Sunday 31 July 2011

Story

It's been a long time, and a nice holiday. Here's an old story I'm resurrecting.


"I can't go outside anymore. I've been in my house for nearly two months now and I'm starting to run out of food. This is serious, and I don’t know who I can trust."

"It started quite a few months ago, around November of last year. I was on the train going to Birmingham, not far from where I live. I was heading to the shopping centre to meet with my friends to hang out, it was a Saturday and I go out most Saturdays. There was this old lady on the train, sitting next to me, and wearing these dark glasses. She looked pretty normal from what I can remember – typical greying hair and a disapproving expression like most of the pensioners sitting near me. Anyway, she was staring at the seat, looking at the pattern on the fabric or something, or maybe she was reading the advertisements, but then she turned to me and - I can't remember if she took the glasses off to polish them, or she might have been showing me out right - she had no eyes. Well, it wasn’t exactly like that, they were still eyes but more like holes. Nothing behind them and nothing in the actual socket, and no pupils that made them look like eyes. Just little bits of nothing on her face, it was like staring into holes with no bottom."

"I didn't freak out right then; I thought that there might have been something wrong with her, like she was blind or something. But I knew she was looking at me, I could feel it, and she was smiling, and I mean you couldn't not  notice that she was grinning at me. After I left the station, I met with my friends as usual, and spent some time in town. Unusually, it wasn’t raining so I spent a little longer than normal in the city. It takes under half an hour to get home on the train, but after what happened that day, I took the bus. Two hours is a very fair deal compared to what happened on the train. It must have been about midnight when I got home."

"I can't remember when I saw the next one, but it was still winter. He was just walking like normal and when I noticed him, and this time I did stop and stare. As he passed I could see the holes clearly, and he smiled at me. Not in a nice way either, he just lifted his hands to his eyes in an "I'm watching you" gesture."

"Then they started popping up everywhere, I'd see them in stores, in restaurants, at university. People I didn't know would smile at me and I'd stare into their eyes, or holes like eyes. I went to the doctor, I said that I was seeing things and after a while I was prescribed some Fenigan - he said that it’s lack of sleep. They didn't stop, I started staying in more, I couldn't take the looks. Around Spring I noticed some of them waited outside my apartment, I watched them from the window before I closed the blinds. I went back to the hospital, they checked the inside of my head; no cancer, nothing out of the ordinary. They didn't know what was happening, neither did I. They started showing up on TV, the shows I watched were ruined with their grinning, their staring. I don’t watch TV anymore, I think I smashed the screen after Terry Wogan kept staring at me with those black eye-holes."

"My friends stopped calling, I didn't mind, it was only a matter of time before they got to them too. It’s better than the alternative, whatever that might be. My girlfriend left me after I stopped talking to her, I haven't seen her in a long while but I don’t know if they got to her too. Every one's gone now, I'm painfully lonely but I'm so scared of what they might do if I leave the house. They're watching me, I feel it."

"Anything remotely human now looks at me with those hole-eyes and I can't take it anymore. I don't think I could hurt anyone, or myself, so I hope that I can just starve to death or my apartment will catch fire. I want death but I just can't do it myself, that's what they want. I'll fail and then end up in a hospital with them so they can make me like them, they can cut out my eyes or put something in. I don't know, I just need to find someone, someone who isn’t them."

"I don't understand what's happening to me, I need help. I can't leave and I have no one to call. Everyone's forgotten me. The last time I called my parents someone picked up and just breathed into the phone. I could see the almost like I was there. I shouted, 'What do you want from me!" My mother answered, but it wasn't her,
 "Why don't you come outside sweetie?"
I ripped my phone out of the wall, people were calling from everywhere. Pizza joints, cafes, the hospital. My girlfriend called, I nearly picked up but I knew that she would just ask for me to come outside."

"I had a hunch, and it turns out I’m right - they’re the cops too. I went outside to see if I could find one to talk to, I wanted to walk to a shelter and get some food. I only made it a few meters from my house. They were arresting an older man, I didn't know him. He was screaming something about eyes. I ran back to my apartment. Either they pepper sprayed him and that’s why he was yelling, or he knew like I do. He looked like he was in pain, but the cops were grinning and the people around them were just staring, except for a few. They were looking at me."

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