Eyes

TW: Suicide and implied schizophrenia

     Everyone knew he was different. Most thought he was psychotic, and some thought he was sociopathic. Both were wrong, he thinks. He’s never wanted to hurt anyone and he feels empathy right? He does his best to be kind to everyone even if they’re not kind to him. Why is it so hard? He’s talking with Jacob now. Jacob is the one person who doesn’t think those things, or at least the only one who doesn’t care. Fitz may be weird but he’s not a psycho. Fitz and Jacob walk through the hall slowly as eyes follow their every move, or more likely watching so Fitz doesn’t do anything. Jacob doesn’t care about the eyes. Fitz always gets tense when he notices them on him. They watch him when he’s alone, in public, awake, and asleep. They follow.

     Fitz is sitting behind the school building, petting a stray cat he found. He gets tense, he begins looking around. The feeling of being watched is one everyone has felt at least once, and if you have you know that if you feel eyes on you it’s because there are. Fitz can’t see anyone, but he knows they’re there. He stands up from the cat who immediately starts meowing at him. He looks down and smiles, picking up the cat and leaving the premises hoping to escape the eyes. He knows that will never happen but he still has that shred of hope he can escape them if even for a minute.

     Fitz makes it home and that tense feeling is still on him, clinging like a spider to a wall. His face has an expression unlike any other. His green eyes are as wide as they get, his mouth slightly ajar, his eyebrows curved slightly inward. Fear. He’s never been so scared of the eyes. Maybe because he knows they aren’t coming from outside anymore. He walks around the house looking for a sign. A break-in, a camera, anything. He doesn’t find anything. He lives alone. The feeling won’t stop no matter where he goes. Fitz makes his way up the stairs to his room trying desperately to forget the feeling.

     He stares at the wall with an expression so lifeless you’d think he was a statue if you didn’t look closely enough. Fitz’s mind raced with a million thoughts, a million outcomes for the situation he was in. His leg bounces up and down, a rhythm to the songs plaguing his mind. His hands are shaking, he looks like he’s slightly malfunctioning. Fitz has been staring at the wall, minutes passing by, hours, maybe days, but he doesn’t move. He knows if he moves it’ll somehow become real, the eyes and voices will continue to follow him and prove he can’t escape. He stands slowly, still staring at the blank wall. A hand reaches out to him but he doesn’t believe it to truly be there.

     The eyes follow him, opening on the wall as he passes. His mind continues to flood with paranoid thoughts and he loses his sense of self. He is no longer himself and the eyes know it. They follow him at the door. He flinches when their eyelids open up next to him and everyone stares like he’s crazy for it. “Nothing’s there,” they say “Why are you so scared” but they don’t understand. They don’t think like Fitz does, they don’t see the things he sees. He knows they’re there even if no one else realizes it

     He switches from walking to jogging to sprinting, he tries to escape and fails. They surround him. He’s in a new place now. One he’s never seen before. He climbs the spiral staircase and the eyes follow. He hears the meow from the cat as he reaches the top “How did you get up here?” he asks as if it can answer. The impossible is possible if you believe hard enough. He can feel the ground open up beneath his feet and he can no longer tell if it’s real or not. He hears the screams of the audience below him and he knows that it’s there, but he feels the same about the eyes. His mind is trying to convince him it’s real but he can not convince himself. Nothing about him feels real anymore, the world is so fake in his eyes.

     He stands on the ledge, looking down at the world below him, the people as small as ants from his perspective. He towers over them like a shoe about the squash them and they scream just the same as he imagines the ants do. He imagines the ants staring at their fate above them and screaming a scream so pained he would cry if he could hear it. He can’t help but picture their bodies lying there. Their families and how they must feel. The pain of the ants below his shoe. He knows though in this scenario he would be the ant, squashed in the road surrounded by those who pretend to care even though he knows they don’t. The eyes are still watching, they seem sad now though.

     Everything feels so small and worthless that he doesn’t know how to respond to it anymore. He wants an escape. He needs an escape. He refuses to let this rule him any longer. He’s scared of what will happen when he hits the ground but he’s not shaking anymore. His lips are curved into a smile and his tear ducts are wet. This is the end of it all. Of the voices, the hallucinations, the pain, suffering, blood, all of the things he’s wanted to be rid of for so so long. He’s finally going to be rid of the voice that tells him to harm others, the eyes in the walls, the things that make the hair on the back of his neck stick up. The thought comes to his mind though, what if the afterlife is worse than this? He looks down again. Should he take the risk? He stares at their faces, the red and blue lights flashing. He smiles again. His hands twitch. His eyes are wide now. He sits down on the edge. He gets a migraine. Shut up. Shut up. Shut up! Shut up! SHUT UP!!! Suddenly the world is quiet, black, is this really all there is? Was it worth it?