The Eye

By Andra Marquardt

Mathis twisted the shovel and winced as a splinter stabbed into his palm. He made a mental note to look for a better one, or a pair of gloves, in the next pile of garbage. Behlovek certainly wouldn’t give him anything.

A hot breath scorched the back of his neck. He cringed as he turned. The horse snorted again. Its breath smelled sweet, like rotten grass.

The man sitting atop it pointed a sharp finger at him. “Keep digging, mudder. Maybe you’ll find something valuable enough to buy your freedom.”

“Yes, Mr. Behlovek,” Mathis said as he walked away. His feet made grotesque sucking sounds in the thick mud.

Who was he kidding? Even if he did find valuables, Behlovek would add them to his ever-growing hoard of gold, silver, jewels and anything else he could recycle and reuse. A hoard he could never use in his lifetime.

That’s greed for you. Mathis frowned as his shovel sank into a wet pile of burnt wood. He longed for the luxury of greed, to feel anything other than the need to survive.

Mathis had yet to see anyone go free. Behlovek said it only to encourage them to keep digging. He watched the others out of the corner of his eye. They dug with their shoulders hunched, their rags of clothes turning from gray to black.

His clothes were in slightly better shape, but that was only because he was new, the latest in a rabble of broken people left alive after Behlovek and his mercenaries destroyed their homes, now lying in blackened heaps at their feet.

A man standing next to Mathis screeched, stumbled back, and hurled.

Mathis coughed and threw his arm over his nose. Another body.

One of Behlovek’s men hit the man in the back with a baton. “Dig, or your corpse will rot next to that one.”

The man continued to dig through his retching.

Mathis pulled a bandana he had found in a previous house out of his pocket and covered his face. It smelled like fire and body odor, but it was better than flesh rotting in the hot sun.

Mathis chose the remains of a house farther away to both get away from the stench, and because it was his father’s house. His father kept everything, and while ninety-percent of it was junk, he owned one thing that only he and his father knew the true value of.

The smell hit him at the same moment his shovel sank into something squishy.

He staggered back, both from the smell and the tattoo on the corpse’s severed arm. He knew that tattoo. A red dragon with a green eye. Why didn’t his father leave when Mathis told him to? His breath hitched, and tears threatened to fall down his cheeks. He wiped his face and swallowed his grief. It wouldn’t help him now.

Before someone could beat him for stopping, he moved to dig somewhere else and to walk mentally through the house. Where did his dad keep it? His bedroom? The attic?

The kitchen. Where he found his father’s body.

He swore as he returned to the corpse. “I’m sorry, Dad.”

He removed his bandana to cover his father’s bloated face and resolved to bury him no matter what Behlovek said or did. He tried to move the body without damaging it further, but the legs and the other arm still tore away. Dark blood and other foul liquids poured out.

After he buried the body and allowed himself a few tears, he dug. The early afternoon sun beat down on him, and he imagined the sweat steaming off his skin.

His shovel tinged as it hit something hard and metallic. He glanced around. No one was paying attention to him, so he bent down and wiped away the soot and mud. A silver box with brass corners and hinges. At least that’s what it was once. Now it was a melted lump.

He nonetheless studied it. Could it be opened, and were the contents undamaged?

Behlovek jumped off his horse a few skeletal houses down and walked toward him.

No time.

Mathis dropped the box and pounded the blade of his shovel onto the box. The first hit dented it, as did the second, but although his shovel broke on the third hit, the box finally split in half.

The sun glinted off the fist-sized, eye-shaped jade with whorls of white.

The Eye of Justice.

“One needs to be careful how to wield it,” his father once said, “because the Eye judges the wielder, too.”

Judge me then, Mathis thought as he picked it up, as long as you work.

Behlovek reached out at the same time Mathis pointed the Eye at him. Time slowed as a green light exploded from the Eye and slammed into Behlovek. He may have screamed, but Mathis couldn’t hear anything past the roar in his ears. Behlovek’s skin mottled to a dark purple, and his body swelled. His clothes ripped apart as flesh sloughed off his bones. Like he was decomposing in fast-forward. His eyes remained intact, and Mathis could see the terror in them.

He was still alive?

His eyes liquified last, and his bones collapsed into a pile of dust.

The light jumped to all of Behlovek’s men until only Mathis and the other mudders remained.

Mathis looked down at the Eye. A greenish light throbbed in sync with his heart.

A vision appeared where they divided Behlovek’s hoard, and each went their own way.

I want the luxury of greed, Mathis thought. With the Eye, he could keep everything.

Do that, and someone will kill you for it, said a strange voice.

He closed his fist around the Eye. I’ll take that chance.

A sharp pain in his chest.

He looked down. A sword streaked with blood protruded from right where his heart should be.

The Eye fell at his feet and winked at him.

Well, that was fast.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Andra Marquardt writes both science fiction and fantasy at night, and her day job is a registered land surveyor in North Dakota. She’s been married for more than 25 years and has a young son who loves to keep her on her toes.

---

More Stories | Author Website | Facebook | Twitter