Image Prompt Short - The Scourge

My entry into this week's image prompt madness

If you want to play along, check out my subscriber chat for all the details. When I looked at the image, I saw the milkman that used to make the rounds when I was a kid in Scotland. The eyes made me think of germs, and the rest just slotted into a rather weird place in my head.

The milkman loaded up his cart with his precious cargo, scanning the cobbled streets for any sign of movement. Electricity was spotty at best, but he was happy to see the amber glow of the streetlights casting kaleidoscopic shapes on the rain-soaked streets. The road ahead seemed clear, but the Cult of the All-Seeing Eye were adept at hiding in the shadows.

Powering up the electric cart, the milkman set out, the bottles rattling loudly in their crates. Back in the day, the sound was a comforting part of his travels, but nowadays, he feared that it might raise the slumbering cult members.

The beings tended to be active after dark, going after cattle and kids alike. No one knew what they wanted from their prey, but the nightly assaults continued. It was up to the milkman to deliver the milk to the little ones, as the liquid was now used as an elixir of sorts, replacing the protein that the many-eyed things craved.

It was the children that they went after when they first arrived, coming from who knows where. The cows were nothing more than collateral damage, the cult, as people now referred to them, culling the herd in an effort to stop prevent the children recovering.

To the milkman, it initially seemed counterproductive to essentially refill the little ones with protein, as it felt like recharging batteries for the cult to feed on. They never went after the same child twice, though, as it seemed the little ones were tainted after such refills. The beasts that did return for second helpings were more often than not found dead, their eyes akin to that of the blind, all colorless and devoid of life.

He drove through the streets of his town, looking for the red X on the doors that would show where milk was needed. It was a war that the humans were, slowly but surely, winning. The milkman looked to the morning sky and watched the massive eye rise where the sun once sat. It looked diseased, weeping cataracts visible to all.

The end was almost certainly near, but the milkman wondered what would happen when the eye and its brethren died. Would the sun return, or would Earth be plunged into an ice age from which there would be no return? That was a question for another day.