The Eye

It was a very strange gift. In ordinary months, quite a few mugs exchange hands, due to sentimentalism, favors, or both. The sculpture standing in front of her was neither; it seemed quite excessive; and what was worse, expensive.

“Thanks! This is amazing. are you sure though? Like, sure, sure?” Ella said moving her head towards Alma but keeping the eyes locked in the bizarre object.

“Yes, please take it, to guard you in your studio,” Alma answered looking directly at her with her eyes dark under her thick eyebrow, while rubbing her apron. 

The piece was an eye, huge and realistic. Technically, it was a bust; one eye, completed with eyelids, serve the role of face. The skin of the eyelids stretched until it became the back of the head. This strange head was mounted on a beautiful neck and perfectly normal shoulders. Ella thought it was absolutely brilliant and worth every single accolade it had won. Alma, a student of realism who had worked on portraits, had been recognized as one of importance in the world of ceramics. It had an almost photographic quality seldom seen in clay. That was before her style turned absolutely bonkers, evolving into this abstract take on human anatomy, breaking molds, and taking the art world by a storm.

“Tell you what, if someone offers me a million dollars for it, I want it back,” said Alma with an attempted grin.

“I wouldn’t be surprised,” said Ella grinning earnestly.

When Ella moved to the city, she worked at a diner. There, while folding napkins around silverware and eavesdropping, she got word of artists in need of roommates. It had been her gossiping addiction that had put her in the inner circle of the scene. That’s why when she met Alma, she felt she already knew her. Alma was rumored to be a failed med student, who by luck and talent, found work at The Raincity Artificial Organ Farms before having her own business. Other’s murmured that this was an attempt at distraction, hiding her work under a smokescreen of political commentary. Whichever the truth was, everyone had something to say about Alma Conzalez, even before the switch.

The day Ella overheard that the infamous Alma had lost her studio mate, and she jumped at the chance. The building was an old repurposed brewery with high ceilings and windows facing the docks. As any respectable clay goblin, they worked partially underground. Their space a strange mix between an art classroom and a woodworking shop. There was always dust, despite the semi-constant cleaning, as the craft required. 

At first Ella would lurk around like a groupie. Clay work is tedious, with long stretches of time waiting for paint to dry, so it soon became tiresome. However, it had Alma’s walls that had ended her snooping behavior. Ella’s studio walls were covered by Kandinsky’s Mondreal’s and the like. On the other hand, Alma’s studio was mostly clutter-free, except for one wall, completely plastered in eyes: photos, anatomical diagrams, cross-sections. Ella’s gaze would dart away at the sight, chasing relief in the emptiness of the floor or the other walls. It made her feel naked to be seen by hundreds of disembodied organs.

It started slowly. For a few months Ella watched Alma burrow herself on work, longer creating portraits, but embarking in big projects focusing on a single organ organ: ears, tongues, fingers and eyes. As she carved for hours on end, it seemed to Ella that Alma had discovered some property in clay that enveloped her completely. Once, Ella witness her rubbing coffee, honey, salt and lemons in a particularly strange tongue, while sticking out her own tongue and grimacing. It made Ella uneasy, but who is to argue with geniuses? Life with Alma became detached and surreal. They went from gallery hopping with the wife, and talking about Ella’s dates to quiet lunches looking out the window, leaving Ella with just silence and curiosity. The strangest part was her new habit of spacing out in normal conversation, to Ella, it seemed like her gaze was looking for signal. 

“How did you get this blue? Is that the cerulean glaze?”Ella asked while touching an iris fresh from the kiln. 

“Not sure, I’ll have to check my notes,” Alma replied, blinking abruptly. 

Ella knew it was a lie. Though it was true that sometimes colors “just happen,” Alma was not that type of artist. Ella felt a pang of distrust; it had never been like them to keep techniques secret, specially because they did not share the same style or clientele. Alma build exclusively for the very rich. 

“How is the official side going? Do you think she’ll sign?” Ella attempted again, as she loaded her small orange and black vase into the kiln. Having to ask seemed crude, but she felt that maybe this way she could break through Alma’s facade. 

“It’s going. She hasn’t signed the divorce papers yet. Legally, I can’t prove she cheated…“ Alma said while rubbing her right ear and tilting her head like a dog. “is enough that she knows I know,” said Alma viewing the freight ship getting loaded out the window.

“One day you’ve got to tell me the whole unedited story!” Ella prodded.“I mean, when you are ready, of course,” Ella said, pausing regretfully.

“One day…” Alma said from somewhere far away.

Ella would tell anyone that she was an artist and that yes, she made a living from it. While saying it her posture would improve, making her feel taller. However, every time she saw her studio mate’s work against the gray-gradient background of the most important magazine in her field her shoulders slumped. It made her feel minuscule. She was selling enough to make a humble living, she would remind herself, which in itself was rare and difficult.

“Hey,” said Alma without lifting her sigh from the iris she was painting.

“Hey! Ugh… I thought I’d been so quiet this time!” Said Ella, during the last months she had been playing a game of sneaking, which she always lost.

