Victoria's entry with entourage chimed the door, yanking his head around. She was wearing a grey sweatshirt he noticed, one he hadn't seen before. He had the words in his mouth to say something to her, anything, but her friends just talked and talked as they followed her towards the back room, passing the counter. He didn't want to be rude and interrupt, not because he had any respect for Victoria's friends, but because Victoria might think he was a worse person than he was if he did. He didn't like tall Jenny and smiling Lucy, in great part because he felt jealousy bubble within him when he saw them hanging around Victoria. They twittered, glancing his way once or twice while Victoria changed into her uniform and clocked her time-sheet. Then Victoria was at the counter, and Andrew almost had hope she would say something to him, but she just kept talking to her friends.
Endless gossip. Something about a tv show. He didn't watch tv, and so he ignored it as he tore himself away from Victoria's presence and clocked out. Her sweatshirt was in a pile on the back room table, shoved up against a small mirror, and he had an urge to touch it. Nobody would know. He didn't anyway. Slipping off the nametag and the overshirt, he scrawled the time in pen and walked out. An old lady had come in, buying an automotive magazine and a snickers, so Victoria was still busy, and so he could only continue walking. Her two friends stood off to the side, keeping the conversation alive like an ember for when Victoria could participate again. He heard the familiar sound of the bell ring one last time that night as he walked out the door. Weeks earlier, when Victoria's friends first started joining her for her shift, he had stayed a few minutes, poking through the racks of magazines and candy while he waited for a chance to say something to her. There hadn't been a chance. Lucy just kept talking and giggling and Jenny would get a remark in seamlessly, glancing conspiratorially at both her friends, as Lucy stopped to breathe. Victoria talked less, and the fact that Andrew didn't even get a chance to hear much of her voice made the noise even more dreadful. He liked how she would laugh though, every once in a while a smile bloomed on her face and pure, joyful sound would reach his ears. He thought it was a perfect laugh, and only disliked her friends more when they made fun of her for it.
Tonight though, he had given up on a conversation. Maybe tomorrow, he thought, though he knew that her friends would follow her on Tuesday night as well. He was frowning the whole three blocks he walked to get to his apartment. He lay down on the rumpled sheets of his bed that was pushed up into one corner. From his view, he scanned the room searching for something. The TV that he never used, the refrigerator he stocked with root beer, the pile of ramen wrappers, pizza boxes and pistachio shells that formed a ring around his overflowing trashcan: all of these things couldn't hold his attention. The ceiling was almost comforting in its blankness, less of a reminder of his life than anything else. The bubbling of jealousy that had filled him was leaking out leaving an emptiness that made him heavier instead of light. Closing his eyes and blindly tossing his clothes in the direction of the closet, he slumbered.
Andrew woke to a pressing under his left eyelid. The light was still on, heating his face. He recalled a similar feeling when he had put in colored contacts for a Halloween costume years ago; a vampire costume with red eyes that he had almost gone trick-or-treating in. His eyelid pushed open, but he still couldn't see. Blinded by the pressure that climbed from inside his eye to his face, then dripping down onto his chest. He smelled raw eggs as he opened his right eye, looking across the bridge of his nose at the weight. Blue and black filled his sight, mixing like paint swirling on a canvas. It was small, billowing bigger like smoke, a face like a chicken with the body of a stub-tailed, six legged lizard. It paced down his chest, growing to the size of a cat before it was completely free of his eye. It looked back at him, reflective pools of empty glass that saw nothing and held everything. The beast scampered down, through the window and off into the night. Andrew lay there, feeling the moist trail drying on his skin where it had passed, wondering when he would wake up. He drifted back to sleep hours later.
In the morning, he woke to a feeling of puffiness, his left eye heavy in his head. In the bathroom mirror his eye looked glassy and empty, a faint glint of yellow caught deep inside. Andrew's bathroom light flickered on and off, a loose bulb, giving him only moments to inspect himself. It must have been a trick of the light. He felt normal, just a little puffy eyed as if he had cried in his sleep. His pillow was lightly moist, smelling faintly of raw eggs.
