I could always feel them. Those two beady little eyes. Never quite staring but never looking away either. By the time I had accepted their presence, a daily routine had already been set. Each morning I would awaken to the same horrible ticking of the alarm clock set on the nauseating floral nightstand. After ten minutes of unavoidable grogginess, I would slowly rise and strip myself of the blankets wrapped around my splayed limbs. It was in that moment, between slumber and consciousness, that I would first feel them. They would creep up my body, like an ocean wave slowly washing over the beach. But then they were gone. Despite the familiarity of their gaze, the two tiny obsidian orbs never ceased to terrify me. The yellow walled room with the simple lighting and almost child-like aura was suddenly warped. Where I once saw my white wooden bookshelf, filled with miscellaneous treasures from the days of ignorant bliss, I now saw a dark wall. A wall that could hide two little black eyes.
As each month passed, the youthful unease began to evolve. By the time a year came around, the wooden bookshelf had numerous dents in its once proud shelves, and my soft and comforting bed had developed the creaks. Morning routines had stuck, but new routines had also arisen. Night was now my time of terror. The anxiety brought around by adolescence had forced my once innocent fear to become a complete feeling of horrifying paranoia. Instead of being a monotonous dull, the fluorescent lighting of my room was now the only safety. For as soon as the house had winded down, and the relatives were in deep sleep, the lights would go off; and I would be left alone, once again, with the two little black eyes.
Still more time passed, and as the weeks slid by, the two dark orbs never left my mind. School days just weren’t as joyous. Games not as playful. Jokes not as funny. The eyes dimmed everything. Under their influence, my vision became tinted with a monotone gray that sucked the very essence of happiness from the world around me. The people around me no longer vibrated with energy, and the plants seemed to wilt in my presence. It was decided. The eyes’ were no longer physical objects. They were a mental virus, permanently engraving their glare into my mind.
Another year, another advancement. The public no longer appealed to me, the very thought of leaving my home was considered insane in my mind. My room had become the only location where I could watch them. I was no longer just the watched. I was also the watcher. Hours upon hours were spent in a kind of staring contest. The eyes would watch, I would watch back. Leaving the room meant turning my back to them, risking a wrath that I could only imagine. The public was not the only enemy I had made that year. Dark secluded places had an almost paralyzing effect on me. The absence of light would strike a paranoia so terrifying, so nerve-wracking, that I would need another person to assist me. It was those moments, when I requested help, that I first started noticing the other eyes.
On one specific day, one of no significance, I noticed something new about the eyes. Something that brought a new wave of terror to my life. I noticed that there wasn’t just eyes anymore. A kind of dark silhouette had begun to form around them. Just barely noticeable, it was a darkness that almost glowed. It was then that I began to act strangely. My family would notice the bizarre expressions on my face when I glanced at my room. They had begun to catch the little twitches that riddled my behavior. The twitches that I saw as the tiny strings holding together the stability of my mental state.
One day those stitches broke. They were torn in a way that not even a seamstress could repair. The events that prompted the tearing would be considered minor in others’ minds. But not in mine. It had been just another day, a day of watching, waiting, and anticipating the next move of my opponent. When night came, the move was made. After an hour of fearful sweating beneath my blankets, I heard the smallest noise. It was just barely there, almost a hallucinogenic kind of quiet, but present nonetheless. I waited with anticipation, all the while knowing that a terrible fate could be in my very near future. Then whoosh! A foul stench of despair and pure malice swept over me. After regaining my senses, I hurriedly sought out the source by desperately glancing about my room. My eyes finally rested on the wall, closest to the bookshelf. I could see a shadow. I could feel myself begin to tremble, knowing that all these years had been in wait of this moment. The moment where I face them, the moment when I finally face the eyes. For a few minutes we watched each other, then the transparent darkness moved. Walking isn’t the word to describe its movement, it was more of a hovering slither. The instant it began moving was the instant I could feel my breath stop. Closer it came still, and suddenly I could no longer hear or smell. Even closer and I lost all sense of the world around me. It was just me and the eyes. I could feel them coming closer. The figure gave off a kind of chill, one that seeped into my bones and made my very being shake with frozen terror. Closer and closer it slithered until it was less than an inch from me. I suddenly felt a sensation like no other. A feeling of emptiness. An emptiness so deep, so whole, so thorough that even my heart was emptied of purpose. I could feel my body wither, much like the plants around me. Like my relationships with family and friends. Like my life itself. And as I withered, I began to see the light, the one everyone knows of. And when I reached it, I screamed with horror. Instead of the anticipated golden gates, there was only a doll, but not just any doll. It was the doll with the two large, black, eyes.