tear out your eyes

this is the next piece in my series of gift art for Dean Koontz in honor of him book, "watchers". in case you haven't seen the first piece and don't know what the story is about, you can go here:
[link]
and read a my sloppy summary. moving on,
this is The Outsider, the second expriment of Banodyne laboritory's francis project (again, if you don't know what i'm talking about, read my summary). this piece was directly inspired from a certain page from the novel in which a government agent, named Lem, is searching for both run away experiments. he runs accross another innocent person who was murdered by the outsider. the body's eyes are missing. this has been the case with every person killed by the outsider thus far. when he is asked to offer some sort of explaination as to why the escaped outsider tears the eyes out of every one of its victims. Lem remembers back to a scene he witnessed when he vististed banodyne labs. in the past. here is that exerpt from the novel...

In yarbek's lab, lem had watched as the man-made monsterousity in the large cage had exchanged complicated series of hand signals with the scientist, while an assistant had whispered a running translation. the outsider had expressed a fierce hostility towards everyone and everything, frequently interupting its dialogue with yarbeck to dash around its cage in an uncontrolled rage, banging on the iron bars, screeching furiously. To lem, the scene was frightening and repellent, but he was also filled with a terrible saddness and pity at the plight of the outsider: the beast would always be caged, always a freak, alone in the world as no other creature-not even Weatherby's dog-had ever been. the experience had affected him so deeply that he still remembered nearly every exchange of sign language between the outsider and Yarbeck, and now a pertinenet part of that eerie conversation came back to him:
at one point the outsider had signed: tear out your eyes.
you what to tear out my eyes? Yarbeck signed.
tear out everyone's eyes.
why?
so can't see me.
why don't you want to be seen?
Ugly.
you think you're ugly?
much ugly.
where did you get the idea you're ugly?
from people.
what people?
everyone who see me first time.
like this man with us today? Yarbeck signed, indicating Lem.
yes. all think me ugly. hate me.
no one hates you.
everybody.
no one's ever told you that you're ugly. how do you know that's what they think?
I know.
how do you know?
i know, i know, i know! It raced around its cage, rattling the bars, shrieking, and then it returned to face Yarbeck. tear out my own eyes.
so you won't have to look at yourself?
so won't have to look at people looking at me, the creature had signed, and Lem had pitied it then, deeply, though his pity had no way of diminishing his fear of it.

Characters plot and exerpt from "watchers" (C) DEAN KOONTZ (to whom i will be sending the origional)
Art is mine.

EDIT 7/8/06: as you know (maybe) this picture is part of a series dedicated to the book "watchers" by Dean Koontz. one of two works, the origional copy of this drawing was sent to the author himself (accompanied by letters from myself and my mother, Janet). In April, i recieved a response from Mr.Koontz and a signed copy of one of his books. i figured a link to the letter belonged here since these two pictures are still some of my most popular (which doesn't say much really..) anyway, here is Mr. Koontz's response:
[link]