By four, Andrew began his shift, selling candy and magazines, stocking shelves, counting change. Instead of the slow building of excitement to closing time, and Victoria, Andrew thought of his dream, the absurdity of it. Andrew had dreamed that his light had been left on, he thought. It was off when he woke up, and he certainly would not have been able to sleep with it roasting him. The creature disgusted him, he decided. It was repulsive with its slimy skin and its many legs. He disliked the audacity it displayed, venturing out into the light of his room. What kept him on the idea of the creature was its emergence from his eye. He disliked the idea that it had been a growth off of him, that it had been part of him. He disliked more the idea that the creature might have somehow gone into his eye from somewhere else, invading him before leaving.
The sun set before he even realized it, night dragging itself into the streets. Andrew barely had half an hour to agonize about what he might begin to say to Victoria when she arrived, her friends following her. Jenny lagged behind, listening as Lucy prattled on, and a strange thing happened. As Victoria passed the register and Lucy trailed behind her, Jenny actually stopped and looked at him. "What's up?" she said, as if it were the most normal thing in the world. Lucy and Victoria didn't even notice. Andrew shifted uncomfortably behind the counter.
"Lovely weather tonight, isn't it? he replied. The line he had been crafting for Victoria if he could ever get a word in. But it wasn't her, it was one of the other ones, one of the ones he secretly despised. He cursed the fact that he had let the words slip out to Jenny, that she would have the benefit of such a bland monument of his interest.
Jenny leaned forward on the counter as she spoke, a twitch of a smile gaining her lips. "Kinda shitty, I think. Been cloudy the whole day, not that I've been out today much anyway." Then she waited. On him. Andrew had not prepared anything else to say, he had only had half an hour to worry and think, and all of the words and the phrases that he had thought up others days fled to the darker recesses of his mind. "C'mon 'drew, what's up?" she reiterated.
"I thought you'd be talking to Lucy" was all he could think to say.
"I can't talk to you? My friend?" Jenny asked. She pursed her lips in pretty disappointment.
"You aren't my friend," Andrew thought, then said, the motion of the thought continuing out his mouth. "I don't like you." An afterthought. Jenny turned and ran. The door chimed; he had heard it so many times, but it seemed to echo this time. Victoria came out, work-shirt on, and started talking to Lucy. She didn't seem like she had even noticed the absence. Lucy, for her part, glanced at the door between phrases, then over at him. She had a look of worry, of confusion, scrunching up her blonde eyebrows. She didn't say anything.
Andrew clocked out. Victoria's grey sweatshirt was sitting on the table again. Had she worn that when she walked in, Andrew wondered. He walked out, slowly, taking glances at Victoria, trying to find an explanation. It was in her eyes, a tiny sliver of emptiness where the color was hollowed out. She ignored him and continued to talk to Lucy. He blinked and nothing seemed to be wrong. Her eyes caught the light and they were impenetrable. Andrew's walk home took longer than usual. He turned on the tv, staring at the screen in an effort to free his mind. The dream was getting to him. Once he had distracted himself, he might sleep. The tv was still on when he woke, pressure bursting forth from his eyeball, the dull thump of something jumping off his chest to the floor. Eggs. Its back leg disappeared out the window as he oriented himself. Breathing heavily, he entered the bathroom. His eyes were perfectly normal. A nightmare where he didn't completely wake up right away. No more sleep tonight, Andrew resolved. He stared at the glassy surface of the tv, playing old Three Stooges skits in between commercials for cleaning supplies. He needed to take out the trash, his room was starting to smell. Tomorrow morning, before Andrew went to work, he would take it out. It slipped back into the room at four in the morning as the commercials went on break. He remembered the blue-black of its moist skin from last night. In its beak were bits of string, shiny and luminescent. They reminded him of laughter. Pausing on the window sill, the creature swallowed, looking Andrew in the eyes with its glassy orbs.
