Posted by It was a warm summer’s day when little Sam Whittaker lost his eyes. He certainly hadn’t intended to, so proud he was of the dark brown marbles in his skull. Sam was chasing a bright red butterfly one Sunday morning when he tumbled down a grassy hill, thrown head over heels by the indifferent neglect of gravity. When he pulled himself upright, the world had gone pitch black, and he could not for the life of him figure out why. For a minute, he thought perhaps the sun had been extinguished, until he reached up to his face and realized, to his horror, that his eyes had popped right out of their sockets!
Joan Whittaker, with the mothering instincts that Sam’s shenanigans had meticulously crafted for her, could sense something was wrong. Something had her on edge, even before her now blind son rounded the corner and slammed straight into a fencepost. He moaned like a dimwitted cow, and Joan lept from her porch, rushing to silence his cries before the neighbors took notice.
“Oh sweetie, it’s ok, it’s alright, do tell mother what happened.” She cooed gently into his ear, and he lapsed into blissful silence
Then Sam uncovered his face and Joan Whittaker screamed loudly enough to disturb even the most hard-of-hearing neighbors. It was now Sam’s turn to comfort his mother, which he did by patting her knee with one hand and staring up at her with his newly-exposed eye sockets. It took some time for Joan to calm herself, but when she did, it was quickly decided that this state of affairs would simply not do.
“I will not allow my son to go blind while he has two perfectly good eyes just laying around in the countryside! Imagine how filthy they’ll get! Rolling around in the grass and dirt!” So the two of them returned to the hill, Joan leading her son by the hand as he struggled to keep pace. When they finally arrived however, the task was not so easy as she had imagined. They spent hours at the base of the hill, Joan using her fine toothed comb to part the grass, and Sam rolling around in dirt, growing accustomed to life without eyes. It was nearly sunset, and Joan found herself wondering if perhaps she could raise an eyeless child after all. She was cleaning the dirt out of Sam’s eye socket with a bent Q-tip when she noticed the cave, sitting just a few yards away.
Joan, having just about exhausted all her energy, mustered one last search attempt for her son. They walked in together, Joan clutching her son’s hand ever tighter, afraid of the dark. Sam, having no way to distinguish between light and dark, of course, suddenly broke away, skipping further into the cave.
“Sam! Wait for mother!” She called, but to no avail. Joan stamped after him in a huff. “You’d think the boy’s ears had fallen off as well!” Wandering further, she heard the sounds of Sam laughing, and another sound, almost like a pig’s grunt. Running to the end of the cave, Joan found her son giggling at an angry little goblin, who clutched in his hands two small, marble shaped objects.
“Listen here you little brat! I want you out of my home right now!”
“Don’t talk to him like that you brute!” Joan peered through the dark, seeing a flash of brown in the goblin’s hand. “You’re the one who took my son’s eyes! Give them back. Now!”
The little green goblin became enraged, sputtering and kicking up rocks. Sam guffawed at the sounds of the angry little figure.
“I found these eyes fair and square lady! I’m going to do whatever I damn well please with them, and if you don’t like it, then you can jus-” his sentence was cut off, interrupted by the force of Joan’s fist smashing into his face. For a minute, the sound of flesh slapping against flesh delighted Sam, who clapped and giggled as his mother beat the little goblin to death.
Joan kneeled down and let out a long sigh. The physical effort of killing another being, even something as small and weak as the goblin, had absolutely tuckered her out, and she needed a minute to regain her composure before picking Sam’s eye up off the cave floor. To her dismay, she discovered the other eye had been crushed, perhaps by the goblin during his fit of rage. In a brief flash of genius, she reached over and plucked out one of the goblin’s eyes, it was just about the same size as Sam’s, but with a shimmering green iris.
Joan pulled Sam out of the cave by his hand, leading him away from the ugly lump that had once been the goblin. Once they were outside she kneeled down in front of him with the eyes. She wondered briefly which eye should go in which socket, before determining that it probably didn’t matter. Slowly and delicately she popped each eye into place. Sam blinked, going cross-eyed for a moment while his vision returned, and then smiled politely up at Joan.
“Now Sam, what do you say when someone helps you?” She crooned.
“Thank you, mom.” He responded in a sickly-sweet mimicry of gratitude. Joan smiled at him, proud of her son’s exquisite manners. She took his hand, and together they walked home in the warm glow of the setting sun.
From that day on, they would return to the mouth of the goblin’s cave once a year, where they would sing and dance and enjoy wonderful feasts in their Sunday best; Joan with her carefully ironed dresses, and Sam in his favorite slacks and dress shirt, adorned with a green and brown striped tie, highlighting his dichotomous irises. They arrived early, and stayed late, celebrating with games and stories and noise until they could barely keep awake. When night fell they would pack up their things and return home until next year when they would celebrate again, all in remembrance of the day that little Sam Whittaker lost his eyes.