There was something wrong with their eyes.
There was something wrong with their eyes. It wasn’t there at the beginning. It had to have changed at some point, but so slowly that I didn’t spot it until it was too late. We were sitting at the rubber-coated picnic table at the front of the warehouse. The checkout lines behind us were humming along as people bought their five-gallon drums of detergent and thirty-six-packs of printer cartridges, handing the cashier their ID to prove that they had a right to the things they bought.
And as we sat, not talking, I started staring at the massive ceiling. And I saw something up there, farther away than it should have been, almost as if the entire building had been slowly expanding ever since we walked into it. The place had somehow expanded in volume to something like that of a football stadium. I stared up, and far off in the distance, there were now catwalks in the ceiling. Rows of men dressed in identical black business suits were walking up and down, surveying the area below.
I looked back down at the round table we were sitting at. The vast warehouse of shopping had become deserted. We were the only ones there now. Our little table sat alone in that ocean of concrete. A few powerful overhead lights created small pools where we could see. I looked behind me and saw a man peek out from behind a wall. A wall that had not been there a few seconds ago. He moved the drywall aside like a curtain. He saw me spot him and he quickly disappeared. I heard a voice behind the wall chastise him, saying, “What are you doing? He’s not supposed to see us!”
I looked back at my family. They were all sitting completely still, their bodies frozen in mannequin poses. Their mouths had contorted in ridiculous smiles that stretched from ear to ear. The pupils of their eyes had turned into vertical slits like snakes eyes. And they gazed directly at me.
My breathing quickened and I looked back up at the ceiling to see that there was only one man in a suit there now. I could tell, even across the vast distance between us, that he was staring directly at me. I saw him raise his arm in a wide arc and bring it back down with index finger extended, pointing directly at me.
My heart rate tripled and I looked back over my shoulder to see that the wall had moved to within three feet of me. It was shaking and bulging now. A small squid tentacle briefly appeared from underneath before recoiling back under. I turned my head and balled up into the fetal position on my bench. My family’s heads had turned into giant smiling cobra faces. I buried my nose into my knees as adrenaline dumped into my bloodstream.
The wall was making noises. The voice screamed out from behind it, “REMEMBER! HE CAN’T SEE YOU! NOT NOW! NOT EVER!” A chorus of snake rattles and growls and screams rose up from behind the wall. A wet and sticky tentacle slithered up and around my neck and started pulling back and down.
Back and Down.