The creature adroitly leaped to the top of the tv, eyes locked with Andrew's. Andrew backed away. It jumped to the light switch, shrouding the room in darkness. "What are you?" Andrew said. "Stay back!" With his back to the corner, Andrew could only watch in fear as the creature walked up to him across his bed. It climbed him, small claws clinging to his clothing until it arrived at his face. Andrew pushed at it, fingers slipping off its slick skin, mucus like egg-white running down his fingers. Then it pressed itself into his left eye, beak first. The creature oozed its way in. Andrew got a grasp of its back leg and pulled, his entire head yanked forward. Inside his skull, he felt a small tearing, as if its claws were anchored inside his flesh. In pain, he let go, and the last of the leg disappeared behind his eyelid. It was the same glassy color as before, his eye, and in the mirror more flecks of light shone from within it.
Andrew went to work with an eyepatch on Wednesday. Victoria came in alone, eyes dulled with specks of emptiness more countless than before. Andrew seethed. He had no words, no grasp of what he could do, what he might say. Andrew had observed the slouch of Victoria's back, the silence that followed her to the back room. She wouldn't meet his gaze after she had changed. He went to clock out.
"Vile creature, aren't you? You strip away her friends, her life. You make her like me." He tore the eyepatch off, staring into the wall-mirror. The scratches that the eyepatch had hidden were faded from the bright red scratches they had been into pink lines that radiated around his eye, which was still glassy, just like the creature's eye. It all made sense to him, and it sickened him. He could smell saltiness from the crumpled sweatshirt on the desk. "I don't want you anymore," Andrew whispered to the empty room. His stomach was unsettled, and as the image of the creature plagued his thoughts, his revulsion increased. "I created you, somehow, so how do I destroy you?" On the table was the timesheet with a cheap bic pen. Andrew's hand shook as he grasped it.
At the register, Victoria heard the scream, shocked out of the doldrums she was experiencing. It was a short scream, high pitched. The store was silent. Victoria flicked her blonde hair back behind her ear and headed to the back room. She heard chuckling as she approached. Andrew leaned over the table. His left eye had slick blood around it, spattered on his skin just as much as it had upon the floor, the table, her sweatshirt.
"OhmyGod are you okay? Andrew?" As he turned his head toward her, she noticed the empty socket behind the blood. It had stopped pouring out, but his eye was gone. Had that been under his eyepatch? How long had he had it? Andrew was grinning.
"I killed it. I don't know if I can make it right, but I killed it." He sounded triumphant, grinning as he said it, gesturing into the puddle of gore on the table. In the center, the blue-black form, like a lizard the size of an eyeball, twitched. "Almost." Stuck into the desk, impaling the lizard, was the pen she had just used to fill out her time card, which was now drenched in blood.
"My nightmare," Victoria murmured. She stepped into the gory room, moving closer to the creature. Its glass eyes had clouded over, dark, reflecting the bright red pool. She reached out to it, to the hole in its chest. Little golden strings twined up the pen, reaching out the inches between it and her finger. Victoria brought them close to her face to see the fine threads, and they darted into her eyes, filling the empty vacuum of colorlessness.
Through his one good eye, Andrew watched it all happen. He did not remember who she was to him, but she was wearing the store uniform, so she must work here. He smiled. The bad thing was dying. Andrew supposed that he had killed it because of how slimy it looked and the faint odor of raw eggs that surrounded it. With a lightness under his eyelids, he slid back against the wall, and fell asleep.
Tonight though, he had given up on a conversation. Maybe tomorrow, he thought, though he knew that her friends would follow her on Tuesday night as well. He was frowning the whole three blocks he walked to get to his apartment. He lay down on the rumpled sheets of his bed that was pushed up into one corner. From his view, he scanned the room searching for something. The TV that he never used, the refrigerator he stocked with root beer, the pile of ramen wrappers, pizza boxes and pistachio shells that formed a ring around his overflowing trashcan: all of these things couldn't hold his attention. The ceiling was almost comforting in its blankness, less of a reminder of his life than anything else. The bubbling of jealousy that had filled him was leaking out leaving an emptiness that made him heavier instead of light. Closing his eyes and blindly tossing his clothes in the direction of the closet, he slumbered.
