Eyes of Void

TW: Mentions of suicide and mental health topics, profane language, and death

 “We left the house at 2:30.” I looked up at my therapist, and seeing her gaze was still locked on me, I continued, “2:30 in the afternoon. That was when we got in the car and left the house.” 

     “Where was your family going that day, Myron?” she asked. Her face still held the same concentration. 

     “An…a-amusement park, I think,” I paused for a moment, reviewing the information in my mind, “forgive me…I don’t remember much to be honest—I think it’s a repression mechanism, at least that’s what the last doctor told me.” 

     “No, I understand. I’ve seen this many times before, just take your time.” 

     I nodded, not really taking her seriously considering we only had an hour together, and about five other patients were waiting in the lobby the last I was there. 

     I brushed my dark brown hair back and out of my eyes, the strands filtering through my fingers. I haven’t had time for a haircut lately, with trying to balance work, therapy, and, well, the dreams. Waking up in cold sweats and being petrified throughout the day makes it hard to remember the little things. 

     I resumed, refocusing on something in the room to distract myself—the grandfather clock. 

     “Dad had talked of going to ‘Fun World’ for a few days. I didn’t really want to go, but of course I didn’t have a choice,” I pushed my hands further down my legs, “So…we left. We took the van and went down the road, our neighborhood road.” 

     A sweat hit me in that moment. Something was telling me not to continue, not to tell this stranger the truth. Images of my last therapist formed in my mind. You’re crazy, she had said to me. This is what she told me after I got to that specific part: the part that gave me my nightmares, that gave me my fear, and that, in truth, had made my life unbearable for the last decade.

     “Myron?” the tone shifted and a strong annoyance creeped in, “Myron?” 

     “Y-yes,” I shifted my glance toward her. Her face donned a stern expression when she met my eyes. 

     “Continue. You were driving on your neighborhood road and—?”

     “Well,” I tried my best to formulate the words in such a way that I could minimize their impact, “someone–or something–walked out in front of our vehicle.” 

     “You say ‘something’...were you unsure whether it was an animal or a person?” 

     She was asking too many questions too quickly. There was no way I could contain the reality of my situation any longer. 

     “No, not exactly. The…umm…thing, that walked in front of us, was human, don’t get me wrong, just not a different person,” I took a deep breath, fighting against the urge to run away from this completely, “i-it was me. An exact copy of myself in every way, from the way it walked, the way it stared at me—the way it stared at me with those pitch black eyes—and, of course, its appearance, which resembled me exactly, even down to the clothes I was wearing.” 

     She shuffled uncomfortably in her seat and put her glasses on a small coffee table, pinching her nose ridge as she lowered her gaze. After a moment, she spoke. 

     “Well, did your family make it out alright?” 

     She had completely dodged the elephant in the room, probably for the best. 

     “Yeah, they’re fine. Surprisingly, we had almost no injuries, besides my brother’s broken arm. The other car didn’t do so well, though. I heard the dad died. Made me feel guilty for weeks considering it was my look-alike that caused it in the first place.” 

     The room was bathed in a long, uncomfortable silence for a minute or so while she was busy jotting something down on her notepad. As her pen, pressed intensely against the paper, performed one last, heavy movement, she spoke. 

     “Maybe you should feel guilty, Myron,” she said, her tone shifting from compassionate to blunt, even rude.

     I wanted to say something, but the words caught me so off guard that I forgot how to speak. Every attempt to mouth a couple words ended in a quiet stutter. 

     “And before you ask, no. This isn’t some new therapy exercise.” She got up from her forest green wing chair and walked over to the small bookshelf along the right side wall. Her thumb slowly caressed the dust off the second highest shelf. After each small stroke, she looked at it, as if assessing if it was really there at all. 

     “I just wanted to let you know that it really was all your fault,” she grinned, “you’re the bad guy.” While her right hand was busy with the dust-coated shelf, her left hand gripped her neck, the ends of her fingers gradually increasing their pressure on her skin. 

