An eye.

Green, maybe. Could be hazel, the kind that changes color with the seasons. I can’t tell in this light.

The eye sits on the kitchen counter near the sink and watches over the cupboards and rat shit within them. Mounds of droppings that could’ve been mac & cheese or pasta or Twinkies. Even the goddamn boxes are gone.

But the eye is still there. It looks moist, at least in the grey light that spills in from the boarded up kitchen window. But there’re no eyelids, no face, no skull, no head, no torso, no body or blood anywhere. The living room’s empty, and in the bathroom is only a tub full of brown water.

The rats hadn't touched the eyeball. They’re still here too; I can hear them breathing and scraping in the walls. I guess I radiate the kind of heat they can taste, and they’ll start crawling out of the walls soon if I don’t get on with it.

I grab a chair, sit and hunch over so I can stare directly into the eyeball.

And I wait.

I don’t blink because I might miss it, and that would make the whole trip here useless. So I stare until my eyes gloss over. They feel as sticky as boiled eggs, and it’s all I can do to shut my eyes.

The light’s beginning to fade outside—it’s going to rain tonight, and that means the rooftops’ll be slick and dangerous to get around on. But I’ll manage. I’m more worried about the rats. How so many of them have stayed alive for this long, with so little food going around, is beyond me. I saw a few holes the size of my fist chewed into the living room wall before I found the kitchen. I can hear them wondering out of the walls and into the apartment. They’ll sniff around until they find me, sitting in a chair, staring down an eye they’re too scared to ea—

The eye moves. Just a little. It turns slowly, first looking into my right eye and then into my left. Somehow I feel it blink though there isn't any wrinkled skin to help with that.