Final Draft: collection of my writing

Eyes in the Reflection of Fresh Ink

Content Warning: Some body horror, general horror, eyes

Art is my own

It never starts small, from Quinn's experience. These sorts of things always happen all at once, suddenly, terrifyingly. They never stop being terrifying, either, no matter how many times you've seen things like this. You never stop feeling afraid.

Quinn sits by the foggy window and watches the people passing by. People living their individual lives, disappearing into the fog, unaware of the eyes on their backs as they walk away. The steam rising from his cup clouds his glasses, and he grumbles as he takes them off to wipe them away, pausing as he looks out the window again once they're replaced. Someone is aware of him, standing across the street and staring at him in turn. They are eerily still, and it almost seems like no one else has noticed them, not even glancing their way. It's strange to see someone so still on this bustling street, unbothered and unflinching as people brush past them. Something about them...it makes him uneasy, something isn't quite right about their eyes, their smile, the length of their limbs and the way they stand. He can't tear his eyes away, chest growing tight as he grips his cup tighter to stop himself from shaking as a sickening wave of terror crashes over him, jaw clenched so tight it's painful and his body growing so cold, as if he's already dead, that...thing, it can't be a person, human in any way, and he feels that sinking pit in his stomach as they're locked in this stare, dark tendrils of something creeping into his mind-

He jolts awake, finding himself in that same chair at the window, tea spilled across the floor along with the shattered shards of his cup. He swears, getting up shakily and starting to clean up, casting anxious glances out the window. The figure is gone, the streets less busy now as it's begun to grow dark. He doesn't remember falling asleep, but he must have, there's no other explanation. It was all just a nightmare, surely, he tries to reassure himself as he cleans up the ceramic shards on the ground. His hands are still shaking so badly that his fingers slip, and blood splashes down into the puddle of cold tea, crimson mixing with into it like ink in water. He hisses in pain, cradling his hand to his chest as he scoops the rest of the pieces up more carefully before standing up and carrying them to a bin to dump them in. He turns back to wipe up the rest, the silence of the bookstore no longer comforting to him as he keeps looking out that window, expecting to see that figure out there again, but the road stays empty now save for a lone carriage, the horse's hooves on the cobble echoing down the street. It's all quiet again, and though he looks out the window over and over again, he never sees it again that night. He swears though, as he falls asleep that night after sitting awake and staring at the door for hours, that he hears it creak open.

It continues like this for several days. Just hints of something, small little things that unnerve him even more. Glimpses of something in mirrors, shadows peering out behind bookshelves and the sounds of creaking floorboards like someone is approaching from quiet, dark hallways. His bedroom above the store, once a place of solace, no longer provides comfort to him. In his dreams he sees the creature, feels its freakish hands on his skin, feels those abnormally long fingers close around his throat. They feel like skin loosely stretched over shards of broken bone, unnatural and terrifying, but he can't do anything, so completely paralyzed that he can't even make a sound as it begins to cut his stomach open with a near surgical precision, pouring a deep black ink into the cavity. Quinn can feel it seep into his organs, his flesh, his blood, spread throughout his entire body so quickly that he wouldn't have had a chance to scream even if he could have. Those tendrils of ink reach up into his mind again, wrapping around him and whispering things he should not know in his ears before he wakes up again in a cold sweat, blankets thrown off himself and the door cracked open. His blood runs cold when he sees that. He made sure it was shut and locked last night.

He tries to get up and go check it. He can't...move. He can't get up, can't roll over, can't even blink as he's stuck in his bed. He watches in horror, unable to look away, as those thin, horrible fingers wrap around the edge of the door, slowly inching it open as he begins to see the eye of that...thing, staring at him, and he can already tell it's grinning even before he can see its face. A second eye opens above the first, and he realizes it no longer holds a human disguise as the creature opens the door fully, invisible in the unnaturally dark hallways, except for its eyes. Five bright, hungry, cruel eyes that stare at him like a dog stares at a piece of meat, with a grin so wide it makes him sick. Inky black begins to seep into the room, that unnatural darkness swallowing up every bit of light as it just stands there, looming and horrific in the doorway with that same smile. He hears the whispers in his mind again, and this time they hold no knowledge. This time, they're simply a reassurance of his fate. He will become one with the dark. And as the darkness finally overtakes the room, overtakes him, it washes over him like a wave, enveloping his body and wrapping him in its cold embrace. The creature begins to approach him, moving slowly, unnaturally, a strange gait that makes him feel sick, makes him desperate to flee, but now he's not just paralyzed, he's weighed down by the weight of the ink covering his body, as eyes begin to open up all throughout it, staring at him, observing him, *knowing* him. The thing places a hand on his chest. The other touches his face in an almost tender way. He closes his eyes, feeling like he's going to throw up, before he feels the ink finally cover him completely, in his throat, in his nostrils, completely suffocating him, and his eyes shoot open again, only to see nothing.