For every inch of hair he grew, a new eye appeared somewhere on his body. The first few hadn't been that noticeable. They'd shown up in places of himself he wouldn't ordinarily look: the back of his head; the base of his left foot; the small of his back.
He was growing his hair out to see how long it could get, and it seemed that past the threshold of the number 5 on his hair-clipping device, for each additional inch of hair he grew, one more eye appeared.
As you'd expect, he soon found the problem could be solved with more frequent, and shorter, haircuts. But it wasn't a problem, entirely. It had benefits.
The first few eyes were in places obscured by hair or clothing. As such, he saw nothing through them. That is, unless he stripped naked and shaved the impeding hair out of the way.
He found that it did not help his new eyes to simply remove all of the hair from his head and body. He shaved his head bald at one point, only to find this made all his new eyes disappear. Not disappear, exactly, but retract into his body, ready to re-emerge at such time that sufficient hair had been regrown.
He thought of himself as a tree – a tree which would not grow until it had enough leaves to catch the rain and sunlight needed for sustenance. And so would stand waiting through winter, skinny and malnourished, until the leaves returned in spring.
He dreaded a future of permanent baldness, when ageing would remove the capacity for hair growth from his body, and thus remove his many eyes forever. Between perma-baldness and death, no longer would he be able to see the world from many perspectives. Only the one perspective, borne of two eyes in the centre of a human face, endlessly calculating and recalculating the distance between himself and death. And, unaided by additional perspectives, getting it wrong. And usually missing the point.
Spurred into action by this fear of the future, he abstained from haircuts for two years. By the end of this time, he was transformed. The hair reached down to his ankles. First off, this provided a constant tripping hazard. But more importantly, almost every square inch of his skin was covered in eyeballs. He could see in all directions at once. The human brain is only designed to handle two eyes at once – three at a push – but his brain handled the additional strain pretty well.
However, it did cause his head to grow slightly larger, in order to house his muscular brain.
After the first year or thereabouts, he'd given up on wearing clothes. They impeded his view. Eyes on his knees, his elbows, his torso, his buttocks... And besides, modesty no longer seemed important. People mostly stayed away from him. This was infuriating at first, but he soon got used to it.
He found that people no longer wanted to look at him. A six-foot tall naked man with hair down to his ankles, his whole body covered in pulsating eyeballs. Granted, it was distracting. He did not go on any dates during this time. What few friends he had, they soon disappeared after he stopped wearing clothes.
But it was weird. Nobody wanted to look at him, but he, of course, still wanted to look at them. Or anything. With all these eyes, he could look at anything and be fascinated by the multifaceted, kaleidoscopic images. Bins, bus stops, pigeons, trees, puddles, cobblestones, toilets and, oh God, the sea... He could gaze at any mundane object and be transfixed.
So while he did miss human contact, conversation, eyes and mouths, smiles and voices, he found plenty to be getting on with. He went for long walks in the woods, by the sea, through city streets. He subsisted on wild berries and the abandoned meals of people who's run away when they saw him coming. A lot of picnics.
Once or twice people had got it in their heads that he ought to be eliminated. Maybe they were from the Society for the Protection of Picnics from Many-Eyed Strangers. He wasn't sure. But they'd soon found that, with his eyes in every direction, it was impossible to sneak up on him. Then they'd left him alone. One of the would-be monster-hunters had dropped a pretty great egg-mayo sandwich as he'd run screaming off into the distance, so the “monster” couldn't hold it against them. Lunch was lunch, regardless of who was trying to kill who.
He knew that someday a time may come when he grew tired of the loneliness and the long walks – when he may wish to shave off his hair, removing the many eyes, and rejoin society, like a freshly-shorn sheep rejoining the flock. But until that day, he was content to wander the paths of the world, viewing it all from his many perspectives, taking it all in. His many eyes, after all, were a privilege afforded only to him. He ought to appreciate it. To complain would be to look nature in the eye, and spit.