How the eye came to be in the cornfield is a bit of a mystery. How it left is what we are concerned with here, for it is a tragic tale, and tragic tales are what we do best.

It starts with a magpie, who has nothing to do with the nefarious activities of birds mentioned elsewhere. It is quite simply doing what magpies are famous for: acquiring shiny things and hoarding them.

It plucks the eye from the ground and flutters aloft, streaking away above the ordered expanse of green with the eye staring down from its beak. It is so intent on getting this shiny prize home that it fails to make note of the hawk until it is almost too late. As it is, it has to change direction suddenly to avoid the larger bird's lunge, opening its beak to squawk in alarm.

The eye falls, hurtling down like a glassy meteor. Whether or not the magpie escapes does not concern us.

If the eye were real, and could really see, it would have at first seen the car, a well-maintained BMW, idling in the front yard of a good sized, two-story house with a large pool to the rear. If it could have changed its course, it might have elected to aim for the pool, which would be hard to miss and safe to land in. As it is, it plummets helplessly towards the car.

If we anthropomorphize for a moment longer, we can imagine that the eye can see the steaming cup of coffee on the roof of the car, and maybe even imagine that it has a moment to feel a vague sort of relief seconds before it plunges into the cup.

The coffee has stopped sloshing by the time the man returns from the house with some nearly forgotten paperwork pressed between left arm and torso. Sweat has already started to stain his armpits, though it is early in the day. His eyes are shadowed and his chin stubbled. He has been up late finishing an important report, which must be presented to the board of directors at his place of employment in less than an hour.

He grabs the coffee from the roof of the car and gets behind the wheel. He is distracted and bleary as he pulls into traffic.

The roads are more congested than usual, and the sweat stains work their way out from the man's armpits until they connect. A migraine starts behind his eyes, and he fumbles for pills in the glove compartment while negotiating a curve.

A space opens up and the man takes a frontage road to avoid the jammed freeway, accelerating with the desperation of the perpetually late.

He pops two pills into his mouth and prepares to wash them down with coffee. The eye rolls to the surface, and stares up at the man from behind a thin film of brownish liquid - a coffee cataract, if you will.

The man, already a bundle of frayed nerves, flings the coffee into his own face in a spasm of extreme startlement; and, blinded by his strangely staring beverage, slams his car into a man crossing the street in front of him.

The man bounces off the hood and spins to the ground, cracking his head on the curb. The car careens away and rips through the fence into oncoming freeway traffic. There are numerous fatalities. The one we are most concerned with, though, is the man with the cracked head. He is wearing an eyepatch, and will never know he was killed by his own eye.
J5a(4)