     “What?” I finally muttered.

     “Are you stupid? Did you listen at all you dimwit? I mean seriously, you have to be the dumbest version of us out there.” Her fingers had now pressed in so much that they punctured small holes in her skin – there was no blood. 

     She only chuckled—deeply and hoarse—as she tore a layer of flesh off, beginning with her neck. The laugh became more of a wild squall as she peeled continuously, revealing another layer of skin underneath. The outer layer peeled readily, like a flimsy layer of rubber. 

     Her vocal inflection became deeper as the process continued, until it became almost masculine.  

     Now she—or he, or it—began tearing the layer off piece by piece, ripping it from its skin, as opposed to the gradual tearing from earlier. The skin-colored layers hit the ground, coiling on themselves as they impacted. 

     It turned toward me as it forcefully ripped the last stretch of it from the front of its face. 

     “Hi, Myron. It’s been awhile, hasn’t it?” 

     “What the fu-”

     “I know, I know, you’re surprised to see me.” 

     It was me. That thing was me. The same hair, the same straight nose, and the same round face. Although, only one thing stood out to me – those eyes. The same eyes that stared into my soul that day. They revealed a thousand stories, a thousand memories as I glanced into their voids. 

     I got up from the sofa, slowly, so as not to startle this new creature. It obviously had power over me in this situation, and its dominant posturing indicated it knew this very well. 

     “What the hell do you want?” I said, raising my voice to hopefully shift the power in my favor. The creature didn’t move an inch and held its unwavering eyes on mine.

     “To be honest with you, Myron, I don’t know what I want. Many have tried to understand that. All have failed.”

     My eyes could barely focus on the thing. While, yes, it was me, in basically every way, something about its presence sent a shock throughout my body. The same feeling permeated my mind when I saw it the first time.

     “How many people have you terrorized?” I said. 

     It moved toward the study table at the back of the room. 

     “You’ll see.”

     “Wha–”

     Its hand grasped a decorative knife on the study table, embroiled with gold patterns and intricate, golden webs. 

     Before I could finish, it unsheathed the knife from its clear casing, grabbed it with both hands, and, with a furious might, punctured its abdomen. Jet black fluid poured from the wound and scattered on the floor in thick droplets. 

     It collapsed on its knees and fell to the side in one motion. 

     The act had been so quick that I could hardly react in time to stop it. At that moment, it was only me, myself, and a silence so strong, not even the screaming that erupted from me could break it. 

***

 “Come on, Myron!” 

     My niece, Ellie, was excited about going to Fun World: from those distinctive dimples that marked her face, to the leaps and skips she performed all the way to the entrance gate.  

     I’ve been promising I would take her all summer, and today was the day. Of course, I waited till the last possible moment to do so, the final week of summer, but no one got on to me about it too bad, not even little Ellie, which was probably at the discretion of my brother. 

     They all knew what happened: from the accident years ago to what they referred to as “the episode.” It wasn’t an episode. They of course didn’t believe me, and it didn’t help that the body was never found by the police. My mom lectured me about how, when we don’t let fears go, they always come back; my dad simply didn’t get it; and my brother and sister, while attentive, only pretended to understand what I was telling them. 

     It was truly useless. 

     I decided to let it all go. Trying to hold onto these things was in vain, and I knew it. So, I ignored the nightmares. I ignored the random chills down my spine, like something was creeping behind me. I ignored the black, tinted-windowed cars that followed me around. I ignored all the sounds and voices at night while I was trying to fall asleep. I ignored it all. 

     Ellie tugged at my sweater sleeve and pointed to the ferris wheel. 

     “Uncle Myron,” she looked at me with her bright smile, “we should do that first.”

     I darted my eyes from her to the ferris wheel. I rubbed my eyes. He was still there. The wheel moved on and on, yet his gaze remained fixed on me–those eyes, those abysses, they stared into my soul. 

