I See Myself in Its Eyes

It was pitch dark, save for the light pouring in from the streetlamp in the frigid tundra outside. It came in through a film of condensation at my window, evaporating the waves into a misty glow permeating the room. My vanity mirror would not be able to catch my reflection with the weak luminescence, but the mist still came over my garbage bin (a mix of water bottles and crusty tissues) and my makeup—arranged in a disastrous pileup like the Pike in the dead of winter—on the desk beneath my mirror. In some spots, the light was just strong enough to reflect the grains of salt from bygone storms, like a lighthouse warning the detritus floating in the air to stay away. Snowflakes danced through the screen and fell to the floor where the native shadow did not already dominate.

I noticed it immediately upon waking up, finding myself stuck at an awkward angle in bed; the left side of my face pressed up against the mattress. I was unable to move anything except my eyes. My sight was directed straight at the being, standing there in the corner, come to visit again. My vision was obscured by a fold in my comforter; the being was surrounded in a hazy aura in my half-vision. It appeared to be nude; where the genitals should have been there was an odd swirl, like a knot in a tree. A long, ashen white beard obscured its whole jawline except for the mouth. The flesh of the being was like wood turned to stone; the fingers long and bony, like claws. I tried counting the ridges and cracks in the figure’s face, but it seemed that the more I looked at it the number of things to perceive increased. One aged indentation branched off into another, and another from there. Darkened spots abounded on the visage, more numerous than the stars in the night sky.

Two horrendous gelatinous masses rested inside the being’s head. Curdled milky white surrounding a pool of viscous cum shimmering in the streetlamp’s glow. At the very center of this was a black hole of a pupil: infinitesimally tiny bead, a nebula’s worth of gravity. Translucent shadows were swallowed as they swam through the jism, dismantled at the joints of their unique shapes. I was all too aware of the pressure creeping upon me from those dreadful searchlights. The first time I ever felt the pressure of the being’s look was when I first turned my face into a Pollock. I didn’t see it that day, but I could feel it there, somewhere. It felt like I was on an airplane: the pressure building up in my ears, every vein and artery bursting with flint and black powder. I broke down and cried right then; my mother found me. She seemed angrier about my transgression against my sex than the ashes of dollars I had smeared all over my cheeks and lips.

Over the years, many doors opened showing me who I was as a person. Over the years, I was told I ought to turn these rooms and their occupants to cinders—inject myself with gasoline and swallow a match, send the ashes flying on the wind into the woods and settle at the bottom of a stagnant pond that cannot be found. From that day onward I was chained to the rocky floor of oceanic depths; every attempt to raise my leg and take a step was met with the pressure of a billion fathoms. With every discrete movement involved in the most mundane of actions, I felt all the fibers in my muscles get pulled down by fishhooks attached to an uncuttable thread. Through many nights I would find myself pinned underneath its eyes and presented with unspeakable nightmarescapes. Tonight, it was here to do the same as it had ever done. I felt my very consciousness contract and fold underneath the being’s gaze; my psychic Self twisting into an intestinal shaped balloon until it began to settle into some kind of identifiable scene.

As clear as the first day of summer: Alex stood before me with his little hairless dick out. It can hardly be called a penis. At full mast it is less than the pinkie of an average adult; the end is like an underdeveloped mushroom. It all looks quite sad. His skin still smooth over his body in the innocence of prepubescence. I was the same way, still in the early stages of figuring out how to use my own personal canvas. The eyeliner is clumsily applied, lipstick smear just underneath my nostrils. I was wearing some shoplifted panties. His body is the same as the bodies of all young boys: flat, plain without any defining characteristics, still holding onto unblemished purity. But this virgin skin was not what caught my eye and drew me towards him. There was something in the sheen of his copper brown hair that reflected the light in such a way to reach within me and find the answers hidden within my very soul. And, of course, his emerald green eyes. How fortunate I was to have had the privilege of meeting with them on a daily basis, to be in the embrace of that sight—even as short as it was. The only look whose touch sent a wave of warm spring water through my pores.

