• It was the eyes, I think, that finally did it. The straw that broke the proverbial camel's back. Those eyes... I have never seen anything as evil, as possessing as those eyes. Yet they held a tantalizing quality that made me want them as much as I wanted to be rid of them. I have every detail of them burned into my mind and to hell and back I will not forget them.

    This all started with a slow ascent in how my mind perceived things. You, along with the rest of the ignorant population, would consider it madness; you would call it insanity. I know, however, that it is an advanced level of awareness, which allows me to see what is really there. My mind has not always occupied this, shall we say, state. I was once completely and ignorantly blissful in my pathetically sheltered world. Now I know better. Now I know how ironic my cynical view on life was. I have since altered this to a better, more knowledgeable outlook. If I think about it hard enough, I can remember the night it started.

    There I was, lying in my bed, trying to sleep whilst my disillusioned mind worried about irrelevant matters that I had once based my whole life on and had considered so important.

    As I lay there, tossing, turning and fretting, it began.

    My minds eye began to mold and construct beings out of the darkness. Most people will claim that darkness is simply the lack of light. This is extremely wrong. My newfound sight allows me to understand that darkness is the actual matter and light is the lack of dark that also allows the dark to become solid. This is the first realism I discovered.

    At first the obstreperous image was slight, just a patch of 'darkness' that was more opaque than the rest of the room and happened to be in the form of something I took as menacing. But given enough time and this particular image began to adapt to movement.

    I lay there, not moving in the slightest and almost forgetting to breathe. It would not move if I looked directly at it, only out of my peripheral vision did it even register as movement. I became terrified and began reaching my hand toward my lamp, thinking to disband the cruel hallucination. I moved so slowly that it could hardly be called progression at all. I'm not sure how long I lay there, reaching for my lamp, moving, it seemed, a centimeter an hour. It was a wonder that the sun did not rise, but finally my fingers came in contact with the pull cord and I quickly jerked it down.

    In an instant my room was completely filled with light, or vacant of darkness. But it was in that split second when the light came on that I saw it. It was tall, taller than most humans, yet it still crouched as an old, crippled man would crouch, bent over at the waist. It was scaly like a lizard yet smooth like a dolphin. It seemed red, and it seemed black, or blue, I'm not sure. It had a face that seemed to embody death itself. It had fangs that stuck out like grotesque tusks, like those of a boar. It had curling horns sticking out of the top of its horrible head. Below the horns was the beast's deep-set brow under which, where the eyes should have been, were simple hollows, blacker then the darkest void in the universe. It was the absolute absence of light, or presence of darkness, whichever.

    The view of this demon was instantaneous; it was in the blink of an eye, yet I had seen every detail and it was burned into my mind.

    This was just the beginning. It got worse.

    After the initial occurrence I began to see this "thing" everywhere. In every dark corner, every shadow there seemed to be brief flashes of it. Its form was never changed, never altered in the least. It was always the same as it had been on that awful night. I caught glimpses of it in mirrors and glasses, any reflective surface. No matter where I was, those eyes plagued me.
    It was about three weeks, my proposed 'sanity' ever slipping, that the whole truth was revealed to me. I was lying in the very bed that land marked the beginning when my mother cracked the door open and stuck her head in. Nothing she said had any meaning, only empty worries about my strange behavior and inquiries about my health, it was her appearance that had me staring. Her face rippled back and forth between the horrible monster I knew so well and the loving mother I had grown up with and adored, finally settling on my mothers face with those eyes in place of her own. Seeing those eyes on my mother, I am not sure what happened but my mind was set. I offered up assurance that I was fine, waited for her to leave, then planned it all.

    I lay in wait, like a tiger preparing to pounce. I had the glinting knife held in my hand and I waited for the thing I had believed to be my mother for so long to enter the door. I smiled to myself as I thought of finally ridding my life of that horrible demon.

    The keys scraped in the lock. The tumblers rolled over, the door opened. I vaulted like a coiled spring just released and my makeshift weapon found its target. Those eyes!

    ***

    "Criminally insane," they said. "Can't go to prison," they said. Fine. I don't care. This place may restrict me to one room but it kept the Monster away and that's really all that matters. That's how it seemed for a while anyway. One of the nurses, the ones, who bring me food and take the jacket off for me sometimes, came in last night, or morning, or evening, I'm not sure which, and I saw it.

    Just like my mother, it had taken her form but that isn't going to last. Oh no. A fork from my tray works just as well as a knife from my kitchen.

    No more eyes.