Yesteryear Fiction

Gnomes in his Eyes
By Paul Ratner


Instead of eyes, he had two gnomes living behind his eyelids. It was a convenient arrangement because he got the benefit of their powers and they got free room and board. They fed on the parts of his brain that were never used -occasionally planting some new tissue - something they enjoyed doing for stress relief as it was like tending a garden. And the powers they provided were an istant analysis of any situation based on thousands of years of gnome knowledge. As such, he didn't really have to use his brain as much but still did - mainly in moments of mistrusting the gnomes or when they slept or got drunk.

There was an incident two years ago when the drinking of the gnomes actually became a serious problem as they boozed for a whole week and kept giving him very incoherent advice. At first he didn't realize what was happening and listened to their direction as he always did. And that ended him up in jail for a bad fight with the clerks at the bank after he demanded withdrawals of his money in pots of gold and
pissed on the computer of the manager, exploding the poor machine and causing a stock market crash (something he refused to admit to but had a hard time arguing against confronted with the hogwash jargon from the lawyers for the global village).

The gnomes were very apologetic about the whole affair and promised not to drink any more, but he knew that it was within the expected range of behaviour of tiny magic people to drown their ancient sorrows in whisky. So he adjusted by keeping a part of his brain on alert. A small price to pay for the amazing benefits they provided. Since he got the gnomes into his eye sockets, he used their wisdom to become the CEO of a hi-tech research firm with defense industry contracts. The gnomes also taught him a number of secret spells he could use to turn people he didn't like into frogs and to get the girls he wanted to love him in perverse ways.

Although it must be noted that keeping relationships working for long was a difficulty for him because the girls invariably got freaked out when the irises of his contact lenses opened once in a while to give the gnomes some fresh air. He tried to get around this ventilation issue by wearing sunglasses at all times but this also was tiresome to the girls he met who claimed to be not after his money but his heart.

But all was well resolved when he met a sexy blind woman with small rotating disco balls instead of eyes who just liked to party. They were a good match -even according to the gnomes, who lamented their own lack of companionship, but then remembered they were very much bisexual and complained no longer. Everyone was to some degree happy! What a beautiful life we can lead if we just join together with
mythical creatures!


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Bio: born in Russia in '76, went to Cornell (MA, '00) and Chapman U (MFA, '05). Been pursuing screenwriting but feel much stranger than the strangest things I've seen in the last few years of Hollywood...