The Mass Blinding of Sclera, Wyoming

The town scalper says he lost his eyes at the supermarket. Left them on a shelf in the toothpaste aisle, and when he came back, they were gone. I say maybe he wasn’t looking hard enough, and neither of us laugh.

My sister keeps a jar of two brown eyes on a shelf in the garage, bloodshot with pupils like smears of wet dirt. A cloud of bacteria drifts in the stale water, foggy like a daydream. She found these at the supermarket six days before the town scalper lost his. Whenever I ask where she found her jar eyes, my sister just giggles. She’s thirty years old, she shouldn’t be giggling anymore.

By August, half the townsfolk had lost their eyes. They leave them at the corner store, the fire station, the post office, and when they come back, their eyes are gone. Why do they take them out in the first place? Do they even know how to put them back in?

My sister’s collection hasn’t grown, but she giggled so much and said so little that they sent her to the home with the other giggling young women in town. They’re giving young women a bad look; my dad says I should join her before I’m burned at the stake. The hospitals are filled with people with empty sockets, lined up against the dingy walls like red-pocked ghosts. A week before September, I ask my mom to drive me out to college while she can still see the road. Neither of us laugh.

A few months in, they stop sending letters—they probably can’t see their papers anymore—so I work hard to stop wondering, too. I make some friends who have eyes and don’t giggle. When winter break comes, one of their families offers to drive me home when no one comes for me. I say they probably shouldn’t do that if they want to keep their eyes in their heads. They laugh, hauling my suitcase into the trunk.