The eye had grown like cancer, engorged her face, swallowed it up, wet and constantly weeping, and still she hung on, ever the addict, until she could no longer breath, the growth covering her nose and mouth completely, and then she expired.
"Why?" asked her mother, adjusting the dress she chose for her daughter to wear, a dress she would have never in her life worn, such an impractical garment it was for the looking of things, the finding out of things.
The taxidermist bowed his head and left the room quietly. Her mother stood slowly, forcing her back to uncurve and fit its corset. The room smelled, tasted, of chemicals still, as the layers of shellac over the the vast expanse of open eye continued to dry.
"Why did you keep looking?" Her mother closed her own eyes, almost willing them to disappear into their sockets, the jelly sucked back into her brain to soothe the sadness that lived there. "You knew this could happen. Science is not for a woman to pursue. There is a curse for us to ask questions. I can't understand..."
"Why?" she asked again after a moment, asking against the pressure building in her skull. "Why?!" Her vision distorted then dissolved to spots. "Why?!" Her fingers and toes and face went numb; her breath was quick and shallow. "WHY!!!"
The pain struck her, an iron pendulum to the face. She fell to the floor, still conscious, but now blind. Blood poured into her hair and she smiled, glad for her pain and glad to be free from the curse.
"I will complete your work, my darling. I will seek for you, and I will tell you all the things learn. I will be your eyes now, darling."
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See all the stories for this prompt at io9.
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