The eye

 THE EYE

 

When she woke up, the eye floated before her, a weightless passenger in a moonbeam that intruded from the street, barely outlined by the dark shape of the house across. In the first moment, Soraya startled at the sight of that isolated eyeball, with a fixed, dark pupil, bloodshot, hanging from the optic nerve and seemingly observing her with obsessive attention.

 

Then, she smiled as she realized it was just the intricate tattoo adorning the nape of her lover from the previous night, a tattoo that had already caught Soraya's attention at the bar where they met, seeming to keep watch over the place while its bearer played darts with his friends.

 

She caressed the man's broad back, feeling the almost bothersome unease left in her sex by his departing body, his four-day beard, and the firm, repeated thrusts of his hips, maintained with the unwavering precision of a metronome. Feeling a satisfied shiver, she tensed like an eager cat stretching before pouncing on a plate of food, and a warm sensation, a tingling longing to be moist once more, ran through her groin like a mild, anticipatory spasm.

 

She moved closer to him, determined to awaken him with her caresses and kisses, to arouse him again, to enjoy him while the moon still granted them time, while she didn't need to know his name or recall his face clearly.

It was then that the eye blinked.

 

That night, the girls had gone out for dinner together, six single or divorced friends, all of them tired of their relationships with men who didn't deserve or understand them. It had been months since they all gathered, since they shared those moments of catharsis, intimacy, and the exchange of sorrows and joys, and they watered the encounter with what on other occasions they would have considered an excessive amount of alcohol.

 

Miriam, the most liberal of them, couldn't stop telling dirty jokes, teasing the restaurant waiter about how delicious the meat was and how much she liked it hot and juicy, jokes that the young waiter, a mix of embarrassment and anticipation, took in good humor.

 

After the meal, during which they went through five bottles of fine wine from Ribera, they all had an easy laugh and their cheeks were flushed like rubies. The waiter, maybe five or six years younger than any of them, appeared with the dessert menu and a bottle of herbal liqueur compliments of the house. Stuck to the label was a small slip of paper from his notebook, with his name, phone number, and a brief message, "I finish in two hours, El Potemkin bar, I invite you for a drink."

 

The girls read the note, huddling over it like a basketball team discussing tactics during a timeout, and they parted ways, laughing. Some fanned their flushed faces, others covered their mouths with spontaneous shyness.

 

Miriam, seemingly incapable of feeling any shame, tucked the paper into Soraya's generous cleavage, her deep brown eyes fixed on the waiter who smiled back from behind the bar.

 

Over the next two hours, the girls went to various pubs and had a few drinks, enjoying the gentle flirtation of the early hours of the night when men are not yet too bold or too clumsy. Afterwards, Lidia suggested going to Potemkin, where the waiter, Julián, undoubtedly awaited them eagerly.

"Let him wait," said Miriam, lasciviously. "The longer he waits, the more manageable he'll be."

"You're a vixen," Soraya said, trying to appear serious in the face of her wayward friend.

Miriam laughed, placing her hands on Soraya's breasts and moving them up and down.

"But I don't have cleavage down to my belly button, you little minx."

They continued laughing and sharing obscene jokes, confidences, and hidden desires for two more hours until, almost without thinking, they found themselves at the door of Potemkin, a bar known for being a dive, where it was easier to find a joint than a clean glass, and none of them usually frequented.

 

It was a spacious place, with dim black lights, large speakers in every corner, and music they could only classify as heavy noise. To the left of the large bar, there were two billiard tables where a group of guys and girls were playing at the moment, and the right wall was covered with four electronic dartboards.

On one of them, eight players were engaged in a match, commenting on their moves and high-fiving after each throw, making it impossible to distinguish who was playing against whom.

Through the speakers, Whitesnake sang "Here I go again", declaring that they wouldn't waste any more time hanging onto the promises of yesterday's songs.

 

Soraya noticed the eye for the first time when the guy went to retrieve the darts he had just thrown. The dartboard's spotlight illuminated his back as he pulled them out, revealing the distinctive tattoo that seemed to watch over the entire room, like those portraits that manage to follow the viewer's gaze regardless of their position. It also highlighted his broad back, which the loose-fitting garment couldn't completely conceal. The man turned around with a serious expression, and she read the message printed on his shirt, "This is not a beer belly, it's a fuel tank for my love machine," unable to contain a burst of laughter.

