The Staring

              It is 3:45am and I am wide awake. I know I should be sleeping. Hell, I know I am exhausted from all of the packing and unpacking, but I cannot bring myself to close my eyes. It’s quiet in the room; dead silent. Despite the fact that it is a rather clear and peaceful night outside of my window, the air within my darkened room is thick and still. I feel frozen in time almost, but I know it continues to drag on as the feint clicking of my tableside alarm clock tells me of the passing minutes.

My breathing is shallow and I dare not move a muscle. I feel suffocated beneath these sheets, but I will not throw them from off of my body. I am sleeping; at least, that is how I want to appear despite the fact that my eyes are open and staring up at the ceiling. The only light in the room is the pale glow of the moonbeams which pour in through the blinds, still… I can just barely make out the eye staring back at me through the hole in my ceiling. It doesn’t blink nor does its gaze stray around the room. It focuses solely on me and remains unmoved; staring, staring, and staring as the minutes roll by.

This is the third night in a row since I moved in last week that I have gone without sleep because of that eye. Upon the morning after the first night when I discovered I was being watched so intently, I carefully made my way up the stairs to the attic with an old baseball bat in hand. I hadn’t called the police because my phone line had yet to be connected, so I took it upon myself to apprehend the Peeping Tom. However, upon reaching the attic I was confused to find that there was no one. No intruder or even the slightest sign that someone had been up in this attic for… years, perhaps. The layer of dust that had settled upon the old boxes and sheets was thick and undisturbed. The area around the small hole in the flooring was also untouched. Eventually I moved a box over the hole; a temporary fix until I could get around to replacing that one particular board.

That following night I slept only for four short hours before something inside me forced me to open up my eyes. There it was again: the eye, silently staring back with a burning intensity that could be felt even through the plaster and wood that separated us. For a time I thought I could just barely make out the sound of breathing. Whether it was my own shallow, fearful breaths or the very breathing of that which lurked above, I cannot say but it dragged on well into the small hours of the morning until I finally lost consciousness.

Here I am for the third night in a row; my pillow soaked with sweat and the pounding in my chest growing louder by the minute as I peer up into the eye of some unknown thing. It still has not blinked and not once since I first discovered it have I seen it move. It just continues to stare. I imagine that it has been staring at me since I first arrived here, alone, in this old two story house; a house that, at the time, I was so happy to have purchased on my own thanks to my promotion. Now I regret moving from my single bedroom apartment in the city. Now I regret kissing so many asses to get that promotion. I wish only that this thing would go away and now…

Now the eye is gone.

The handle of my bedroom door is turning.







 Short story by: Philiko

