My Short Stories

Devil's Peeping Eyes

The sun rose from its bed and the dawn chorus of the birds began sharp at 5 AM. They chirped and chittered a song that was not comprehensible by any human, but the tunes, the extravagant and rehearsed melodies flowed through Nathaniel's ears and entered his brain. He pushed up from his bed and yawned, making his way to the window.

He pushed aside some curious leaves that projected themselves into his window, trying to reach across into his room. There was a massive tree facing his side of the building, and its spindly branches extended forever, lurching into every open hole they could, and in this case, it was a window.

Birds, birds, where art thou? Nathaniel wondered. He'd gotten used to the Shakespearean voice of his mind that spoke in outdated ways, and wondered in poetry and rhythmic thoughts. A lifetime of being forced to listen to Shakespeare from birth had done such things.

The birds hid themselves well and kept out from Nathaniel's sight. An hour passed and the birds had stopped. Nathaniel huffed and withdrew from the window and did his morning chores and activities.

As he entered the living room, he was greeted by an old man, an old man with starved wrists and streaks of stark white on his round, smooth, and egg-like, bald head.

'Nathan! How are you?' He said, clapping him on the shoulder.

Nathaniel grinned. 'Perfectly pleasant!'

'You should become a poet. Always speaking alliteratively, reading a hundred poems and books every day—you know we were descended from great scholars and philosophers?' The old man, who was his grandfather, said.

Nathaniel winced at the bright, blinding smile of his grandfather, which blasted his retinas and flooded them white for a brief second, as if a star had turned to face him directly.

'Poets and philosophers can't make a living, though.'

'It's not about the money, it's about knowledge. Have you read The Bet by Chekov? That lawyer guy read 600 volumes of theology, science, novels, philosophy, and a dozen more in fifteen years of voluntary solitary confinement!'

'Mm-hmm,' Nathan said, the sound he made when he wanted to acknowledge what people were saying while subtly signing that he thought the opposite. He was very proud of this refined tactic he had created, and that always worked, every time.

'Alright. You get ready and prepare for work, Nathan. My job starts at twelve, yours starts in an hour. Hop it!' He gave Nathan a shove, chuckled, and withdrew into his room to fiddle around with axles, motors, and whatever magical components were used to create machines of majesty, machines that whirred and hissed and worked side by side by humans, helping them, saving them.

Nathan smiled. He wondered why grandfather hadn't gone into engineering or machine-creating or whatever they called it.

He was just leaving when felt a menacing air just behind him. It drifted slowly, carelessly, watching from behind like a curious pigeon tilting its head and observing the movements of passer-by, with all their foreign and strange sounds, their clicks and clacks and whistles and gestures.

Nathan stopped dead, the insides of his stomach twisting and knotting into a shape of a mouse. Slowly, he turned, his body filling with dread that tried to petrify him, immobilize him, make him stop dead like a statue and look with fear as a whistling sledgehammer came and smashed him to bits.

Cold air blasted from behind, like a pervert, whispering and licking its lips, rubbing its hands over him, looking for a place to silently insert their dagger and kill him without alerting anyone, without leaving a speck of blood.

'Leave foul beast,' he whimpered. The air pushed closer, closer, murmuring and jabbering and hissing with queer sounds and wrapping its hands around his body, trying to choke him to death, squeeze the life out of him.