 

Miriam observed her, following her gaze, and commented on the discreet yet striking allure of the guy, and how easy it would be to find out how well that fuel performed. Then, seeing that Julián, the waiter, was one of the players in the dart match, she smiled and nudged her friends toward the bar, confident that the young man would soon notice them and the game would begin.

 

And so it happened. When Julián picked up his darts and, amidst greetings from his companions, scanned the bar, he immediately spotted them and raised his hand to greet them. They, playful and amused, responded with feigned lack of enthusiasm. The guy with the eye had his back turned, but he still turned around to face Soraya directly, as if that peculiar tattoo had allowed him to pinpoint her exact position without a doubt.

 

At that time, purely by chance, the song by Whitesnake said,

"Like a drifter I was born to walk alone
And I've made up my mind
I ain't wasting no more time,"

and the man with the tattoo smiled.

 

Soraya couldn't help but smile back, and from that moment on, everything fell into place.

 

She still had her hand on his back when the eye seemed to blink, coming to life in a quick and imperceptible movement that Soraya knew her conscious brain didn't perceive. Perhaps it was a more primal part of her, more connected to pure animal instinct, a part she might not have paid attention to under normal circumstances.

Suddenly, she felt nauseous and shivers ran down her spine. The lidless eye seemed to narrow, which was as absurd as seeing it blink, but it was the only way Soraya could explain the strange change in the expression of that lifeless thing.

She tried to withdraw her hand but felt as if it was stuck, fused to the man's skin with an immovable force, as if something physical held her there. She was afraid to divert her gaze from that malicious eye, just as she would have been afraid to avert her eyes from a threatening dog, knowing that any distraction, any show of fear, could trigger the predator's attack.

She heard a whisper, like a hand caressing silk, and she could clearly feel strong fingers closing around hers. She swallowed hard, and it seemed to her that the eye's expression turned jubilant, wicked, as if it knew that it had already cornered its prey.

In the periphery of her vision, Soraya could perceive the man's back bulging, distorting, and something struggling to emerge, taking shape and forming one, two, three hands capable of trapping her, dragging her toward some unspeakable horror if she didn't act quickly.

But she was unable to even breathe, trapped by the gaze of the eye, knowing that something worse than death awaited her in its tattooed pupil.

 

A dirty yellowish-white light, powerful and raw, entered the room through the window, sudden and unexpected.

 

The eye, the consciousness that resided within it, retreated for a second, cowed and surprised, and the pressure of those impossible hands relaxed for just a moment.

 

It was enough for Soraya, her animal and instinctive side, to leap backward, falling off the bed, freed by the sudden explosion of light that a neighbor, an early riser, had cast upon the room without knowing its miraculous effect.

She couldn't help but scream as she fell, and her lover woke up, startled, turning on the bedside lamp and looking at her with a mix of delight and concern.

 

-Are you okay?

 

She was aware of her grotesque appearance, sitting on the floor, naked, her skin covered in cold sweat. She quickly gathered her scattered clothes into a tight bundle.

 

-I have to go. It's late.

 

He turned back to grab a cigarette from the pack resting on the bedside table, as if he were accustomed to women behaving like this upon waking up. Perhaps it was a normal reaction to the monster within him. Perhaps he would now rise, unleashing the beast, launching it against her. Perhaps he was just a lonely man, already familiar with the sensation of sleeping with someone but not with waking up next to anyone.

 

She watched his back, expecting to see that thing emerge to attack her, but it was a virgin territory of horrors, its only relief formed by the moving muscles, and the eye was nothing more than an inert and curious tattoo that seemed to be pinned to the ceiling.

 

-Don't you want me to walk you home? -he asked, lighting the cigarette.- It's late, and there are a lot of clumsy out there.

 

She shook her head as she finished getting dressed and blew him a kiss with her hand as she walked out of the room, trying to give the situation an appearance of normality.

 

-Will I see you again? -he called out loudly as the girl headed for the front door.

 

-Of course. Of course-, she said.- It's been great. I'll call you.

 

She left with a slam, and the young man, somewhat perplexed, shrugged and lay back on the bed, arms behind his head, the cigarette smoldering between his lips.

 

-They always say the same thing and never call-, he said to the empty room and to any present consciousness that might hear him. -I don't understand why.