I couldn’t come up with a clever title for this story
(which was told in its original form by a Northern Cheyenne woman named Rachel Strange Owl)
because the original title is
“Doing a Trick with Eyeballs”
and just like that Apache story about a house full of vaginas
there’s not a lot I’m going to need to do to this one.

Okay so there’s this prick named Veeho
who is the quintessential try-hard piece of shit
like, if you’ve ever gotten picked up by a ride-sharing service
and your driver was trying way too hard to be your friend
laughing really loud at his own bad jokes
and being just a little racist
and you couldn’t wait to arrive at your destination
so you could stop smiling and nodding
and give him a four-star review and a passive-agressive comment
because maybe he means well and he’s trying so hard and this is his job
but also he’s incredibly slimy
well
that driver was Veeho.

So Veeho comes into an Indian village
desperately looking for a way to impress everyone
and he runs into this medicine man
and Veeho is like “HEY DUDE LOOK WHAT I CAN DO
YOU’VE GOT PRETTY DIRTY EARS
WHAT’S THAT YOU’VE GOT BACK THERE?
OH MY GOD IT’S A QUARTER HOLY SHIT”
and the medicine man is like “Bitch please
check this shit out:
YO EYEBALLS”
and his eyeballs are like “YEAH?”
and he’s like “GO HANG OUT IN THAT TREE OK?”
and his eyeballs are like “SURE”
and they fly out of his head and go hang out in a tree
it is fucking INSANE
and it looks PAINFUL
and then the medicine man is like “Ok eyeballs
I think we’ve made our point
come back into my eyesockets now”
and the eyeballs come back and burrow into his face
and Veeho is like “Oh
my
god
you have to show me how to do that”

Now when I first read this story
I’ll tell you what I thought was gonna happen
I thought the medicine man was just gonna say no
and Veeho was gonna punch him or something
and then problems
but the medicine man is just like “sure okay
i don’t need to have a monopoly on stupid eyeball tricks
boom
you can shoot out your eyeballs now
BUT
you can only do it 4 times per day
if you do it any more times
your eyeballs will get a taste for freedom
and they won’t come back.”

So Veeho is like “Shit yeah, i’m a freak now”
and he runs outside and he sees a fence
and he’s like “Eyeballs, jump over that fence”
and his eyeballs are like “Okay”
and Veeho is like “HAHA FUCK YOU FENCE”
and he summons his eyeballs back
and then he chucks them into a tree
and over a river
and onto a yak or whatever
the point is
he has very clearly exhausted his four uses for the day
and finally he gets to town
and he’s like “HEY GUYS I’M A WIZARD NOW
I CAN SHOOT OUT MY FUCKING EYEBALLS”
and everyone is like “bullshit, prove it”
and Veeho is like “Hmm
how many times have I shot out my eyeballs today?
four?
Nah, the first one was just practice
it can’t possibly count”
so he’s like “YO EYEBALLS, FLY INTO THAT TREE OVER THERE”
and his eyeballs are like “SURE WE LOVE TREES”
and everyone is like “WHOA THAT IS SO FUCKED UP
YOU SHOULD BE THE FRONT MAN FOR A METAL BAND”
but then Veeho is like “Okay eyeballs you can come back now”
but obviously they don’t
I mean come on
no eyeball wants to live inside a head that dumb
and then a bird comes and eats the eyeballs
which i guess the eyeballs find preferable to going back to Veeho
and everyone laughs at him and goes home.

so now he’s blind
and he’s wandering around bumping into shit
and he runs into a mouse
and he’s like “PLEASE MOUSE GIVE ME AN EYEBALL”
and the mouse is like “Yo dude my eyes are tiny, no way”
and Veeho is like “PLEASE”
and the mouse is like “Okay fine you can have one of my eye
I will straight up become a cyclops to shut you up.”
But the mouse is right
the eye is way too small
he can barely see a tiny point of light
but it’s better than nothing
so he keeps wandering around until he finds a buffalo
and he’s like “PLEASE BUFFALO GIVE ME AN EYEBALL”
and the buffalo is like “dude my eyes are like the size of your head”
but Veeho is like “PLEASE”
and the buffalo is like “FINE
I will actually disfigure myself just to make you go away”
so Veeho takes one of the buffalo’s eyes and stuffs it in his socket
but it’s way too big
and it makes everything look big
and that combined with the mouse eye gives him a WICKED headache
but at least he can see
so he staggers home
to his wife(?????)
and his wife looks at his ruined face
and is like “Hey maybe you should stop trying to impress everyone”
and Veeho is like “You know maybe you’re right”
and the story doesn’t explicitly say that Veeho’s wife leaves him
but I believe in happy endings.

So the moral of the story
obviously
is before you make any kind of magical pact
make sure you know how to count to at least 4
preferably higher.

The end.