The eye

Magnify the Moment
The Eye
By: Ross Quigley

Tossing and turning, half asleep and half awake. There I lay, in that infinite darkness. Time flew over me. Three O’clock, four O’clock, five O’clock. The morning raced closer as I plunged back into sleep, back into the nightmare.

Six O’clock. Time stopped. That time that had been racing towards the finish line earlier that night (or morning, depending on how you look at it) halted like a wave crashing into a rocky shore. Laying in bed, seconds became minutes, minutes became hours and hours stretched for an eternity. Lying there, untouched by time. Floating in everlasting emptiness, the seemingly familiar makeup of my room, my blue and green dragon sculptures, my Ty Beanie Babies placed above my books on a red bookshelf, all hidden behind a curtain of perpetual dark. It was like the black void of space. No time, no direction- just emptiness. The only familiar thing was my blanket, covered with a patchwork display of patterns of dulled reds, blues, greens and yellows. That was my only protection against the envelope of darkness in the room- my first and only line of defence. I held it tightly as the merciful state of sleep overthrew my conscious mind.

“Buzz, buzz, buzz!”, my alarm screamed into my ear, ripping out of my peaceful slumber. My still sleeping hands fumbled for that delicate little switch, the switch that would silence the painful noise. It was 7:30. The faint wisps of early morning light pierced through the gaps in my dust-covered blinds pouring colour into my messy room. I pulled myself up and immediately dropped down again. It felt as if a dynamite had just went off inside off my brain, the pain echoing in my ears with every heartbeat. Massaging my temples I pulled myself back up. The headache seemed to disperse and let a small but urgent thought from the back of my mind surface.

Something was wrong.

No it was just a little headache, I argued with myself. I must have slept funny. Also I didn’t get much sleep last night. Lack of sleep probably caused the headache. That was a sensible, logical answer. My favourite kind of answer.

But something was wrong. There was an eye.

What eye?

A shadowy eye, gazing at you through the darkness. You saw it. You saw it when your headache came.

That was just some colour distortion from rubbing my eye. That was another logical, sensible answer. But something was wrong.

Pushing the thought to the back of my mind, I got up. I went through my basic routine. Got on my red B.U.M. shirt, and faded black Cherokee jeans. I pulled myself downstairs and had a bowl of Reese’s Puffs cereal with some 1%, pure filter milk. I brushed my teeth, helped the comb fight its way through my long, reddish-brown hair and went off to school.

As I dropped into period A I kept finding my thoughts being pulled back to the night before, and to this morning. To the headache. To the eye. Did I really see it? It seemed so uncertain now. Maybe I dreamed it. I had had a dream that night. Well it was more of a nightmare. In the morning I couldn’t remember any of it but now it was slowly coming back. There was a hall. It was long and wide enough for many people. But it was empty, out of use. Maybe it was a new building, or an incredibly old one that was now out of commission. It was too hard to tell, if enough information was even given in the dream, it surely wasn’t here now. I was walking down the hall, ignoring the empty doors. I knew where I was going; I had been here before. But what would I be doing in a place like that? And where was I going? I stopped and looked at a door. The letters were blurred, the word on the door illegible. But there was a picture, a picture of a-Du-du-du-du! The chimes knocked my train of thought of its rickety mental tracks. Packing my books and shoving them in my knapsack I went to Period B, Law.

As the class settled down the teacher immediately started teaching, either forgetting about or ignoring the fifteen minutes of silent reading slotted to happen at the start of the class. He started sauntering around the class in a way that, if an onlooker combined his actions and his age, they might think he was just a student. He started talking about the International Court of Justice, about war crimes and crimes against humanity and… My mind trailed off. I was in the hall again. In my journey down this time things were more detailed. A few of the doors were open. There were people in them, their attentions focussed on the person at the front of the room. The doors to the rooms each had plates where numbers should be, but they were all unreadable. As I pushed through the though the hall I noticed it was still empty. Even though there were people in the rooms branching off from the hall, I still felt isolated. I felt alone. The door still seemed to be there, but the words were as blurred as ever. The picture was clearer now, more in focus. It seemed to be a stickman, but maybe it would get more detailed if I ran through the dream again. Maybe-Du-du-du-du! God I hated that chime, now more than ever. Time was really going quickly, like when you’re half-asleep. Like it was last night. Like in a dream.