We awkwardly approached one another, grasped each other’s soft, small hands. Our faces came closer, hesitantly, overthinking all of our movements to the last detail in our infinite vulnerability in this moment. As his young face made its slow, methodical way towards my own I saw just how beautiful it was, greater than anything my dull mind could comprehend at the time. A small shadow came over his face, and his emerald eyes burned in the dark and left my vision with a fiery purple dot fixed in the center. I felt completely at peace in this minute, brief moment in time enraptured in this boy’s gaze, and his lips pressing up to mine.

I was struck at that moment with a terrible pang in the center of my being. I felt as though there were something pressing upon me from all around, a massive weight trying to crush me underneath it. A great panic developed in me, and I began to cry. Tears poured forth from my eyes, carrying away my eyeliner, to be absorbed by both of our soft lips. We separated; he appeared distressed at my sudden change in disposition. A concerned look fell upon his sweet face. I felt worse at having made him worry and obscure his cute features. He embraced me, bringing me close against his smooth, warm chest. But I couldn’t calm down. Hooks had dug into my body, tearing out my guts like a ravenous predator. The being was looking at me; I couldn’t point it out, but it was driving its claws into all the orifices it could, quartering my soul. The four walls surrounding the two of us took on a crystalline texture. In the dim patina of glistening icy white, I was unable to escape myself. I was hideous (certainly Alex thinks so. Oh my God, what have I done to him? We shouldn’t be doing this; it was my fault I made him come here to do this it was my idea it was…). The ouroboros of guilt deepthroated itself further and further.

The temperature was gradually increasing in the room; it felt like my skin was peeling off. I looked around the room; there was no fire, and yet all around me the room was turning eggshell white to grey to charred black. Alex’s pure flesh dried up before my eyes and cracked as he turned into a hideous spiral leaking crimson fluid; his eyes rolled into the back of his head, the pulsing veins at the optic nerve burst, drenching his hair in terrible maroon viscera. It dried instantly into blood-caked nails, some standing erect, others at a bent angle like they were struck by an unskilled carpenter. Soon the spiral morphed further into an indescribably monstrous shape, turning inside out and back again until I couldn’t tell which was which. The abomination soon dissolved, melding into the rapidly deteriorating box I was in.

I was all alone. I tried to scream, but there was something inside of my chest that blocked the air from escaping. Not a sound could escape from my throat. The room around me was melting. Thick slime dripped from the ceiling: Vaseline mixed with soot. From what was left of one of the walls, there came something trying to make its way through. I stood there, unable to move as a sloppy, amorphous pile of sludge wriggled further into the room from where the door once was, now more resembling an erratic heartrate. The mass hung there suspended off the ground wriggling like a phallus. From this dripping monstrosity, a pair of arms emerged from the shaft, with a pair of legs soon following as it broke off from the slurry. The mucous slowly began to take on a human shape, developing a head and torso. It stood there, still dripping a grey-black jelly. Two slits formed in the creature’s head; they opened with an awful squishing sound. A pinpoint pupil rested in a tense stillness at the center of the whites of its eyes.

I tried to scream, but the air sat still in my lungs. It was not blocked by the substance in my chest—which I could still feel pressing down upon my insides—but by the gaze of the creature standing before me. Those incalculably dense pupils were pulling at me by the atom. I could feel my eardrums begin to burst; my cochlea was annihilated and rebuilt, only to be destroyed again, over and over. But I could not cry out, the creature would not let me. I was paralyzed, helpless before it, just barely able to breathe under this immense pressure. The creature began to move towards me in slow-motion, gradually gaining speed. It reached out towards me; its claws outstretched about to tear into me. With the little vestiges of strength I had, I took all of the air in the room into my lungs like a flame. I launched up from my bed and made a sound that the human body could not produce. The streetlight went out with a crash, and it was so dark in the room that not even the being in the corner was able to see me.