Eyes

Sometimes the eyes that watch you will drive you mad.

Eyes. The eyes are everywhere.

          Cassie screamed and tumbled to her knees, her hands clutching at her temples. She could feel cold concrete through her light blue pants, icy cold and hard. She screamed again, her nails beginning to dig into her temples, warm blood lightly coating the tips of her nails.

          The hard metal door swung open, and two men in white ran in, followed by a woman with a clipboard. They grabbed Cassie by the arm and pinned her back against a wall. She screamed again.

          “Get them! Get the eyes!” The woman moved closer to Cassie, and leaned in near her face. She had deep brown hair, pulled back into a neat bun.

          “Don’t worry Cassandra, these ‘eyes’ will go away.” She reached into the pocket of her long white coat and produced a needle from it. Inside was a seemingly transparent liquid. “They’ll all go away…”

          Cassie screamed again when the needle dug deep into her warm flesh…

          A bright light shone in through the window, and Cassie stirred on her bed.

          She opened her eyes and gazed around her room, her vision hazy from sleep. She blinked once, twice, and her eyes cleared.

          She sat up slowly, her left arm sore. She rubbed it lightly and looked at the cold metal door to her cell.

          Closed. Locked. It must still be before rising hours. Cassie stood up, her feet touching the cold, gray cement floor. She walked over to her window and reached up, grabbing a hold of the black bars that closed her in. She stared out, into the dirt and rock field, and farther out, the barbed wire fence.

          Cassie heard a clank, and turned to see her cell door opening. A guard was standing there, holding a fresh set of clothes. Cassie stepped forward as the guard closed the door and took them silently.

          She stripped right in front of the guard and replaced her underwear and light blue pants and shirt with fresh ones. She was used to being watched constantly…

          Once dressed, Cassie was taken from her cold cell, into the cafeteria.

          She walked through the line, holding her trey silently. She sat down alone at a table without really noticing anything. She sighed and looked down at her food, a bowl of sickly looking oatmeal, and simply pushed it away.

          Cassie had always hated oatmeal…

          She sat there until an announcement told this group to move to the “activity room”.

          Cassie filed out along with the other people, and walked silently into the room. She planted herself at a table, and picked up a piece of paper and a red crayon.

          She didn’t keep track of time. Time meant nothing to Cassie. She didn’t look up when a large hand clamped on her shoulder, or when another hand took her drawing out from under her.

          She kept her eyes locked on the ground when she was forced out of the room, taken down a long hallway, and brought into another room.

          The room was cold, terribly cold, as if an air conditioner had been left on even though it was only early spring.

          She sat down in a black chair, and finally looked up.

          Across from her sat that woman with the dark hair. Today it was up as it had been the night before, as it always was. Her neck was long, almost too long, and her eyes a piercing green.

          Cassie assumed her to be a snake.

          The woman picked up that clipboard and began to read.

          “Cassandra Granger. 17-years-old, born in Maine, grew up in the outskirts of New York. Father disappeared when you were 5; mother killed herself when you were 11. You went into foster care for 6 months, and then were sent to a mental facility in New York City. You were sent to 4 other facilities before being sent here two nights ago.”

          The woman looked up at Cassie, who simply stared back at her.

          “So, Cassandra…what has made you so unmanageable, hmm?”

          Cassie was quite.

          “Cassandra, I’m speaking to you…”

          “It’s Cassie,” she whispered in her weak, soft voice. “Only bad things call me Cassandra.”

          “Alright…Cassie. What bad things?”

          “Papa called me Cassandra,” she whispered. “He’d call me Cassandra, then touch me. He was always cold. Mama called me Cassandra. Those people in the white call me Cassandra. Even the eyes call me Cassandra.”

          “The eyes. Tell me Cassie, what are these eyes?”

          Cassie looked away, her brown shoulder length hair falling in front of her eyes. She peered through it was she spoke.

          “They’re always there. The eyes. They watch everything I do. They want to get inside me, inside my head. They like it in my head…they…they want to hurt me…”

          The woman was writing something on the clipboard when Cassie looked directly at her.

          “Okay Cassie, I see.” She looked over at the guard, and said, “Give her tranquilizers, two every night before you lock her in her cell. We don’t want a repeat of last night. I’ll talk to the doctor about these hallucinations she’s having.”

          The guard nodded and took Cassie by the arm. He led her to the door.

          “Nothing will stop them,” Cassie said. “The eyes will always be watching…”

          Then the guard pulled her out and the office was silent.

          Cassie was lying on her bed that night. It felt hard underneath her. Clutched in her hand was the remaining powder of her pills, which she had hid under her tongue, then crushed.

          She sighed, and then suddenly, something came into view.

          In the shadows near the door, something moved. It was too dark and far away to see it’s outline clearly, but Cassie didn’t need to. She sat up and put her back against the wall.

          Then another shape appeared to her right, and to her left. One closer to her then the first, a fifth closer yet.

          Soon the room was full of them. Eyes. They were everywhere. The walls, the floor, the ceiling, floating right in front of her.

          Cassie held back a scream, biting her lip to keep quiet. She closed her eyes, trying to block out the images.

          But then she felt her eyes opening against her will, as if she had no control. She began to tremble as the eyes moved closer, and she got her first true and clear look at them.

          They were all different colors. Brown, hazel, blue, green, gray. They were tinted red, as if they hadn’t closed or slept in days. And from some oozed an off white pus, from others maggots crawled out, and others gushed fluids of all colors.

          And still some dripped blood. It ran over them, and they seemed not to notice.

          As they neared Cassie held out her hands and finally spoke.

          “Demons away. You shall not hurt me.” Still they advanced. “Demons be gone, in the name of our Lord…”

          Closer they came…

          “In God’s name…spare me…”

          And then it hit. Rushing pain from her head. She felt them squeezing inside of her. Through her ears, her nose, mouth, her own eyes. Cramming inside, closing in on the space of her brain.

          She screamed, tears gushing down her face now. The pressure made her head feel as if it would burst. She screeched and began tearing at her head. Her nails scraped down her temples and cheeks, her blood running down her face.

          Her screams shook the entire asylum, woke every person within the damned building.

          And then they fell silent…

          Within the city the coroner opened the black body bag and an officer lifted a pale girl’s body onto the icy cold autopsy table.

          The coroner took a look at her and shook his head.

          “Shame,” he said as he tilted her head to one side, looking at the side of her face.

          “She’s bone thin. What do they feed the people in that damned asylum anyway?”

          “Lord only knows,” the coroner said as he opened one of her eyes and stared into the gray orb. Blood shot.

          He looked at her face again, then lifted her right hand and looked at the blood and torn flesh caught under her nails.

          “Self inflicted?” the officer asked.

          “The gashes? Yes.” He looked in her ear again and blinked. He reached over and grabbed a large pair of tweezer like tools, and probed them carefully in her ear.

          He clipped onto something and began to pull it out.

          “Looks like the lord wasn’t listenin’ to this poor child tonight,” the officer said. “She can’t be more then 17.”

          “Yes, shame indeed.”

          The coroner pulled the tweezers from the girl’s ear, then dropped them onto the slab.

          “My God!” he exclaimed.

          “What the hell is that?” The officer asked, peering over the body at it.

          “It’s…a human eye!”

Author's Note

This story is over 5 years old, but somehow, the concept it still a favorite of mine.