Story Time!

Everyone has their inner creep. The Facebook stalker who knows exactly what you did last weekend but asks you anyway. The nosy neighbor watching you trim the tree.

My inner creep consists of all of the above, but I discovered last year I also have an inner Stephen King. We had an assignment to write a short story last year in my English class. They had to have an element of magical realism. And I definitely surprised myself with my cynicism. It remains as one of my favorite pieces of writing I have ever done just because of how surprising it was even to myself as I was writing it.

So here it is: the Bluest Eye.

My alarm rings. I get up and shrug into my slippers. Saunter across the room to my mirror. My face has blue beady eyes looking back at me. I shut my eyes so I don’t have to see them. I hate my eyes. They match the color of the room, and the sheets, and the floor, and my pajamas. I’m drowning in a sea of blue. Yet I know I will never change the wall color, or the sheets, or the floor, or my pajamas, because my wife picked them out. It's her favorite color.

I shave my face with my two-bladed razor, without looking so as to free myself from the blue because I can’t stand to see one more bit of it. My face stings more than usual as I pat on my aftershave, and although I already dried my face, it still feels wet. A warm wet. I quickly turn from the mirror—I don’t need those beady blue eyes judging me—and I look down at my hands. They are red now, I smile at the beautiful color. I don’t know how to describe it, other than that it wasn't blue. I rub the color onto my wall and paint myself a red mural. I touch my face again and more of the red appears on my hands, to my delight. I rub that onto my sheets, so that I can fall asleep that night with red on my mind. Maybe I will dream of something other than blue. As I am doing this my wife walks in.

“Oh John, what are you doing this morning?” she says, charmed I’m sure.
“Do you see this new color? It is beautiful, yes?”
“Yes, of course. You like red, do you?”
“Yes, maybe we can make the whole room red. Wouldn’t that be nice, dear?”
“Oh, yes, that would be nice. Here’s your breakfast.”

My wife sets down a tray with a plate of eggs, bacon, and orange juice. She loves to treat me with breakfast in bed, so I give her a smile to show her I’m pleased. This in turn makes her happy, and a happy wife makes a happy life. She smiles back at me with her pretty straight teeth and leaves me to relax and eat in quiet. She likes to give me this time alone in the morning to think. Although I miss her while she’s gone, I know she’ll be back to pick out what I will wear today. It is another thing she enjoys to do, so I let her. She also calls up my pals for me so that we can play poker.



My alarm rings. I get up and shrug into my slippers. Saunter across my room to the mirror. Shave without looking, and pat on my aftershave. It stings and a warm red liquid appears on my hands. I like the color of it, for it is not blue. As I decorate the room with this red liquid that comes from my face my wife steps in. She has short cropped hair and pale skin with green eyes. That’s why I love her so much, I have never seen a color green like that other than on her eyes. They aren’t like my eyes, which I hate, for they are blue like everything else.
“Oh John, what are you doing this morning?” she says, charmed I’m sure.
I suggest for her to further decorate the room with the red. She politely agrees with me but I know we will be sticking with the blue. She’s a stubborn woman. She then gives me my breakfast on a tray and leaves me to my quiet thinking time. Finally, she comes back when I’m done and leads me out to the foyer where all my pals are sitting around the poker table. I play and banter with them until my wife calls me to dinner, by that time I have won myself two dollars. Not my best day. I give the winnings to my wife who is very appreciative. I eat my dinner, say goodnight, and go to bed.



My alarm rings. I get up and shrug into my slippers. Saunter across my room to the mirror. Shave with my eyes closed. Decorate my room with a beautiful red liquid that emerges from my face. I like the color red, for it is not blue. My wife brings me my breakfast on a tray. Says she likes my decorating, and politely leaves me to my quiet time. When my beautiful wife returns in her floral t-shirt and blue pants—the same blue as my eyes, the room, the sheets, my pajamas—she leads me out of my bedroom to the poker table. I deal the cards out around the table and as I’m scanning my hand, a quite lucky one, one of my companions looks up from his cards.

