Eye Contact by Michael Craft

Author:Michael Craft [Craft, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Suspense
ISBN: 9781480433953
Publisher: Kensington
Published: 1998-06-01T04:00:00+00:00

Thursday, July 1

THE POWDERY SURFACE of planet Zarnik retreats behind the sprint-paced beat of Manning’s shoes. Clouds of unknown gases whorl overhead, pink beneath the cold and distant sun. As Manning speeds toward the curved horizon, the clouds’ hue grows ruddy, then bloody, then black, invisible against the night sky. Naked except for his white leather running shoes, Manning trundles onward blind, spinning the globe under his feet in the darkness. His erect penis slices a path through the thin, pristine atmosphere, creating a wake of inertia that fans out behind him. Just as the sky begins to glow with yet another morning, Zarnik’s tiny yellow moon, Eros—the wad of nylon once launched by Manning himself—rises, darts through the clouds, and sets behind him.

Glancing down, Manning notices that he runs along a path of footprints in the dust. With surreal clarity, he sees that the prints are in fact those of his own shoes—he has circled the miniature planet countless times, never veering from the equator he has traced around its featureless terrain. With the discovery that his run has been futile as well as infinite, Manning feels his body drain of the energy that has propelled him. His penis sags. His pace slows. His feet tread heavily across the chalky sands, churning cumulous puffs of grit that trail from his shoes like dwarfed thunderheads of roiling talc.

Can he stray from the trail that his shoes have imprinted on this faraway world? Or is he forced—by the intangible but powerful momentum of repetition—to run faithfully, exclusively, forever in this rut of his own making? He can’t even remember how long it has been since he first trod this path that now seems so restrictive. Has it been an eternity, or merely a moment? Or something in between, about two years?

He knows, however, that the trail itself, while straight and narrow, is not an active force. It emits no magnetic field, no insidious cosmic rays that he is powerless to resist. Rather, he has grown so accustomed to his perpetual path that he fears his own ability to swerve from it. He left a former life billions of miles behind, but he’s forged a new routine out here in the wilds of the universe, running a familiar path that offers all the comforts of home. Why would he even flirt with the temptation to sidle into unknown territory?

Because he’s human, of course. He’s a man, with all his instincts intact—passion, curiosity, and a deep-rooted drive to fight confinement and convention. Dare he try, just once? Dare he even think of it?

The thought of transgression, while frightening, excites him. His hard-again penis pulls him like a leash, tugging him to the edge of the path, toward unexplored desert, challenging him to soil those immaculate white shoes. His sluggish pace halts. He stands at the brink, mulling an option he has never before considered. He knows, though, that a decision has already been made for him, as if fated. Both the mental enticement and the physical pull are so strong that he has no will to resist them.

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