Andrew woke to a pressing under his left eyelid. The light was still on, heating his face. He recalled a similar feeling when he had put in colored contacts for a Halloween costume years ago; a vampire costume with red eyes that he had almost gone trick-or-treating in. His eyelid pushed open, but he still couldn't see. Blinded by the pressure that climbed from inside his eye to his face, then dripping down onto his chest. He smelled raw eggs as he opened his right eye, looking across the bridge of his nose at the weight. Blue and black filled his sight, mixing like paint swirling on a canvas. It was small, billowing bigger like smoke, a face like a chicken with the body of a stub-tailed, six legged lizard. It paced down his chest, growing to the size of a cat before it was completely free of his eye. It looked back at him, reflective pools of empty glass that saw nothing and held everything. The beast scampered down, through the window and off into the night. Andrew lay there, feeling the moist trail drying on his skin where it had passed, wondering when he would wake up. He drifted back to sleep hours later.
In the morning, he woke to a feeling of puffiness, his left eye heavy in his head. In the bathroom mirror his eye looked glassy and empty, a faint glint of yellow caught deep inside. Andrew's bathroom light flickered on and off, a loose bulb, giving him only moments to inspect himself. It must have been a trick of the light. He felt normal, just a little puffy eyed as if he had cried in his sleep. His pillow was lightly moist, smelling faintly of raw eggs.
By four, Andrew began his shift, selling candy and magazines, stocking shelves, counting change. Instead of the slow building of excitement to closing time, and Victoria, Andrew thought of his dream, the absurdity of it. Andrew had dreamed that his light had been left on, he thought. It was off when he woke up, and he certainly would not have been able to sleep with it roasting him. The creature disgusted him, he decided. It was repulsive with its slimy skin and its many legs. He disliked the audacity it displayed, venturing out into the light of his room. What kept him on the idea of the creature was its emergence from his eye. He disliked the idea that it had been a growth off of him, that it had been part of him. He disliked more the idea that the creature might have somehow gone into his eye from somewhere else, invading him before leaving.
The sun set before he even realized it, night dragging itself into the streets. Andrew barely had half an hour to agonize about what he might begin to say to Victoria when she arrived, her friends following her. Jenny lagged behind, listening as Lucy prattled on, and a strange thing happened. As Victoria passed the register and Lucy trailed behind her, Jenny actually stopped and looked at him. "What's up?" she said, as if it were the most normal thing in the world. Lucy and Victoria didn't even notice. Andrew shifted uncomfortably behind the counter.
"Lovely weather tonight, isn't it? he replied. The line he had been crafting for Victoria if he could ever get a word in. But it wasn't her, it was one of the other ones, one of the ones he secretly despised. He cursed the fact that he had let the words slip out to Jenny, that she would have the benefit of such a bland monument of his interest.
Jenny leaned forward on the counter as she spoke, a twitch of a smile gaining her lips. "Kinda shitty, I think. Been cloudy the whole day, not that I've been out today much anyway." Then she waited. On him. Andrew had not prepared anything else to say, he had only had half an hour to worry and think, and all of the words and the phrases that he had thought up others days fled to the darker recesses of his mind. "C'mon 'drew, what's up?" she reiterated.
"I thought you'd be talking to Lucy" was all he could think to say.
"I can't talk to you? My friend?" Jenny asked. She pursed her lips in pretty disappointment.
"You aren't my friend," Andrew thought, then said, the motion of the thought continuing out his mouth. "I don't like you." An afterthought. Jenny turned and ran. The door chimed; he had heard it so many times, but it seemed to echo this time. Victoria came out, work-shirt on, and started talking to Lucy. She didn't seem like she had even noticed the absence. Lucy, for her part, glanced at the door between phrases, then over at him. She had a look of worry, of confusion, scrunching up her blonde eyebrows. She didn't say anything.
