cabal
#wordoftheday #prompt #drabble #horror #warning
cw /// paranoia (stalking/voyeurism); psychosis; body horror; self-harm; eye injuries
Unseen eyes watch from each corner.
At the brightly lit grocery store, on the silent street in the evenings, and from the shadowed doorway of the office supply closet. The eyes rake over every inch of her, their gaze an almost physical weight capable of tearing straight through her thick coat and rubber boots, her layered shirts and pants.
They can see her naked flesh.
They can even see her bones.
Bare, dry joints clicking and clacking in a parody of life as she goes about her daily routine. Trying to ignore the gazes resting upon the bleached white of her exposed shoulder blades.
She cannot escape them but she tries all the same.
Refuses to leave her apartment. Installs her own blinds. Adds extra locks to the door. Quits her job. Cuts all social ties.
They still watch.
She can feel the pressure on her skin.
How anyone could find her insignificant drudgery so interesting, she can’t say, and she certainly can’t ask; she’s never seen them. Ironic, considering how much they’ve seen of her.
But then.
Once.
Just once.
She sees them.
Wavering, shadowy humanoid shapes, edges ragged and blurred, as though cut haphazardly from a sumptuous cloth of deepest ebony. They go about their business exactly as she does: standing over the overflowing sink, sitting on the couch or on her unmade bed, leaning against the dirt streaked wall by the door.
Floating directly behind her, about 3 inches in the air, as if suspended on a hook or rope, toes pointed downward. A thing made of cloying darkness, drawing rattling breaths and staring.
Staring.
Eyes glowing like banked embers set in a featureless black face formed of smoke and fear and night.
Teeth.
White and sharp and glinting. Winking at her in the muzzy half-light of her apartment as if they are both in on a private joke.
She smells wet earth and a faintly fermented sweetness.
Like rot.
She holds two spoons over what appears to be a flickering orange blossom, sprouting incongruously from her oven burner. When the metal glows red with heat she presses the convex sides hard into the sunken pits of her eyes.
Sizzling so bright and painful she screams, even as what remains of her ruined eyes dribbles down her hollow cheeks and onto her shirt.
Into her mouth.
Tasting of blood and pus and salt brine.
Only then does she realize her mistake.
Seeing them was one thing.
However, now that they can no longer be seen they whisper.
That air reeking of the grave wafts gently past her ears, carrying words that she cannot fully make out but then, suddenly she can understand…
She wishes she had not.
They aren’t words.
They are vessels in the guise of words. Filled with no meaning, simply madness.
The whispers never cease, even in her new darkness.
They will never leave and neither will she.