Eyes in the Dark

The old, grated elevator was broken, so he took the stairs. He'd slept in too late and that left him making the three story ascent alone, listening to the way the bottoms of his sneakers clacked against the grey, concrete steps. Listening to how the sound bounced off the walls, which themselves were draped in shadows cast by the old, fluorescent lights, stained orange and growing duller as time passed. He wasn't inclined to waste his time in the stairwell, however, that's why he was hustling up, only refraining from doing two steps at a time because doing that earlier had almost sent his chin down onto the cold, barren steps, and the last thing he wants to deal with at that moment was blood dribbling down his neck. The occasion was special, one that he wanted to experience with all of his buddies while they were all still young enough to not be interrupted by their kids or by some other responsibility, which would be the next time this kind of thing would take place.

Today, he and his buddies would get to see the eclipse.

Finishing the ascent, the man pushed the door to the roof open loud enough that the bang drew the attention of the small group already there; two standing around a barbeque and one on a lounge chair that they found for free outside of some suburban house. "Mikey!" Said Ben, one of the standing men. "About time man, get the fuck over here."

"Yeah, yeah." Mikey responded, waving off the reaction to his presence while walking over to the group. Their apartment was one of the smaller buildings in the city, and it was impossible not to notice how the skyscrapers surrounded them. Whatever, they still had a good enough view. Not a cloud in the sky.

"You got the glasses?" Mikey asked. "Travis has em." Ben said, pointing to the guy in the lounge chair. Travis was dressed for the beach and had a small pile of eclipse glasses on his strewn over his stomach, much like the pair he was currently wearing. He paid no reaction to Mikey plucking on the things up. They had carboard frames. They would look like 3D glasses if it weren't for the dark, rippled glass. He put them on and noticed something right away.

"I can't see shit in these things."

"They ain't sunglasses, bud," That was Glenns voice. "Look up."

He did, and he saw light shining through the field of murky, metallic grey. "Oh." Was all Mikey could say before taking them off again. "When's it happening?"

"Like ten minutes?" Glenn said, more like he was asking Ben.

"I think so." Ben responded.

Mikey couldn't help but feel a little annoyed. He goes through the trouble of getting up here and they can't even get the timeframe for this thing down? Whatever, he thought. "What's on the grill?"

**

Ten minutes did end up being the amount of time they had to wait. They spent that time cooking up some burgers. The heat of the grill soon became the only heat for them to warm to. The group looked up, then quickly back down to put the eclipse glasses on. The world turned to a wavy mercury. Mikey looked up and saw the light from earlier had been rung around a circle of pitch black. He had never thought he might see this in his lifetime. He had never been particularly interested in the concept, he would admit to that if pressed on the subject, but... he had no words for it. It was incredible to look at, even with the eclipse glasses stymieing it.

"The hell is that?"

Mikey turned to see Travis, and when he pulled the sunglasses up, he saw Travis wasn't wearing glasses, yet he was still staring right at the eclipse. "Travis!" Ben hollered; the whole group was looking at him now. Before any of them could really accept the fact that their friend could very well be going blind in front of them, or whether the man was shivering because of the newfound absence of heat as opposed to the fear they would all soon be feeling, a new sound belted their ears. It was louder than anything any man had ever heard in their lives, and it was coming from above them. They looked.

It was a full eclipse, the sunlight still ringing the shadowed over moon. It was like a hole in the sky. Something was crawling out of it.

The group watched, paying no mind to the fact that their eyes weren't being burned out of their skulls in that moment. How could they? The thing coming out of the eclipse was white as bone, with a head as long from front to back as the enormous scythes jutting from its spindly arms. The thing that drew the four men, however, were the eyes.

Across the things oblong head were eyes. All along its length and in the spaces between the spaces. They visibly jittered around, looking all in different directions, not just at the quartet on the roof. The sight made their collective stomachs churn, but they couldn't rip away their gaze no matter how hard they tried. None of the men paid attention to the moment Glenn got up out of his chair and began to walk, not even the man himself. None of them noticed when they all began to follow him. None of them even registered the moment their feet stopped touching the rooftop, or the air sweeping up across their falling bodies.

They never noticed it.

The eclipse ended soon after, and the news would report on how well it went, how many people turned out over at Niagara Falls. People were interviewed about the experience. About how they felt, how it made them want to feel. How many of the younger folks were planning to see it again in another forty years. There were no reports of eye strain or retinal burning.

There were plenty of reported suicides, though.