A singe sentence, as many seasoned writer’s have learned, can spark an entire story and chase away the Writer’s Block. I, my self, have three works, two of which are on the blog, that were sparked by a single sentence or paragraph.
Today’s prompt: “Those eyes; I’ll never forget those eyes.”
Write a short anecdote or several pages based on the above sentence. Tag it as “promptly written” or leave a link in the comments so I can see your work!
They say that you never forget a face. Not truly. You may think that it’s faded from memory, but some part of your subconsciousness remembers. A face in a crowd of your dreams could be a face you only glanced on the street. You may not remember them, but there they are.
I never gave the statement much thought. Dreams are just dreams; they aren’t reality. It’s funny how quickly your beliefs can change when the truth stares you right in the eyes.
Work in customer service was full of unfamiliar faces. Every day, people would come in, complain about their purchases, make returns, demand cash back. And every day I would tell myself to keep smiling, don’t let them see how much you hate your job, how unimportant and petty their ‘big problem’ is.
Every night, I’d walk to my car in the dark, perfectly safe. Never feared the all-consuming shadows, or lived with the gripping fear of being attacked by a psycho in the parking lot. What were the odds that it would happen to me, a middle aged, average woman that was, like everyone else, just a face in the crowd? Apparently, higher than I thought.
Next to the customer service desk at the Target where I worked was a small little Starbucks shop. What reason would I have to glance over at the few little chairs and tables? I didn’t believe in being paranoid about being watched. I knew I was a woman of average looks; shorter, slightly plump, as many middle aged mothers were (I was fine with it; it was a part of aging. I was no runway model obsessed with her figure). Never could I assume anyone would take an unhealthy interest in me.
And yet, one day, I found my gaze drawn to one of those chairs. A man sat there, late fifties, grayed hair, scruffy, with cold, hard eyes. He was staring straight at me over the rim of his coffee cup. I looked away immediately, my attention turning to the woman placing a bag of clothes she wanted to exchange onto the counter.
I looked back at the chair when she was gone, but the man had disappeared. I shook him from my thoughts. He was just another face in the crowd. A face I would forget by morning, never to be seen again.
But there he was the next day, same chair, staring creepily at me over the rim of that stupid cup. I turned to my coworker, asked if the man worked in the store. I’d never seen him before yesterday. But, when she looked over, he was gone. She dismissed it, saying that I shouldn’t worry about it.
That night, I walked to my car feeling uneasy for once it my life. I looked over my shoulder, locked the doors as I got in the car and sped off, checking my rear view mirror every few blocks as I drove home.
For the next three days he was there, staring at me: the same time, every single day, drinking his coffee, watching me with those cold, dark eyes. And every time I’d look away, he’d be gone, as if he’d never existed.
His face began haunting my dreams. I’d make up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat. I’d see him in the corner of my eye, but never fully. Only those eyes. Those evil, dark, empty eyes, staring me down.
It got to the point where I talked to my husband about it. I took it to my manager, but the mystery watcher was nowhere in sight on the cameras. I couldn’t believe it. He was just not there, like a ghost. He would be there, but the cameras never saw him come in, and never saw him come out.
I began to loathe him. How could he be doing this with no one noticing? What was a perfectly normal woman like me doing to deserve such harassment? He was suddenly everywhere, at work, in the store, lingering just out of sight, watching me.
And then, one day, it stopped.
He was just gone, poofed out of existence, never to be seen again. For weeks afterwards, I looked up at that chair, over my shoulder as I left work and got home. But he was gone.
I never forgot those eyes, empty, black orbs staring at me unfeelingly. There was no life to those eyes. They were evil.
My life was ordinary once more. I stopped fearing being watched. I forgot all about the man in the chair, haunting me wherever I went. Nothing seemed wrong anymore.
Until I saw those eyes somewhere else.
My mother fell ill. We moved in with her. My young son and I were unpacking some old pictures to put up on the wall and organize later to put in family albums. He pulled out an old black and white photograph of my grandmother as a young girl. And, standing behind her was a middle-aged man I recognized straight away; the man that had tormented me for weeks with those unblinking staring terrible eyes.
My grandmother told me stories of her stepfather when I was young. He was a nasty man, with a terrible temper and disgusting habits. He was a sadist, interested greatly in black magic and demons, fascinated with the evil nature of the spirit world. Her mother killed him with a baseball bat to the head one night. The police never arrested her, never questioned why she did it.
But, three nights later, they found her in bed, nasty bruises around her neck, strangled to death. The killer was never found, but my grandmother knew the killer could never be caught; he was already dead.
The house my mother lived was her mother’s childhood home. The house felt peaceful, up until I saw the picture and all those scary ghost stories suddenly came flooding back to me. After the disturbing find, I could never sleep in the house. I started seeing those eyes again; lurking everywhere, just out of sight.
Coming home one night, I found my family outside, speaking with police officers. A paramedic was in the house. They were loading someone up into the ambulance. The lights were off as they drove away.
My mother was found in her bed, no pulse, no breath. The police wanted to arrest my husband, but he had arrived just minutes after the police arrived. She was barely even cold when they found her.
They found no trace of my husband’s DNA on her. No bruises around her neck; she had simply passed peacefully in her sleep. But I knew better; my mother slept in her grandmother’s room, the same room where she was found strangled to death fifty years ago. My mother was on oxygen. She couldn’t have just stopped breathing on her own. It didn’t make sense.
Things in the house got worse. I would hear voices everywhere. But it was only me who heard those whispers- angry disembodied voices, muffled shouting and banging, like a man having a tantrum in another room.
I locked the door to my mother’s room, forbade anyone from sleeping there. I burned the pictures of my great-grandfather, had a priest cleanse the house, had psychic after psychic come into the house, only to say that the house was empty, there was nothing there.
But I could still hear those voices, feel him lingering around every corner, watching me with those staring, unblinking evil eyes. What did he want with me? Why was he doing this?
I bought book after book on the subject of ghosts and demons and everything else classified as paranormal. I held my own EVP sessions, left sensors around the house, video cameras.
But nothing ever happened.
My children never saw anything, nor did my husband hear the voices, see the shadows lingering in the corners. They started thinking I was crazy, sent me to the doctor, to a therapist, to a psychologist. They, too, called me crazy. I had never met my great-grandfather, had no possible way for his spirit to attach to me
But, I knew what I was hearing, what I was seeing, what I was feeling, was real. It had to be. I saw those damn eyes every time I closed mine- black, empty, evil. Even when they packed me away to get ‘help’, I saw him, staring, watching, hating. I could never escape those eyes.
Victoria Stenton 