The Incredible Left Eye

Lucas’ heart had started to beat rather quickly. He assumed this was because his actions were illicit and somewhat unscrupulous, but this was not the only reason.

Also helping to raise his pulse was the extraordinarily potent white light that was emanating from number eleven.

Lucas could never have guessed that powerful, electromagnetic waves were drawing him nearer; he could no more have resisted the force than he could have hit himself hard with a mallet or swallowed his own underpants.

Inching forwards that little bit further, he failed to notice that his will was drifting away and his mind falling – second by second and with mathematical precision – into an inescapable, hypnotic trance.

Later he would note having felt a novel sensation of super-intelligence, which left him with a glow of total well-being, but also an ongoing and relentless desire for more: More of the intelligence and more of what he saw.

There was a two-inch gap between the pale green curtains and the top part of the window was open slightly. Like a lunatic, Lucas jammed his face up against the glass. His jaw dropped as he saw what was inside the narrow room.

Kneeling serenely in the middle of the floor, staring straight at Lucas with eyes that saw something other than him, was the most beautiful woman he had ever set eyes on.

Quite what it was that set her apart from other females, he could not have said, but weirdly, a visible ray of light spilled out from her left eye in a clearly discernible beam. Or perhaps it was pouring into her left eye from some external force. It was not clear which.

Whatever the case may have been, the woman pierced the depths of his soul with the light from her incredible left eye.

And then there was the sound….

33 Degrees

As he strutted past the row of third-floor flats with his hands in his pockets, confident of another successful evening, a peculiar chill in the mid-summer air made Lucas step up his pace. “Bit parky”, he muttered to himself, with an uncharacteristic shiver.

Lengthening odds and a cool breeze aside, this man’s progress to The George would have proceeded uneventfully and in precisely the same fashion as had occurred on most Saturday nights for the past fifteen years, had he had not fumbled with his keys and dropped them through a gap in the railings onto the second-floor walkway below.

He cursed under his breath and, instead of carrying on to the small private car park outside the flats, Lucas took a right turn at the second floor in the direction of numbers eight to twelve.

The outside lights had broken on this level and there was no visible moon to properly illuminate his way, for at that point of time it was hiding behind the only cloud – a great, dark skudder – in the otherwise crystal-clear sky.

Scanning the floor for his key ring, Lucas soon spotted a steely glimmer close to number ten. Stepping forward and bending down quickly, he scooped up the keys with relief.

That would have been the end of that had he not noticed a very strange light emanating from behind the partly-closed curtains of number eleven.

Lucas was not usually a nosy person, but something about the light seemed to draw him closer, almost against his will; almost as if he were being hypnotised.

For some strange reason, the closer he got to the window, the warmer the atmosphere became. By the time he reached the window-sill of number eleven’s spare bedroom, the temperature would register at a distinctly Egyptian 33 degrees.

The George and Dragon

We live in a changing reality to which we try to adapt ourselves like seaweed bending under the pressure of waters*.

The air was pungent and the sky was dark as thirty-two year-old Lucas White locked the door to his flat and headed off for his regular Saturday night appointment at The George and Dragon.

He was filled with anticipation for this usually predictable occasion, not least of because he and his friends were to be joined by an extremely attractive aerobics instructor called Kiera and her two bosom buddies.

Lucas hoped the evening might lead to a panting embrace in some dark alley or other while he walked Kiera home from the pub.

This embrace would – in his dreams – render her so helplessly overcome by his testosterone-fuelled animal magnetism that she would insist on dragging him upstairs to tear off his clothes, whereupon she would subject him to a naked horizontal (or even vertical) version of one of her sweaty routines.

To an objective bystander this may have sounded like wishful thinking on Lucas’ part, but there was actually a one in three chance that his dreams would come true before midnight.

There was also, however, a two in three chance that he would awaken to a deeper dream before the clock that night reached 11.

*The Leopard, Tomasi Giuseppe de Lampedusa