"Ocean eyes…" Eve looked at him wistfully, she had never seen such blue eyes. Through the apparent cataracts the sky bore into her, and she felt like she could drown in those eyes….
Hardly knowing him, she began to wonder….
Jack was in the market facing Eve, pondering about her own world, about her own erased existence. It was a warm day, as Jack sucked in the air as it hung in his mouth, he had to breathe fast because of the suffocation burning in his lungs. There were no usual shoppers in the market, giving the unnatural sense that him and Eve were the only ones on the sidewalk leaning against the old buildings behind all the venders. He changed his thoughts to the girl before him and smiled warmly:
"Call me jack if you please…"
"So you're name's jack?"
"Yup"
"You don't seem to be from around here…"
Jack's face looked at her blankly, again giving her the sense he could see her and cruelly frightening Eve as he bubbled with laughter that seemed to echo through the humid summer air. Eve fell back on the palms of her hands looking at Jack frustratingly. After some time he calmed down, he at last squeezed out some words forcibly.
"You and I, my dear, are most definitely not from around here." Eve gave Jack a puzzled look.
"Then where on earth are we from?" Jack loved her skepticism, and smiled, playing with Eve's thoughts.
"Not from this earth…"
Change was in the air.
Eve for the next few weeks lived with the young man. There was nowhere else where she could go, so she lived in Jack's run-down upstairs apartment room of a building that was across from the outside market where Jack played his guitar for money. Her room was small, and she often found herself clothed with unceasing shivers at night. But even with the horribly uncomfortable bed she slept in, she would find herself dreaming the most unusual vision every night she let her mind retreat to the place between waking and sleeping.
Leaves swaying dancing reflecting the most purely sinless light from somewhere look up blue ocean backlit canvas of millions of lights actually moving dancing mimicking the leaves above her now and eyes move down to the swaying foliage possessing the sky to a grand beautiful old tree with colors running through the veins of its bark and the roots seeming to hug the earth below protecting it from an unknown being air so crisp as if a human had never spread his poison upon this place smells of deep natural earth and flowers could be detected a mile away the wind was so wholesome. (AN: wow!!!! What a run on man! Where's my award??!!!) And yet… a presence of evil that swallowed hearts lurked beyond sight and his voice could be heard his wicked song was thrust towards the ear:
'The sky is crying
The tears rolling down her noose
His wish was shot in the dark
But her gift is what she can't lose
The mother of all must delight in pain
Brought upon her by the flow of blood
Thorns may be crushed by her children's feet
But inside her heart they swell as a flood
Evie dear mother of all
His life he will yield
For the love you both may have
But beware;
Both your fates are sealed'
These nights Eve woke in a cold sweat, Jack running to her side claiming that he had heard her scream. Jack would then sing her to sleep, even though Eve was indeed 16- but you must understand, this dream wasn't a dream at all. It was a place where all people go between wake and asleep. This place becomes so realistic as you become caught between these two worlds, as so does that voice, that being… and also the eerie tune the cry would proclaim which left Eve shudder with fright at the possible meaning. Seeking security she told Jack her visions with clarity and with appalling accusations of the premonition.
Eve could sense Jack's anxiety. His hands would tremble as he stared into the space beyond Eve, as if he was indeed viewing the dream as she described the panorama each night, each time a different perspective. The Man seemed to be coming closer to something…
These nights she felt that Jack might leave her because of the unknown danger she did not understand at all in her dream. For some reason she could feel that perhaps this man that Jack had been so alarmed of when she first met him is possibly real. She would whisk these thoughts away, thinking of how ridiculous it would be for Jack to kick her out because of some stupid nightmare. But then again in her dream her senses were alive, as if she was really conscious and indeed feeling the wind caress her and smelling the soil from the pulled weed a mile away… it was too real for her mind.
