told her she was incapable of seeing anything without the lens of war, that she would only find true happiness if she put her camera aside and experienced the world without the frame of the viewfinder.

  That day, she had picked up her camera and walked out of his life. She would be nothing without the ability to see the truth of the world through her lens. If that meant living alone, then so be it.

  The desert terrain soon gave way to rocky hills, and the Humvee turned in a wide arc to head along a rutted road on the final approach to the encampment.

  Its location at the crossroads of a trade route was strategic, so the place had been torn between all sides in the conflict, wrenched back and forth until it was left broken and bloody.

  Factions had shelled the village, uprooting its people and leaving them homeless refugees. But again and again, they returned and rebuilt, uncovering ancient foundations and using broken bricks from one generation to provide shelter for the next. Tin-roofed homes were cobbled together from salvaged military equipment reinforced with old tires, bent rebar, and planks of reclaimed wood.

  The makeshift shelters might be shattered and fragmented, but Sara knew she would find beauty here through the prism of her lens. The shy sideways glance of a young woman in the shadows, the wrinkled face of an old man, the broad grin of a child unbowed by suffering. Her images could change the perspective of those who saw them, and this bombed-out encampment might yet become a beacon of hope, a story of survival, one that drew international aid and a level of protection for this community.

  The Humvee jerked from side to side on the rocky surface, and Harvey slowed the vehicle to a crawl on the uneven road.

  “This is worse than usual.” He shook his head as he gripped the steering wheel more tightly. “We have to get some engineers out here before it gets any worse or we’ll never get through next time.”

  Two little boys, both around nine years old, ran out from the village and jogged alongside the Humvee, their hands thrust out for sweets.

  “Hello, please,” one shouted, a wide smile on his face, his dark eyes expectant.

  Sara wound down the window and raised her camera, capturing his cheeky grin and long limbs against the backdrop of the desert. The boy ran in bare feet over the rocky surface with the ease of one who belonged to this land. Sara could only hope her image captured this carefree moment, a boy in his element, as it should be.

  As Harvey tried to rev the Humvee forward, the gears ground together with a metallic rasp and the engine stalled and died. They were only a few hundred meters from the village.

  “Damn it, there are too many rocks.” Harvey nodded at Mags. “Clear some away from the front wheels and I’ll try again.”

  Mags opened the door and stepped out into the heat of the desert sun.

  The two boys ran up and tugged at his uniform.

  “Please, thank you,” they giggled with the few English words they’d learned.

  Mags reached into his pocket, and Sara captured his generous smile with a snapshot, the desert dust pale against his black skin as he reached out with the last of his mint sweets.

  Through her lens, she caught two hands briefly touching — the man and the boy, the soldier and the war-torn child, the invader and the oppressed.

  A sudden flash of magnesium white.

  A crack and a roar. A blast of hot air.

  The wrenching sound of metal as the Humvee bucked and rolled.

  The blast crushed Sara’s chest and tore the breath from her lungs. Her vision faded and her ears rang as smoke billowed around the half-exploded vehicle. She gasped for breath, inhaling the stench of burnt flesh and hot metal, coughing and retching as she fought to escape.

  A blistering heat flashed across her skin as she crawled her way out onto the burning sand. Sara screwed her eyes shut against the flames and smoke, and although she couldn’t see anything, that last moment remained seared into her memory.

  Mags. The children.

  Perhaps they were injured. Perhaps she could help. She just had to find them.

  Sara wiped her eyes with the back of one hand, trying to clear her vision.

  Sparks of such intense pain shot through her skull that she doubled over with a wave of nausea.

  After a moment, she touched her eyes more gently with light fingertips. There were shards of glass embedded in her face.

  In her eyes.

  Another sudden blinding flash of light.

  The boom that followed was like thunder, the detonation echoing across the desert as fresh blood joined that of generations past under the sand.

  Three days later

  Sara lay in a hospital ward at a military medical center, bandages over her eyes. The room smelled of antiseptic, but it couldn’t mask the stink of pus and blood from her wounds, the stench of burned flesh and hot metal and charred sand. She knew these were sensory memories — a nurse had told her so during her first panic attack — but she still had to fight them back.

