His eyes were always what they noticed first. Eyes like a dead fish. They were eyes that stared at nothing, yet seemed to take in everything. A big pool of brown nothingness…
He hobbled on slowly, stick in hand. He stared straight ahead, not turning around. Children looked at him, mouth open in fear. The braver ones even came over and looked straight into his eyes. Some even came and poked him, running away as quickly as they came, their friends silently cheering a while away. All this, he seemed oblivious to...
Behind the nothingness, there was a story. They were eyes full of misery, full of pain. Eyes like that of an injured dog, silently pleading. He was begging all the sadness to go away…
“No one knows where he lives, or how he survives, but there is clearly something weird about this man. I have heard that he hasn’t talked to anyone in ten whole years!”
They were eyes that have seen war, eyes that have seen his brother die, his sister, his mother, his father, and his darling wife and son. He was never to see his son graduate from school, proudly holding up his diploma. He was never again to smell the sweet fragrance of his wife’s perfume and his mother’s mouth-watering apple pies… They were eyes that were alone in the world…
A mother sees her daughter looking curiously up at him. “Janey come back here right now!” The girl scurries up to her mother tears running down her face “Mommy, I only wanted to talk to that man, he looks so sad ” Her mother pulls the girl away. She had heard enough of town gossip to know that this man was an odd fish. And as for Janey wanting to talk to him, well...
They were eyes that reflected the misery of the world…