“You, sir, are cheating.” He is looking at me. I don’t know how to respond, I have never heard this man speak before.
“I am not cheating, how can I be cheating? The game hasn’t yet begun.”
“But you’ve played this game before. I have finally cracked your code. I’ve been silently observing you day by day and have come to the conclusion that you have played this game over and over again and have thus memorized the deck, so as to give yourself a perfect hand. Cheater!” He yells the epitaph at me. I call my wife in.
“John, it is not yet time for dinner, is everything all right?”
“Yes, I just wish to spend some alone time with my friend here, will you let the others out?”
“Oh, of course,” she replies. The other men leave promptly and I am alone with my accuser.
“How has this arisen, my good friend? I know not of what you speak of.”
“Let us go into your bedroom.” He leads me into the blue room. The red is now cleaned off of the walls and my sheets and blanket have been replaced back to a clean blue. “Now, tell me about your day yesterday.”
At this question, I suddenly realized I couldn’t remember what I had done yesterday. All that came to mind was what I’d done today. So that’s what I told him.
“Well I did what I usually do, I get up, I shave, I eat breakfast, and I come out to play poker.”
“But more specifically, my friend. What did you do?”
“Well something unique did happen yesterday. I decided I would shave with my eyes closed and then this red liquid emerged on my hands when I would touch my face, so I decorated my room with this new color, to give it a change of scenery. But of course my wife has cleaned up again and now my room was back to its normal blue again this morning.”
“Amazing. Truly remarkable. John, do you know what date it is today?”
“June tenth I believe.”
“Interesting. No John, today is July tenth, I overheard your wife chatting on the telephone the other day. She mentioned the date, which was different from what I had believed it to be. I too thought it was June tenth. So I began to investigate.” He paused. “Tell me, what happened on June tenth of this year?”
“Well, I woke up, I shaved with my eyes closed, and decorated my room with this beautiful red color, and then played poker.”
“John, I have something very stunning to tell you, you may want to sit.” I sat on my clean blue bed. “John, it appears you have been doing the same thing every day for the past month. But that’s not it, you have been living the same day. And you have been stuck in this day, June tenth, for what looks like a month now. I believe we all have. Somehow, our world has stopped turning, and we have been cursed to live the same day over and over again.”

As he says this to me, I realize how right he is. Now that I think of it, the only memory I have is of waking up, shaving without looking, and decorating my room with red. We have been cursed. Only a witch could have set a curse like this. And a very strong one at that.

“A witch,” I said, “A witch has done this.” My friend nods in agreement. “I assume you know who this witch is?” Again, he nods.

“It is your wife. She is the keeper of time, and has kept us stuck in the same day.”

Again, my friend is very right. Maybe I should have felt a bit saddened to hear that someone I loved as much as I love my wife is a witch, but I’m not. All I feel is a need for revenge, revenge for having my future taken from me.

“What shall we do?” I asked. My friend has a sly grin on his face.

“We reverse the curse. And the only way to do that is to eliminate the creator.”

“The witch,” I replied, “I know exactly how to do it.”



Birds sing. I wake up with my friend sleeping next to me. We are lying on a bed of damp grass, cars whooshing by us in the street. I bump my friend, he wakes.
“Look, what do you see?” I say.
“I see that we slept on the side of a very busy road last night. What do you see?”
I see a newspaper rack, freshly replenished just this morning on the sidewalk by where we slept. I stand and saunter over and pick up a copy. The date says July eleventh.
“I see something other than blue,” I reply. “We are free my friend! We succeeded! It is July eleventh!”
I continue to read the paper, for I have not seen a newspaper in I can’t remember when, probably before June tenth. The headline says TWO MENTAL PATIENTS ESCAPE FACILITY AND KILL NURSE. There is a picture below it of the nurse, she has beautiful green eyes, like my wife. Under that is one of the suspects, a haphazard looking man wearing a blue shirt with blood stains on it and blue beady eyes. It’s amazing we make it through the day with crazy people like that on the loose.