Glass Eyes

J.M. Vesper

Dad told me they were sleeping. Glass-eyed things posed around our double-wide—fox with jagged snaggleteeth, barn owl bigger than my second-grade backpack, the fucked-up buck Dad counted twelve points on if he squinted and lied. “Just sleeping,” he’d mutter, nicotine fingers digging eye sockets, Merit Ultra Light flakes snowing into deer fur. “We keep their dreams, Linney. That’s our job.”

     Ten years old. Thursday. The dove spoke.

     Mom had gone for Diet Coke and Pall Malls, three hours ago by then. I was watching Squidward be a dick to SpongeBob on Dad’s RCA with tinfoil antennas, the one he won at the Moose Lodge raffle. The mounted dove—Aunt Sheila’s dead pet—twisted its glued neck and opened its beak.

     “She’s fucking Dale from the Sunoco,” it said. Had Aunt Sheila’s smoker voice.

     I shut the TV off.

     Next morning, Mom’s Cavalier still gone. Found her green toothbrush snapped in half in the trash under coffee grounds. Dad called her sister, then the sheriff, then drank Jim Beam from under the sink until he puked on his Carhartt.

     I found a gray feather stuck between the pages of my math homework. Didn’t tell anyone.

     Dad got shitcanned from the pallet factory two months later. Turned our metal shed into a workshop with a spray-painted plywood sign —“STARKEY’S TAXIDERMY—YOU KILL IT, WE FILL IT.”

     Men in camo brought dead things—mangled deer with Budweiser cans in their assholes, coyotes they’d run over on purpose, bass that stank like pond scum. Everything stank—chemicals, blood, Dad not showering. Ms. Pellman made me sit by the window at school. Tiffany Schmidt told everyone I smelled like dead squirrels and AIDS.

     “Your mama had to go,” Dad said one night, deer blood crusted under his nails, wearing those stupid magnifying glasses on a cord. His breath smelled like Jack and Slim Jims. “Some women aren’t built to stay.”

     I remembered Mom screaming that the house stank of death. Dad saying her fucking weight- loss shakes cost more than his supplies. Her throwing his special- order glass eyes into the yard. I found them later, stuck in mud and watching me.

    The raccoon on our bathroom shelf knocked shit over at exactly 3:14 a.m. The bobcat Dad finished for Mr. Redding growled when Dad passed out with cigarettes burning. The crow above my bed tap-tap-tapped songs into my skull on full moons.

    October 17—Fox dragged itself to kitchen sink. Coming back, knocked over Dad’s empties. Blamed me. October 24—Deer head bled from nose during COPS. Dad wiped it with his sleeve, kept drinking. November 2—Mom’s voice from Dad’s latest owl. Said Dale left her in Memphis. Said she didn’t mean to stay gone so long.

    Dad started to fuck up his work after that. Used too much wire. Not enough Borax. The animals looked wrong—bloated, twisted, like something only hurting pretending to be something dead. 3 a.m., talking to them while he worked. Sometimes they talked back. Not always with Mom’s voice.

    Thirteen candles on a Walmart cupcake. Dad gave me a knife wrapped in circulars from Kmart. Swiss Army, red plastic, scratched- up, broken toothpick.

    “Your granddad’s,” he said, drunk-proud. Eyes wet. “You got the touch, Linney. You understand dead things. They like you.”

    Blizzard knocked out power lines that night. Dad lit the kerosene heater that made my throat hurt and Jesus candles from the Mexican grocery, then passed out in his chair, mouth open, snoring. Half-empty bottle between his legs.

    Claws on paneling woke me up. Feathers scraping popcorn ceiling. The wet smack of preserved flesh peeling from stuffing.

    Every dead thing in our house moved. Coming alive, but wrong. Fox with its jaw hanging off. Owl’s wings beating crooked. Buck’s severed head dragging itself by antlers across our stained carpet.

    All heading toward Dad’s shed.

    I followed them, wearing my Tweety Bird pajama pants, clutching Granddad’s knife. Crunching through snow, stepping over beer cans and the rusted bike parts Dad said he’d sell on eBay.

    The shed door hung open. Padlock busted. Inside, Dad hunched at his worktable, bloody hands moving over something covered with the yellow sheet Mom brought from her childhood home when her own mother died. The one with cigarette burns and period stains Dad pretended not to see.

    Smell hit like a fist—chemicals and roadkill and something sweet like the Bath & Body Works spray Tiffany Schmidt used after gym.

    “They hate how I’m doing it,” Dad slurred without turning. “They say I can’t get her right.”

    The lantern flickered. I saw what was on the table—something taking shape, not animal. Its features all wrong.

    Mom’s face. Half done. Waiting for eyes.

    Dead things surrounded the table, watching the car crash.

    “She’s coming home,” Dad whispered. “Just need to make her smile right.”

    The crow from my bedroom landed on my shoulder. Opened its beak against my ear. Felt its cold tongue move.

    “Don’t be here when he’s done, Carolina,” it said. Mom’s voice. Only one who used my full name.

    I stepped closer, knife in hand. Dad turned. His eyes shone like the glass ones he ordered online.

    “I can help,” I said. “Been watching long enough.”

    Dad smiled. Made space. Dead things watched, glass eyes catching lantern light like tiny fires. Outside, snow fell. Inside, we worked together—his hands and mine, making Mom come home.

    By morning, we’d fix everything. By morning, I’d know how to keep people from leaving.

    The crow stayed. Quiet now. I cut into Mom’s cheek. It wasn’t Mom’s cheek.

    She wasn’t coming back.

    I knew where the knife needed to go next.

J.M. Vesper writes speculative stories and poetry, with work appearing or forthcoming in Intrepidus Ink, Not One of Us, and elsewhere. Their poetry was recently shortlisted for Chestnut Review’s Summer 2025 Issue. They hold degrees in Creative Writing (B.A.) and English Teaching (M.A.). You can find them at www.jmvesper.com.

© Variant Literature Inc 2023