I feel calm. In my view I see blue skies and soft, fluffy clouds. I feel myself flying around in the air, the warm rays of sun basking on my face. I look around at my beautiful surroundings when all of a sudden, everything fades out. The heavenly world around me turns dark. I open my eyes.

The Eyes That Pierce

-part 2-

It was all a dream. The man. It was all a figment of my imagination. A sense of relief rushes over me. There is no man with a knife. Everything is fine until I look around me and see a room that’s not mine. I realized that I’m not in my own bed either. I’m on a couch- a ripped, dusty couch that one would see with a “FREE” sign in someone’s yard. I jerk up. The floor creaks with my movement. I feel a breeze. A window, with ripped curtains, is open. I look outside and see trees and a dry, discolored field. I feel as if someone has put a gray filter to the world around me. Some of my sensibility kicks in, and thoughts race through me. Where am I? Why am I here?  None of this feels real-probably because I’m still half asleep.

The door of the room is closed. I walk across the creaky floor and put my hand on the handle. I feel… scared. I think back to what happened in the woods. Did the mysterious silhouette bring me here? Is this just a dream? 

I peek my head out the door, and I see someone in a bathroom, looking at themselves in the mirror. I briskly move my head back into the room. The man. That was him. I need to get out of here. The man with the knife took me here. I know it. My phone. My phone! I have my phone! I reach into all my pockets. Nothing, nothing is there. No phone, no wallet, it’s all gone. I start to feel light headed. I know this isn’t real; it can’t be. If it’s not real, then why does it feel that way? Then I pinch myself, as I had seen other people do in movies when they think they are in a dream. I feel it- the pinch. I actually feel pain, meaning I’m not in a dream. I walk over to the window. I look outside and notice that I’m about two stories up, meaning that I can’t escape this way. I’m stuck in a house with someone. Who that someone is is not a fact I know.

 I look around the room and see a dresser. I don’t know exactly why, but I open each drawer. I shuffle through each drawer and see nothing except spider webs and dust. I decided to look out the door again. The man is gone. He’s not in the bathroom anymore. Did I make any noise? What if he comes for me? I take a few deep breaths, and I open the door once again, using the softest of steps I have ever used. I walk out of the doorframe. No one’s here, or at least I can’t see anyone. I slowly descend into the hallway, nervously looking around me. Someone walks in the house; I can hear their footsteps. It’s him, it has to be. I slowly take a few more steps when I hear something. Someone is right behind me. Pain rings in the back of my head and I drop to the ground.

“Good, you’re finally awake,” I hear as my eyes open, and I wake from whatever sleep I was in. The voice was unrecognizable. “I’m watching you…” the voice says. “I was watching you; I’ve been watching you.” I still do not know who’s talking to me. Then, I remember everything. The speaker is dangerous. The man in the woods, the random house, the pain. My heart starts to race. The words I’ve been watching you repeat in my head. I get up and run. I’m jolted to a pause. The man grabs the back of my shirt. “You stupid girl, you can try and try and try, but you will never leave. All the others tried, and you can guess what happened to them.” I look at his face quickly and his eyes lock on to mine. His eyes read: psychopath, murderer, insane. I can’t move. I feel it again- the piercing of his stare. His eyes are the eyes that pierce.

I look down, my peripheral vision catching a shiny metal object in the hand of the psycho in front of me. A knife. Flashbacks from the night in the woods come back, and all I can do is start crying. It’s as if I think crying lets out my fear all together, but it won’t. That’s not real; it’s not realistic. What’s real is that I’m in a  random house, with some random mildly-insane looking person who’s holding a knife. All I can do is stand there, while the man looks and talks to me, as I feel his stare piercing through my stomach. Why, how, when, who, where? 

“I’m going to go make dinner,” the man states. He acts like we are well acquainted roommates and it is extremely odd. Here I was, a person, kidnapped. Wait, kidnapped. I’m kidnapped. I can’t think properly. I’m only 22 years old, stuck in a house, and I don’t know why. I walk out of the room, carefully. I halt to a stop when I hear the man’s voice again from downstairs. My heart races. “Oh don’t worry sweetie, you don’t have to sneak around. You don’t want to go the same way the others did, do you?” What does that even mean?! Others? I’m scared out of my mind now, my thoughts racing in my head like cars on a race track. I walk along the gray wooden floor. The house is falling apart. The old wallpaper along the hallway is molding underneath and falling apart. I notice that when I wake up, the sun is just setting outside. I  notice that there are no lights in the house and I start to connect the dots. I’m not gonna be able to see at night- one more thing to add to my list of worries. The hallway looks like an abandoned hotel hallway. I look to my left and see a staircase, darkened, due to the lack of no lights. I slowly walk down the stairs. As I take slow, soft steps I try to decide whether I should hide my presence, and get more quiet, or if I should just act normal. I mean, the crazy person I’m trapped with seems to be acting normal, so should I?

I peek my head out the side of the staircase and look around. To my right, a kitchen, where I expected the crazy man. My expectations aren’t reality, and I wonder where the scary man went. I walk down the last two steps and look to my right. There he is, the man, on an old, ripped, vintage corduroy couch watching a television show on an old, cracked vintage TV. He turns his head, and I can’t make out any of the features of his face. 

“Oh, hello,” the man says. He gets up off the couch and walks over to me. “I never even learned your name.”

“I, um,” It’s terribly difficult for me to speak. I don’t even remember the last time I talked to another person.

“If you’re going to stay here forever, with the others, I think I should know your name.”