It’s impossible to say for sure but when the power went out last Thursday I could swear that your eyes burned yellow, which isn’t the least bit my business, of course, it’s just your eyes never looked that way before, and if I’m being honest it sort of freaked me out, what with the darkness of the room and the bright bursts from your line of vision, the way you glared around the room and lit up bright lines between your face and the things you glared at, like your skull was home to two burning lighthouses, like the way Cyclops shoots those beams from his eyes, only when I asked you about it they reappeared normal which has me questioning my own sanity and also whether it was your eyes or mine that had changed, only now I’m certain it was yours, so tonight I plan to take an axe to the power lines outside of our home so I can see those burning irises again and take photos so I can sell them to the Weekly World News, so that everyone can see you’re the new batboy, only not half bat/half boy, just a wild and crazy girl who has laser beams for eyes, because I hear the Weekly World News pays top dollar for new and sensational stories whether they’re real or not, and maybe it will pay enough to have your eyes looked at by a real doctor, because I’m nothing of the sort, even though I did stay at a Holiday Inn last night due to your gaze keeping me awake, and maybe, just maybe, you melt the doctor’s face like in Raiders of the Lost Ark and set the office on fire and every single employee in the building goes out of work and becomes homeless, and we’ll tell them they can all come live at our house because your eyes could light up the whole world and warm all the children in it, at least that’s how they appear to me.
William M. McIntosh is a writer of drivel and collector of rejection letters. He loves literature, film and any other kind of art he can get his grubby little fingers on. His work has been published by Maudlin House, The /tƐmz/ Review, BarBar Magazine, Night Picnic Press, The Lowestoft Chronicle, Roi Fainéant Press, and Your Impossible Voice. He doesn’t tweet, but if he did it would be @moonliteciabata. You can find links to his work at www.wmmcintosh.com. He is based in Cincinnati.