Jack was again playing his magic on his old guitar. People would pass by, dropping strange-looking coins in his guitar's battered case. From Sitting next to Jack and from constant wandering, Eve had begun to notice that the people here spoke a strange tongue, a cross between French and German. When she, without knowing, spoke to someone because she had bumped into him or her, she found herself speaking strangely, somehow knowing that when she said 'aeiavia evieai' she was exclaiming 'excuse me' in her mind.
When she informed Jack about this peculiar incident in the market, he again looked at her with amusement.
"I told you: we both are not from around here."
"Oh really? Then, Jack, amuse me and tell me exactly where the hell did I come from?" Eve's temper always rose when she tried feebly to remember some things from her past. He loved her when she acted like this, and he thought like many times before, how she really was before...
Well... she might have been the rebel in the school. The protector of the underdog and speaking for those who cant speak for themselves... or perhaps the quiet one? The one when spoken to surprised the listener because of her intelligence and compassion about everything she took an interest in...
The memories were streaming out of her chest like ribbons flowing pleasingly to those who could not see them. Like spirit-like beauty, people, buildings would pass before him in his infinite darkness, giving him the cursed gift to see scenes of horror love pain obtained through such a painful memory of his own.
He began to probe the sights she sent before him: swings, a boy, a kiss, an older woman with silky curly locks reading a story to a sick red-haired child... but then he saw something peculiar. As the unusually vivid scene flew out of Eve's heart… the luminance of the elegant memory so great and stunning that he witnessed a soft candlelit face of a beautiful young lady as it passed out of this… woman…
A Christmas tree with burnt out lights. The same child who was sick was alone, crying silently in the dark warmed room filled with beds along the walls that occupied children waiting for the mysterious Santa Claus to bless them with gifts the next morning. Shadows danced on the walls as the fire crackled in the fireplace and an sign was portrayed above the fireplace, sporting Josephine's Orphanage for Children.
The tears fell silently from the darkened tired eyes of the child as she thumbed her small and only box-like gift wrapped hurriedly in brown paper. The child seemed to hold no emotion in her features as she kneeled before the fire, and her red unkempt hair fell in her eyes. Glancing on the box, it said in rushed writing: For Abby. Then underneath the letters, a note was taped beneath that read: give to daughter for Christmas.
Her name was Abigail.
The girl opened the box painfully finally pained emotions rising to the surface, careful not to rip the wrapping, and placed the little present flatly in her hand. She examined it with a fear-like wanting , looking unusual with the tears still streaming down the same path on her rosy face.
The girl opened the box, and out popped an ocean-colored marble. The girl looked agonizingly upward, eyes closed as tears flowed hitting the dusty floor. And with her small lips, she whispered softly:
"My Ocean Eyes."
Jack gasped.
"Jack???!?"
He blinked.
"Jack? You've been looking strangely at me for some time now... are you okay?"
Eve was literally inches from his face, innocent eyes staring deep within his dead ones, and her hands softly massaging Jack's shoulders. Jack could feel her soft, sweet breath rushing out of her mouth on his face, and he wondered about the woman's face, the present, Abby Abby Abby the marble ocean colored marbles ocean eyes
Glad to see Jack was okay, she kneeled back before him, and looked at him concerned.
"C'mon, I do have somewhat of a right to now what I'm doing here and why..."
"Tell me why you call me ocean eyes."
Eve was taken aback. The feeling he omitted was one of hope, and oddly, a wanting for more... but what?
"What does that have to do with my question? What do you mean?"
"Just please... answer."
She looked at him, searching for his reason as he kept stony face still and his eyes swirled like something…..
"Your eyes... remind me…"
"What??" jack felt himself become desperate. He was hungry for her lips to release what he already knew, he had to hear her.
Eve looked into Jack's dead blue eyes, and felt something come from them. She felt like she was being fed something, felt like she was getting something back that was stolen from her, she didn't care what all she wanted was more of it had to have more…
And as fast as the emotion plagued her mind, it was whisked away.