  Sara clutched the edge of the bed as she anchored herself to the physical world.

  Inhale for three.

  Exhale for three.

  Once she had calmed her racing heart, Sara reached up and gently felt around the edge of her facial bandages once more. There was a distinct pain where the edges of her raw nerves still functioned. But behind her eyes, there was only a throbbing deep within her skull.

  She was lucky, they said. The explosion had killed both soldiers and one of the children. She had been badly injured, but she would make it.

  They gave her drugs for the pain, drugs for the panic, drugs for sleep.

  Each had their own color. White, blue, red, red, red. Lights flashed in her imagined vision, at once both bright and dark, like parts of the sky fallen to earth with the rain of shrapnel and glass.

  She was lucky, they said, but Sara wished that what was left of Mags would rise up and drag her beneath the sand. She wished his blood would choke her, and the scuttling insects of the desert would
burrow into her bleeding eye sockets to devour what was left of her broken body.

  The door creaked, and footsteps approached her bed.

  “Morning, Sara, I’m Doctor Hasabi. I’m in charge of the experimental treatment program here at Westfield Military. How are you feeling today?”

  His tone was brusque, matter-of-fact. He must have seen much worse than her in this bed, and Sara was grateful for his lack of pity.

  She turned her bandaged face toward him. “As good as can be expected.”

  She paused, but she had to ask. It was the only thing she cared about now. “Will I get my sight back?”

  The scrape of a metal chair on tile. A shift in the air by her bedside as the doctor sat down.

  The shuffle of papers. The scent of spearmint as if the doctor had been chewing gum, or swilling mouthwash.

  Sara pushed the thought of Mags and his mint sweets away as Doctor Hasabi spoke.

  “Your eyes were severely damaged in the explosion. We removed the glass and metal shards, but we cannot restore your sight. The damage is too great.”

  The doctor’s voice faded away as the pounding in her head grew louder. Sara struggled for breath as his words lay heavy on her chest, crushing her spark of hope to dust.

  He touched her hand. “Sara, it’s okay. Take some deep breaths. There is a possibility you could see again, at least partially, but there are risks.”

  His words echoed in her mind, coalescing into a way out of the interminable darkness.

  “What… what do you mean?”

  “We have a new eye transplant program using eyes that are part human, part robotic. It’s experimental, both in terms of the technology and the procedure. We have to connect the vasculature, the blood supply, and musculature so you can move the eye, and then rewire the pathway to your optic nerve. It’s essentially brain surgery, so it is extremely high risk—”

  “I’ll do it.” Sara cut him off. “I’m a photographer. Without my sight, I cannot do my job.”

  My job is my life. I am nothing without it.

  The click of a pen top and the sound of writing on paper.

  Sara could almost hear the doctor thinking. Was she a suitable candidate for the surgery? Was she stable enough?

  Inhale for three.

  Exhale for three.

  Repeat.

  The wait seemed endless as the doctor weighed her life in the balance.

  Finally, he spoke. “I have to read you the waiver form since you can’t read it yourself. It’s long, but we have to cover all eventualities and then you can make your final decision. I’ll record your verbal consent in addition to signing the forms.”

  Doctor Hasabi read the pages, his tone blurring into monotony as Sara listened to the litany of potential dangers — visual distortions, chronic pain, brain damage, death — and responded in the affirmative to every possible dire scenario.

  They finally reached the end. “Knowing the risks, do you consent to the surgery?”

  “Yes, absolutely. As soon as possible.”

  “Sign here.” The doctor pushed a clipboard under Sara’s hand and guided her to the right spot.

  She scrawled her signature.

  The chair grated on the tiles once more as Doctor Hasabi stood up. “We can proceed this afternoon. The nurse will be in to prep you for surgery shortly.”

  The door creaked shut once more and Sara lay in the bed, the beep of medical machines keeping a pulse with her heart, as she clung to the hope of seeing once more.

  It wasn’t long until a nurse came in, all speed and efficiency.

  The squeeze of a blood pressure cuff.