That was the quality about Alma that confused her the most. Somehow, this woman seemed to be aware of everything but what was in front of her. It was odd how she always knew who had been where. It was even odder, that she knew things that Ella didn’t know, and Ella knew everyone.

Ella’s hands were covered in wet clay when her phone beeped.

“Hi Ella, lets be blunt, I am worried about Alma,” said her phone under the name “that Bitch”.

“Go on,” she typed. Alma’s ex, Tiffany had never texted her without good reason; maybe this way she would know what actually happened. 

“I will sign the damn papers, but I need to know that someone is looking out for her.” texted Tiffany, Alma’s ex. 

“Getting cheated at will do that to people,” she typed quickly.

“Okay yes, I am a piece of shit. But did you know she hasn’t been selling anything? She just gifts things to people now. She hasn’t sold anything in months.” texted Tiffany. 

“This is about money?” Ella stared at her phone in astonished. 

“You should care, last time I checked you guys shared a lease. Just meet with me, we can talk and see how she can get some help. After we talk, I’ll sign.” typed Tiffany. 

“Fine” she replied briefly. 

Tiffany was, according to everyone and her own admission, a womanizer. Unlike Alma, she hasn’t failed med school. Together they had been a power couple: gay, attractive, successful and in love. No one had ever expected them to divorce in such a scandalous way. Today, Ella would finally have the inner scoop on why the magic had fizzled.

“I don’t know what happened to her; one day she was herself, then this. I felt like she was ghosting me,” shared Tiff looking at her glass of Trader Joe’s Port. She made leggings and a fleece look elegant.

“To be honest… she did start to work too much around that time. I just assumed that you were busy too, being a doctor and all,” said Ella looking around her, it seemed odd to her that Tiffany still had all of Alma’s art around, with all eyes on them.

“I supported her art, but I also enjoyed seeing my wife. I felt like a third wheel…” She took another sip, hiding her roman nose and a bit blushing. “it wasn’t right, and it would be stupid to say.. well… anyways…” she paused looking around. “I’ll sign, and I am going to therapy, but I think she needs it more. Do you understand why I haven’t signed? Up to that point, I am still her next of kin. So I need you, who sees her every day, to pay attention and make sure she doesn’t do something stupid.”

“You think her capable of that?” Ella said, noticing how unsurprising the insinuation was. At her side stood an ear, powerful and expertly crafted. It made her feel like her words were being sucked in by a sea conch.

“I don’t know what I find her capable of, but gifting valuable things is not a good sign,” Tiffany said hanging her blond hair on the back of the sofa, looking at the ceiling. Ella noticed that looking up was the only break from Alma’s influence in the living room.

“She doesn’t seem like she has a grasp of reality; she is losing it, she is absentminded and clumsy. Is like Alma is not there,” and as she said that she felt a prickle, that sensation that lets human’s know they are being observed. “Have you considered redecorating?” she shuddered. 

After laughing and eating cheese, they hatch a simple plan to keep in touch, and see if having the divorce rolling would change Alma’s strangeness. They would reconvene in a week, maybe drink more wine and eat more cheese; it had been fun after all. Tiffany got to vent, and Ella got to listen to gossip with a snack.

One of Ella’s favorite things was her walk from the car to the building entrance. She could see everything that made her happy: the water, the busy pier, and the semi-buried window to her studio. The structure greeted her with a mosaic of orcas and seashells. Once inside, a tall shelve displayed once piece for every artist who had ever shared the space. Usually, it made her chest swell with pride; these were her predecessors. Today, she felt shame. As she looked straight ahead she could only see the eye. Blue, white and some other undefined shade of a magical hue. She felt followed as she descended the flight of stairs.

“Hey” said Alma looking down at her hands. “Did you have a good night?” she said with her Chilean accent thickening.

“Hey, actually I did,” answered Ella as a single drop of ice ran down her spine.

“Yeah me too…” her eyes were lost as she bit her short stained nails even shorter. “Even if I don’t have a grasp on reality and I am losing it, that’s what you said, right?” Alma said sharply. 

Ella wasn’t sure when her mouth had opened or how long she stood there. Her shock crashed heavy into her senses, making her feel like she had drowned.

“I… I… I didn’t, I thought I was helping,” she gagged, each word drying her mouth.

“Sure, by sitting on that sofa, drinking wine with my ex, sharing stories about me. Thank you.” She said, loudly this time. “Get the fuck out of my sigh…” she sneered lowly.

Ella opened and closed her mouth a couple of times, finding that she had nothing to say each time. Her legs felt numb as they barely managed to shuffle her into her office and drop her tingling body in the chair. “Why did Alma acted like she had been there?” she thought. She was always there, always seeing, constantly listening with her inattentiveness, but how? That strange oddness she felt the night before in her house… that sense of being seen. Of being heard. Of someone else being there.

That prickle in her skin; she felt it now. Ella stood up as she narrowed her vision into the eye in her shelf, she started sinking and shrinking. She grabbed her hammer, and with momentum she swung it into the eye.

A scream, a heart-stopping shrill. The broken bits flew and the terracotta and water poured out, gushing. Ella paused for one second before running toward the noise. Alma stood with one hand on the table, and another against her own eye, while red, liquid clay spilled out through her fingers slowly.