" Beauty in the Eye "

Looking back, the whole event seemed to start with a very strange nightmare. Very strange because I don't normally get nightmares. I just go to sleep at night and wake up the next day. I almost never dream, but when I do, it's always really surreal. Dreams are supposed to be like that, so I've heard. The nightmare that started off all of this nonsense was not surreal. Well, it was, but not in the way it should be. Dreams are supposedly ours brains cobbling together various memories and other pieces of information, right? This dream was not that. It was... Coherent, for lack of a better term. I remember walking down a long dirt path, no wider than a bike trail. All around me, rather than a forest or a plain or something like that, it's an ocean. Not like an ocean full of salt water, or any liquid. It's a sea of clouds, stretching on infinitely around me. Clouds coming up and licking at the side of the path like waves in an actual ocean. Clouds above me, like regular earth clouds. Anyway, I'm walking down this pathway, and the weird cloud path seems to just go on forever. An endless sea of clouds and sky. As I'm walking, it seems to get slowly darker and darker, like night is falling, but there's no sun in the sky. The sky was just bright blue, with no sunset, and it simply faded from that light blue ocean to a dark blue abyss. Eventually, when it's almost pitch black, and I almost can't see my feet walking along the path, something starts rumbling. The path in front of me slowly starts to disintegrate, like dirt rolling down a hill, just being swallowed up by the black clouds around my feet. I look behind me. Same thing happening to that path, as far as I can see. I look down, and find that the ground beneath me is staying solid. The clouds all around me start wavering, like a rolling ocean, and the waves get bigger and bigger. Eventually, tens upon hundreds of forms emerge from the rolling sea. They were all different sizes, but even the smallest were bigger than my head, and some of the bigger ones were the size of a small apartment. The forms were very simple, and very uniform: A perfect circle with tapered ribbons trailing after it. All of the forms emerged from the sea of clouds and then started swirling around me, becoming a typhoon of shadows as their numbers and speed increased. As soon as all of them had seemingly erupted from the ocean of clouds, they started to glow. Not just their entire form, but a specific part of them. Like a bright, vibrant holiday display, they all lit up, in every color of the rainbow and a few more I didn't quite recognize. Again, dream. It didn't make total sense. They were irises. The glow of the whole... Flock was so great that I could see all of them. Flying eyeballs. Literally flying eyeballs. Hundreds of flying eyeballs with bright red nerve endings and muscle tissue trailing behind them, and glowing irises. Just wait, though. It gets worse. As all of these eyes are flying around me at hurricane speeds, the dirt path under my feet starts to crumble like the rest of the dirt path before it. As the soil turns to dust under my feet, I start trying to find a place to stand, but to no avail. The path below my feet collapses, and I fall through it, suddenly dropping into the sea of clouds. Oddly enough, after I broke through the cloud layer, I found it to be no thicker than a blanket, simply giving way to a dark abyss beneath it. I plummeted into dark nothingness, and looked below me. Just like before, something started to glow. You can guess where this is going. Glowing bright, flawless white, in a great big circle, was the iris of another eyeball. A massive eyeball. Way bigger than the ones above the clouds. If I were to guess, I'd say this big mother was the size of town hall, with a pupil big enough to drive three busses through, side by side. This giant eyeball is right below me, looking straight at me. It swallows me, and the last thing I feel is my body passing through what feels like jelly.

After that, I jolted awake, feeling like I just hopped out of a swimming pool. Thankfully it was a cold sweat and not something else, but still. I knew something was wrong about that nightmare. It was the first I had experienced that I can even remember, and it felt way too real. I guess they all feel real though, right? Anyway, I jumped so forcefully out of my sleep that I apparently woke my baby. Not baby as in child but baby as in my significant other. So she raises up in bed and puts a hand on my shoulder, yawning that cute yawn she always has right after she wakes up. "What's wrong, hun?" She asks me. I'm still trying to catch my breath at this point. I sorta turn to her, but still try to look somewhat away, not wanting to face her. I was scared that it wasn't really over. "I... I just had a bad dream." I told her. She wrapped her arms around me and chuckled, "Oh, poor baby! Well, it's over now, right?" I stood still for a moment, moving my hands around. Everything felt alright. "I suppose. Yeah, I think it is." I told her. Without removing her arms from me she flopped back into bed, dragging me into the mattress with her. "Well, don't worry. I'll keep the boogiemen at bay, alright? Now... *Yawn* you get some rest." She tried to comfort me. I suppose it worked, because after a few minutes, I had fallen back to sleep.