  The prick of a needle for blood draws.

  The sound of rubber wheels on vinyl as she was wheeled to the operating theatre.

  Sara imagined the place in snapshots as sounds conjured the hospital corridors around her. Someone — a nurse, perhaps — walked past, footsteps faltering in the hallway as they stared down, wondering what horrors lay beneath the bandages. A deep voice called for help from a nearby room, a sound of desperation as a loved one passed beyond reach of the living.

  Once within the operating theatre, capable hands transferred her from the gurney to the table.

  It was freezing cold and a thin blanket did little to warm her. Sara shifted on the gurney, her gown rustling as the sounds of preparation went on around her. There was a sense of anticipation in the air, a barely restrained excitement at the experimental procedure ahead.

  As the last minutes ticked by before she went under anaesthetic, Sara considered what might happen next. What remained of her eyes gouged out of her head, left like jelly in a metal tray. A blade in her brain. The smell of burning.

  What if they cut too deep? What if she woke up with more deficits that she already had? What if the pain was too much?

  But the alternative was to never see again, never look through the lens of her camera and show the world a snapshot of the truth.

  Doctor Hasabi leaned over the table. “We just need to do some last checks while you’re awake, but it won’t take long. Try to relax.”

  As he gently unwrapped the bandages around her face, Sara felt a chill touch her exposed skin and the gaze of the operating theatre upon her.

  A gasp came from across the room, swiftly silenced.

  Cool fingers on her cheeks, fitting a mask over her mouth and nose.

  “Just relax, breathe easily now.”

  As the world faded to black, Sara saw Mags reaching for her from the desert sand. Where his eyes should be were burning, bloody holes.

  Sara woke screaming.

  Intense pain split her skull, as if the neurons in her brain were being rewired with blades and flame.

  She clutched at her head, clawing at the bandages, whimpering in agony. She tried to open her eyes, but they were welded shut, crusted over with the residue of burned cells and stitches and blood. The horror of it crashed over her like a wave.

  Alarms blared. A nurse rushed in.

  The prick of a needle brought the relief of blackness once more.

  When she woke again, something had changed, as if the rewiring was complete. The pain was a dull ache under the gentle fog of whatever drugs they’d given her.

  A breath from beside her bed and the swish of a medical gown.

  “Sara, it’s Doctor Hasabi — just relax. I’m going to remove the bandages and examine you.”

  His fingertips were cool, and Sara wondered how deep into her skull they had probed.

  “I’m going to shine a light into your right eye now.”

  Sara gasped. “I see something.”

  “Good, good. Blink for me.”

  Sara blinked, her eyelids fluttering as the doctor’s face emerged slowly from the haze. It was blurred, but still, she could see him.

  Hope almost burst from her chest at the sheer relief. She would see again. She would go back to the desert. She would get her life back.

  “Keep blinking. Let the eye adjust.”

  As the doctor stepped away, Sara saw his features more clearly.

  A portly Middle Eastern man with a hawk-like nose and a proud smile that welcomed her back to the world while appreciating his own skill as a surgeon.

  But there was something around him, a blurred shape, like a shadow crawling over his back. Something like claws dug into the doctor’s skull; something with articulated joints and a bony carapace clung to him.

  Sara blinked once more, trying to clear the strange vision as Doctor Hasabi looked down at his notes.

  “There’s a minuscule piece of shrapnel from the explosion still embedded at the very back of your eye. It’s too dangerous to remove, so there is a risk it will dislodge at some point. But we can monitor that with follow-up scans.”

  Sara imagined his words in a visual snapshot. A piece of grey metal surrounded by the red of her veins. A speck of war and violence embedded in her brain, soaked in the blood of the dead.

  Strangely, it comforted her to think of carrying it with her as a reminder of those lost.

  Doctor Hasabi held up a chart of letters and numbers.

  “Can you read this line?”

  As Sara passed each of the visual tests, she wondered how soon she could get back out to the desert, how fast she could embed herself back with the military. Surely her scars and her resilience made her even more suited to that life. Her job was war, and while humans walked the earth, there would always be work for such as her.