Andrew clocked out. Victoria's grey sweatshirt was sitting on the table again. Had she worn that when she walked in, Andrew wondered. He walked out, slowly, taking glances at Victoria, trying to find an explanation. It was in her eyes, a tiny sliver of emptiness where the color was hollowed out. She ignored him and continued to talk to Lucy. He blinked and nothing seemed to be wrong. Her eyes caught the light and they were impenetrable. Andrew's walk home took longer than usual. He turned on the tv, staring at the screen in an effort to free his mind. The dream was getting to him. Once he had distracted himself, he might sleep. The tv was still on when he woke, pressure bursting forth from his eyeball, the dull thump of something jumping off his chest to the floor. Eggs. Its back leg disappeared out the window as he oriented himself. Breathing heavily, he entered the bathroom. His eyes were perfectly normal. A nightmare where he didn't completely wake up right away. No more sleep tonight, Andrew resolved. He stared at the glassy surface of the tv, playing old Three Stooges skits in between commercials for cleaning supplies. He needed to take out the trash, his room was starting to smell. Tomorrow morning, before Andrew went to work, he would take it out. It slipped back into the room at four in the morning as the commercials went on break. He remembered the blue-black of its moist skin from last night. In its beak were bits of string, shiny and luminescent. They reminded him of laughter. Pausing on the window sill, the creature swallowed, looking Andrew in the eyes with its glassy orbs.
The creature adroitly leaped to the top of the tv, eyes locked with Andrew's. Andrew backed away. It jumped to the light switch, shrouding the room in darkness. "What are you?" Andrew said. "Stay back!" With his back to the corner, Andrew could only watch in fear as the creature walked up to him across his bed. It climbed him, small claws clinging to his clothing until it arrived at his face. Andrew pushed at it, fingers slipping off its slick skin, mucus like egg-white running down his fingers. Then it pressed itself into his left eye, beak first. The creature oozed its way in. Andrew got a grasp of its back leg and pulled, his entire head yanked forward. Inside his skull, he felt a small tearing, as if its claws were anchored inside his flesh. In pain, he let go, and the last of the leg disappeared behind his eyelid. It was the same glassy color as before, his eye, and in the mirror more flecks of light shone from within it.
Andrew went to work with an eyepatch on Wednesday. Victoria came in alone, eyes dulled with specks of emptiness more countless than before. Andrew seethed. He had no words, no grasp of what he could do, what he might say. Andrew had observed the slouch of Victoria's back, the silence that followed her to the back room. She wouldn't meet his gaze after she had changed. He went to clock out.
"Vile creature, aren't you? You strip away her friends, her life. You make her like me." He tore the eyepatch off, staring into the wall-mirror. The scratches that the eyepatch had hidden were faded from the bright red scratches they had been into pink lines that radiated around his eye, which was still glassy, just like the creature's eye. It all made sense to him, and it sickened him. He could smell saltiness from the crumpled sweatshirt on the desk. "I don't want you anymore," Andrew whispered to the empty room. His stomach was unsettled, and as the image of the creature plagued his thoughts, his revulsion increased. "I created you, somehow, so how do I destroy you?" On the table was the timesheet with a cheap bic pen. Andrew's hand shook as he grasped it.
At the register, Victoria heard the scream, shocked out of the doldrums she was experiencing. It was a short scream, high pitched. The store was silent. Victoria flicked her blonde hair back behind her ear and headed to the back room. She heard chuckling as she approached. Andrew leaned over the table. His left eye had slick blood around it, spattered on his skin just as much as it had upon the floor, the table, her sweatshirt.
"OhmyGod are you okay? Andrew?" As he turned his head toward her, she noticed the empty socket behind the blood. It had stopped pouring out, but his eye was gone. Had that been under his eyepatch? How long had he had it? Andrew was grinning.
"I killed it. I don't know if I can make it right, but I killed it." He sounded triumphant, grinning as he said it, gesturing into the puddle of gore on the table. In the center, the blue-black form, like a lizard the size of an eyeball, twitched. "Almost." Stuck into the desk, impaling the lizard, was the pen she had just used to fill out her time card, which was now drenched in blood.
"My nightmare," Victoria murmured. She stepped into the gory room, moving closer to the creature. Its glass eyes had clouded over, dark, reflecting the bright red pool. She reached out to it, to the hole in its chest. Little golden strings twined up the pen, reaching out the inches between it and her finger. Victoria brought them close to her face to see the fine threads, and they darted into her eyes, filling the empty vacuum of colorlessness.
Through his one good eye, Andrew watched it all happen. He did not remember who she was to him, but she was wearing the store uniform, so she must work here. He smiled. The bad thing was dying. Andrew supposed that he had killed it because of how slimy it looked and the faint odor of raw eggs that surrounded it. With a lightness under his eyelids, he slid back against the wall, and fell asleep.
