The Eyes

         The eyes were the worst. He could feel them wherever he went, judging, damning, whether conscious of the fact or not. Shame and isolation slugged through his veins; all he could do was lower his eyes and pass on as quickly as he could.
         He could handle the rumors, muttered half-quietly to wide open ears.
         “...killed someone in cold blood...”
         “...murderer...”
         They followed him everywhere, the stares and whispering. The intensive media coverage of the trial ensured that everyone had at least an idea of who he was. Those few who didn’t know were unhesitatingly filled in by those who did. He didn’t know which was worse, seeing people so eager to convince others to destroy him, or witnessing the horrified conversion of those they did.
         He had become a recluse. When he was forced to leave the house for one thing or another, he left, finished his business quickly, and hurried home. He was never fast enough to escape the accusing glares.
         Murderer.
         The eyes never left him. They plagued his sleep, invading his dreams, dreams that inevitably became nightmares. He saw them when he met the eyes of every person he passed in the street. Nowhere was safe for him; the eyes would follow him off the edge of the earth.
         But he had no regrets.
         He had confessed as much to the judge. The reaction from the gathering at the trial had been predictable: mutters, gasps, loud sobs and louder threats. The jury, the supposedly impartial scales, had lowered dark expressions his way; one woman had gone so far as to mouth to him, “You’re dead.”
         It was the judge’s reaction that surprised him. He had looked at him with tired eyes, worn and dimmed from a lifetime spent in vicarious pain and loss, and nodded imperceptibly. With a shock, he had recognized what lay in the judge’s eyes: understanding.
         The judge had disregarded the jury’s verdict entirely, pronouncing him innocent, then set down his gavel and left the room without a word. That judge was now stripped of his office and in public disgrace. Double jeopardy prohibited the court from taking him to trial again, however, and the judge’s verdict stood according to New York state law, so he walked free—or as free as he could be from the ever present, ever judging eyes.
         He understood that he could never be free of them. He was willing to accept that, too.
         For in the end, it was all worth it. The venomous stares, the trenchant comments, the slow, burning decay of his heart—he welcomed all of it, not as penance, but confirmation. It meant that his trade had been a success: his soul for hers.
         He could still feel the same rage at the memory he had felt at the moment of its creation. The edges of some of the details were dull, thundering into him and leaving bitter contusions, while others were sharp enough that he could cry out as they pierced him: depression hounding him stronger than usual that day; wandering down an alley, taking the long way home; passing through the cold gray parking lot of an auto body shop; passing a car, a tan Nissan Maxima; jumping when a hand smacked against the roof; blinking as the lights came on inside the car.
         Her face was the purest terror—his, the darkest humanity.
         The memories were razors: punching through the glass, scoring his arm with dark red lines; the girl falling out as he yanked the door open and threw the guy onto the pavement; pain as a bottle smashed into his head, blood welling in eyes already filmed red with rage; slamming the guy’s head against the pavement again and again and again; the fear he saw in the eyes of the man whose life he held and found wanting; the crunching sound as his hands crushed through the assailant’s windpipe; the deadpan gaze of those eyes, judging, damning, and altogether unconscious of the fact.
         The last thing he remembered was the girl sobbing and the realization that the slick feeling on his hands was the man’s blood. Then all the memory went soft.
         Later he was told that the young man he killed had been suspect in several other instances similar to this one, but no one had ever been able to get a clear confession from him, so the cases were always dropped. The girl, a young twenty-something with a passion for classical literature, reported being dragged from her home and thrust into a car. She had known the criminal for quite some time. Had he not stumbled upon the scene when he had, intention would have become reality.
         No, he had no regrets.
         Seeing the story’s potential for outrage slipping with the somber truth of the attack, the reporters had reduced the girl’s involvement to a mere blip on the bottom of the television screen. The truth had slipped out, of course—probably the fault of one of their own reporters—but the news company had taken the resulting subpoena with a grain of salt and a heavy-typed headline in the next day’s newspaper.
         They converged on him instead, but found that it was like vultures pecking at a walking corpse. He had nothing to give them, no fire left in his hand, and soon they left him to his dark remembrances.
         Was it justice? No. Neither was it revenge. It was murder—clean, uncomplicated murder, and he could feel it pick apart his sanity and soul every day.
         Shortly after the trial, he had bought a gun, a small pistol, and a single bullet. He held the gun every night, looking at his reflection in the cold steel surface. Every night, his finger tightened a little more on the trigger.
         But she kept him alive. The last time they met, she had hugged him and thanked him for giving her her life back. A single tear blazed a trail down her face and wetted his shirt.
         “My name is Natalie,” she said. “You didn’t even know my name, but you still... Thank you. I... I just can’t...” She choked on a restrained sob. “They’re wrong about you. I know you’re a good man.”
         He had not replied. She had looked up at him with tears capturing the blue light of her eyes. “I hope you can come to know that, too.”
         That was three weeks ago. Two and a half months had passed since the event, with no relief to be found from the eyes’ silent gaze. He knew there never would be. Murder took something vital from him, something irreplaceable. He might have called it innocence, but the truth was that he just couldn’t see the beauty in life anymore.
         But sometimes, another set of eyes looked at him: eyes brimming with tears that sparkled like moonlight rippling on the surface of a lake. Eyes that didn’t judge, didn’t damn, eyes that mourned with him. Eyes that held sorrow and comfort.
         On a warm evening, mid-October, when the city was quiet and still in contemplation, these eyes watched him put the gun at the bottom of a drawer. They observed silently as he stood for a long moment, looking at the steel that no longer seemed to glint so coldly. He closed the drawer and lay in his bed, drifting off to dreams that, at last, held peace for him within.
         All night long, the eyes watched over him, and slowly, with their help, he found his way back to life.