Moving down to the cafetorium at lunch I choked down my food without much of an appetite. Picking up my books at my locker for the afternoon I skipped my usual bathroom break and headed to the library to work on my homework because I was a bit behind due to that stupid dream. Due to that eye.

After lunch I went into period C, where my English teacher started preaching about sending banned books into the wild or something. I wasn’t really paying attention; I let my mind return to that hallway. It was definitely in use, this run-through gave me enough detail to see that. Muddy prints made from a wide variety of shoes covered the white tiled floor. The rooms on the sides of the corridor were filled with people my age, probably students, but I didn’t recognize any of them. They all resembled extreme stereotypes. Jocks laughing as they flexed their muscles and through their work across the room, nerds furiously punching numbers into their calculators and blonde girls who sported clothing that looked as if it was at war with the school dress code. I was approaching the door again. The picture remained oddly unchanged, but the word was a bit clearer. It ended with a ‘N’ that much seemed clear enough, but the remaining letters were still out of focus. I placed my hands on the door. It began to open and I ventured inside and- Du-du-du-du! The chime screamed forcing me into my period D class.

As I headed towards my final class I felt that I had to use the washroom. I guess that is what I get for not going at lunch, I thought. But I can’t go now or I’ll be late for class. I hurried into my classroom where my whimsical chemistry teacher sent us to work on the problems she assigned the day before. I needed help, but I couldn’t pull my mind away from the dream. This time my journey through the hall seemed quicker. The people in the classes were definitely students, and they were now ridden of their formerly stereotypical shells. Now there were blondes, redheads, brunettes and people with black hair, along with students with unnatural colours than spanned the scope of a rainbow. Their eye colours ranged from ocean blue to emerald green to hazelnut brown. I might have even been able to match some names to the faces but it was too hard to tell, and the chime was going to activate in the not so distant future. I had reached the door now. The picture was still just some stickman; apparently that part of the dream was vague. I could now see that the first letter in the label was a ‘M’. I was going to open it but all of a sudden I had to go to the washroom too badly. That is how that always happens to me. I’ll be in control one minute and then BAM!, I have to rush to the washroom as quickly as possible. I asked the teacher for permission and then left.

I pulled around the corridor and walked by a few students who were out of class for various reasons, legal or not. I went around the corner and began to stroll down the empty hallway, trying to look casual but be quick. Footprints littered the grounds, students were in their classes. I was sensing a strange sense of Deja vu, but my bladder forced me not ignore it. I pushed open the door to the men’s room

A stick figure of a stickman, M_N

and raced to the urinal. As my brain
started to take control of my body from my bladder again I felt that feeling I felt in the morning- the feeling that something was wrong. I whipped around, forgetting to wash my hands in my panic. I tried the door but it was locked, causing my heart to skip a beat. Next I tried looking out the window looking out into a strangely dark landscape for an escape route, but it was locked as well. As I turned around again the power died, plunging the room into darkness. I wanted my room; I wanted to feel the safety of my blanket. I broke into a cold sweat, my heart beating so fast that I thought it was going to pounce right out of my ribcage. As I peered into the emptiness I plummeted to the floor with a blistering pain in my head. When I found the strength to look up I saw it. I saw the eye, it’s vision fixed on me, stabbing though the darkness. I tried to scream, but it couldn’t escape my throat. As it began to move forward, unblinking, I shuffled back into a corner. It slowly moved towards me, as if it were suspended into some viscous liquid. My headache started to grow stronger as it neared, like a miner was forcing his pickaxe deeper and deeper into the rock that was my mind, splitting it in two. The soulless pupil was looking down into me, into my very core. It moved to touch me, and to do god knows what else.

Suddenly I jolted up in my bed. My sheets were soaked in sweat, my heartbeat yet to regulate. It was six O’clock. I peered into the darkness and saw nothing. It was just a nightmare, I told myself and fell back to sleep under my patchwork covers. Just a nightmare my mind repeated. That soothing thought led me into my unconscious state. I fell asleep. But something was wrong, and there was an eye.