     Ellie forced me along and toward it.

You must move on Myron, you must move on. 

     She got distracted by a cotton candy trailer. 

     The owner looked down at us. Those same eyes. That same face. 

     Ellie laughed, and pointed to the bubblegum-flavored cotton candy hanging by a string above us. Does she not see him? I looked up from her and saw what she was pointing at. My eyes widened and my stomach turned. It was crawling with maggots. The man simply grinned at my disgust. 

     He was in the middle of handing her one of the cones when I refocused my attention. Before he could reach it, I slapped it away. 

     “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” I yelled. I could feel my face burn, not just because of this man, but because he was ME. I was the one behind this madness. 

     “Oh come on, Myron,” his black eyes lowered to Ellie, “you wouldn’t want to disappoint her, right?” 

     I looked down at her, and her beady, blue eyes looked up at me. She almost seemed aggravated. At me? Did she not see what was going on? I gave a quick check of my surroundings. Everyone was looking in my direction. Not at the infested cotton candy, not at the man who was identical to me in every way except for his eyes, but at me. Me. 

     I dragged Ellie away from the stand.

     Stop it Myron, stop it. Just ignore it. 

     I halted halfway to the ferris wheel. 

     “Ellie, we can do the ferris wheel, just no cotton candy, okay?”

     In the adrenaline rush, I hardly saw the trembling of her body, the painful shock across her face, and the tears bubbling in her eyes. Tears of my own began to form. What have I done? 

     “I’m so sorry honey,” I paused and knelt down to grab her little hands. “Uncle Myron has just been going through some things lately.” 

     She wiped her apple-red cheeks of the tears and gave me a little nod. 

     “You want to ride the ferris wheel?”

     She gave me another nod. 

     I nearly forgot about him in my pity for Ellie. Surely he wasn’t there anymore. It was all in my imagination anyway, at least I hop–no. It was all in my imagination. 

     We waited in line for about ten minutes before being let on the ride. Everyone was strangely silent, not only while waiting, but even on the ride itself. Ellie didn’t seem to care, so neither did I. 

     The seats of the wheel were shaped like straw baskets, attempting to mimic them in plastic form. They rocked back and forth with each rotation. 

     Night had begun to settle at this point, and Ellie was tightly hugging my arm and gazing at the stars. I decided I would join her. 

     A silence formed between us that could only suggest that she, at least for now, forgave me. For the first time in years, the incessant, gripping fear seemed to mostly depart from me as we sat there together. Yet, I still felt a lingering sensation that tickled the back of my neck. It was small, barely noticeable, but still there. 

     I resisted the urge to turn around as much as I could. The tickle became a throb, which then became nothing less than torture. I gripped the back of my neck, hoping that the pressure would disrupt the pain. It did not. It continued to increase until it enveloped the whole of my skull. 

     Ellie, whether or not she actually noticed my problem, tightened her grip on my arm. Thank you. I grounded myself back in reality. This was now a tug-of-war. Ellie, on one side, helped me to resist, while the temptor, on the other, tried to pull me inward. I was just the rope. 

     Come to me, Myron. We aren’t much different, you know. 

     Its words were like adding gas to an open flame—no, like adding ten gallons to an open flame. With each syllable, the pain spiked throughout my body. 

     It's either you or her, Myron. You decide. 

     I responded mentally, regardless if it could actually hear me.

You won’t do anything…you can’t. No one even sees you but me. 

     Oh Myron, come on now. Me and you both know my power.

     I heard screaming from below. A man had collapsed and people, panicked, gathered around his lifeless body. 

     I can do anything. 

     One of the bolts holding our basket in place popped out of its socket. This wasn’t anything new for hastily put together amusement parks, of course—it was the way it shot out of its place so rapidly, and with such force.

     Don’t doubt me, Myron. 

     Ellie's hands gripped my arm even more. 

     I could feel it now. The rope was balanced between the two opponents. This was the deciding moment.