🕸️Open Your Eyes🕸️

Chapter 1

Cricket noises

. . .

It's getting late.
My eyelids have begun to feel heavy.
I better go to sleep.

Lamp click

I leave aside the book I'd been reading and look out my window.
The process of falling asleep is always a struggle against noise.
Barking dogs, police sirens... Or even my own intrusive thoughts.
But not even the turning gears of my brain are producing much sound.

Tonight is just oddly... Quiet.

...Too quiet...

Bedsheets shuffling

I feel restless.
My sight veers towards the hallway outside my door.
The distance between my room and the opposite wall is only ten steps long.
I'd know, since I've made an habit of counting them whenever I go out.

One, two, three... Absentmindedly, but always.
I don't know why.
Maybe I just like being aware of my surroundings, to the smallest details.

. . . . . .

But tonight is different.
The hallway looks like it stretches into nothingness, like the throat of a gargantuan beast.
Logical thinking cries that it's just my imagination.
There can't be anything wrong or different about it.

It's just a hallway

But...

. . . . .

I don't want to look at it.
So i take a deep breath... And close my eyes.

. . .

. . .

In my room...
There's a bed.
In my room...
There's a wardrobe.
In my room...
There's pictures framed on the wall.
In my room...
There a door that leads of to a hallway.
My room is apart of myself.
It's a world I know like the back of my hand.

Were if someone was to blindfold me and asked me to find my way around...
... I'd do so without the slightest difficulty.
As long as nothing changes, having my eyes closed makes no difference.
In this room, I can always find what I want to find.
Because this is my room... I know how everything looks.

I need to wake up early tomorrow.
I should really try to sleep.

. . .

. . .

. . . ?

What's that sound?
Are those... Footsteps?
... No that's impossible.
It must be my imagination.
But it's getting closer.
And closer?.
And closer?..
And... Closer?...
... They are gone...
Right there's no way someone could be there.

Bedsheets shuffling

"Hey."

. . .

"Open your eyes."

I don't open my eyes.

"Open your eyes."
"Look at me..."

I do my best to ignore the voice.

"Why won't you look at me?"
"Where are your manners?"
"If a stranger asks for help... Is it right to ignore them?"
"Is that... How it is?"

I can feel someone breathing over my ear.
It's cold.

"I will share a secret with you."
"I have never seen myself before."
"I don't know if my face is ugly."
"I don't know the colour of my skin."
"I don't know if i'm even here."
"That is why I need you... To open your eyes."
"So you can tell me how I look."

"But I am also shy."
"So I might hide the moment you do."
"You won't find me anywhere, and soon... You will forget."
"Like a faded dream."

. . .

"I know your not asleep."
"You listen with those tiny ears of yours.
"They look so... Fragile."
"Like I could almost grab them."

I feel something caress my ear.

"Put my fingers around them."
"And tear them off."
"If I do. Would you scream?"
"Will I hear your voice?"

. . .

"It was a joke. I was joking."

. . .

"Don't be scared."

. . .

"... Hey."
"How do you think my eyes would look?"
"When our gazes finally meet... What will you find?"
"Answer me."

Do I answer?
Yes... I should answer, before he gets angry...

"I think... They would look, Empty" I replied with a tint of shiver in my voice.

"They look... Empty?"
"That may be so.."
" I'm always straining my sight, to stare at what's in front of me."
"Searching for that one, precious thing."
"It's what drive's me to look inside places... Such as this."
"But sometimes I strain to hard."

"Little pieces seem to fall off my face."
"One after another..."
"Making a cracking sound as they go."
"A sound like..."

Cracking sound

"This."

"In my desperation, I always attempt to piece them back together."
"I kneel and search for the missing fragments of myself."
"But they are never there."
"Maybe the wind takes them somewhere about if my reach."
"And that... Makes me sad."

"So sad, I put my hands where my eyes should be."
"And o burrow my fingers."
"And I take it out."
"I take everything out."

Crunching noise

"Every little piece that remains"
"Harder, furiously, and wallowing in sorrow"
"I pray to whoever's listening to give back what's mine."
"To not make me lose more than I've already lost."
"I don't want to waste my time... And search for more than I care for."
"Yet no one delivers."

"No one is listening..."