The city at night sounds like an animal caught in a trap. The pain of it has kept you awake again. You get up slowly and head for the bathroom. You stare into your eyes while brushing your teeth. In the early daze of morning you see a face from the past. The boy with too big eyes. He had lived in a small town, a town with not too many houses at all, a town with more houses than people. He had been an average boy. Average height, average build, average looks, average hair, average shoes— average, except for his eyes. You remember old super villains, once popular, no doubt now biding their time in the dusty attics of America. These villains all had one thing, besides malice in common: too big eyes. When pressed any expert or aficionado will tell you why. It represents a distorted view of the world. Maybe that explains why he acted as he did. The boy with too big eyes began to cry. And not just at funerals. He cried when his parents yelled. He cried when he couldn’t do his homework. He cried when other boys made fun of him and when his father tried to show him how to hit and when he hit those other boys. He cried, the boy with too big eyes, and no one knew what to do, no one knew exactly why. Maybe it was because these things called eyes serve as floodgates of the heart. The larger they are, the more they hold back. The larger they are, the greater the strain of such holding back, until one day they break and the outpour is blinding. Or maybe those too big eyes captured light at the wrong angle, distorting the world, as the aficionados would claim. Or maybe nothing was ever wrong with his eyes. Maybe it’s the world that’s too big. You rinse your mouth out with water and spit into the sink. You can hear the city breathing the rapid gasps of an animal in pain as you head down the stairs. Out on the street you keep your head down, careful not to look too much.