The Jeweller

Very slowly he sipped his tea, not shifting his glance from the thick double-spaced printing he read with his jeweller's eye

Engrossed in his corner, he passed on to the other inhabitants of the room a scrawled insularity of time and space

For both passed him by with the speed of light, not unlike the flow of substance, however varied, into that lysergic entity of astronomy known as the black hole

He was hardly ugly for his time and conversation was certainly not lost on him

Drastic measures were called for and, as in antiquity, the lonely man was blessed with wisdom to the point of desperation

But there in his corner, developing around him like a sun, was a climate of such rare beauty that sight and sound could no longer be considered sufficient food for the senses

And he had begun to notice, as his hearing failed, that mind and matter were in no way connected to one another, as if in fact the one could not propose and prove its erotic existence in terms of the other

"What does this word mean?" he enquired of the solemn waiter hopefully

"Nothing for desert, sir?" came the reply, "Perhaps a cocktail, demitasse, or a herbal essence, it helps the breathing you know sometimes"

"The bill, if you don't mind," quickly he shot back

And as the patter of the feet faded in the room, for he barely heard them now, his eye slowly began to close

And by the time he emerged on the sunny street, he was forced to rely entirely on the other eye for help, but happily it continued its many functions, blinking gently for lubrication, and registering images

It was rush hour in Hawaii, only 10am

So, turning into his street, he stopped at the drug store and bought an eye patch that soon covered the reluctant eye

Climbing the stairs, he pondered what to do next: he would call a doctor and have tests made, eat nourishing food, and if necessary, consent to surgery - the last resort of the gambling man

And at 1am, he awoke from a dream and after fumbling his way in the obsolescent light of his room, he peered into the rusty veins of his mirror and lifted away the patch

What he saw astonished him: where once was tremulous tissue and membrane was now a follicle and perfectly formed vagina with vulva, overgrown and mysterious, unrevealing and still to the untrained eye

But in the deep dark recesses of that sticky occlusion lay the unclosing watchful eye of disgust in its closing moments, lunging forward and hungry for the cold light of day