I woke up in the morning after that, with no other nightmares coming to bother me in my sleep. I felt more groggy than usual, but I suppose that's what happens when you get kicked out of deep sleep, right? After that, the usual morning ritual: Begrudgingly hop out of bed, change out of my jammies, walk downstairs, nearly trip in my half awake state, check on Rambo (Our pet leopard gecko), go to the kitchen, start up the coffee and toast, go to the living room, flop face first onto the couch in a fruitless attempt to defy being awake, get woken up by Katie (Said significant other) when she comes downstairs, walk back into the kitchen, smell the coffee, immedietly become more awake, fix up a cup for Katie and myself, drink the coffee, eat some delicious toast, go sit on the couch. Sadly, after I finished the morning ritual, I had to go through another morning ritual: The going to work morning ritual. I don't dislike my job in the slightest, but after a long week, coupled with that weird nightmare I had the night before, I really wasn't feeling up to it. Regardless, I got on the ball with that ritual, and was at the door ready to leave. Honey met me there with a smile on her face and a coffee cup in her hand. After giving me a kiss and a playful pinch, she let me go. Work that day was nothing special. I work Tech Support, so it mainly consisted of telling people to plug their monitors in and stuff like that. After work was over I drove back home, ready to relax. I never work weekends, thankfully, so after I get off on Friday I'm free for two days. Even across the whole day, though, that nightmare was still on my mind. I kept seeing eyeballs in places where they really shouldn't be, places where they couldn't possibly be. I tried to not look my co-workers in the face. I had to force myself to look in the rear view mirror when backing out of the lot outside the building so I wouldn't have to look into my own eyes. When I finally got to the house and in the front door, I found Katie playing Smash with Rambo. Somehow she was losing. I walked into the door and then over to the couch, and flopped face first into it. Katie paused and looked over at me. "Rough day at work?" She asked me, concerned expression on her face. I replied as best I could through the fabric of the couch. "Not really. I just feel awful." Hearing this, she put down the controller and scooted over to me, pulling me up by the armpits. I rearranged myself and leaned back into the couch, halfway slumping into the fabric, halfway slumping into the cushy embrace of my baby. After sitting around watching Katie play games for an hour, and then joining her for the next four, I went upstairs, changed into my jammies and read some dumb comics until nine at night, and then went to bed. I'm not exactly a night owl, and today was fairly draining, as well.

That night I had another nightmare. It was different from the last one. I wasn't really myself, and I felt disconnected from whatever was going on. I almost felt like I was floating around in the background of another dream. In the dream, I remember being in a room. It was built from smooth, reflective metal plates, and was brightly lit despite their being no source of light. Lining the walls of this room were two things: Massive computer monitors crowded with green ASCII text behind keyboards with far more keys than they ever needed, and picture windows. Outside these picture windows was the sky. Another bright blue sky, filled with clouds. And almost nothing else. It was like this whole room was floating out in space, but with bright sky blue instead of inky blackness. After that, there seemed to be some sort of focus. It was the planet of earth. Just a lonely blue, brown and green orb floating out in the cosmos, keeping to itself. The view was close enough that the room I was in had to have been in some kind of orbit. Somewhat close, far closer than it ever should have been, was the moon. I can't decide which, but either the room was in a place where the two looked the same size, or they actually were the same size. It was at this point where it dawned on me that this was a space station, even though it was literally just the one room. This space station also had staff. Just two. Two women, both dressed up in lab coats and baggy pants, two women with long black hair tied up in pony tails, two women with gray-blue eyes. Two women who looked exactly like me. The two were standing in the middle of the room, talking calmly with each other. Each was standing on the floor, but they were upside down relative to each other. Neither seemed to notice or care. As they discussed whatever it was they were talking about, something started to change.

The sky outside started to darken. It was just the same as last time, but with one minor difference. This time, the sun was visible in the sky, just about as big as it would be if you were looking at it on a normal earth day. As sky started to darken, the sun seemed unaffected. As the sky got to be slowly darker, the two women in the middle of the room seemed alarmed. They both ran over to the big picture window closest to the earth and moon, and placed their hands against the window. Their attention was focused to the right, just to the left of the moon, away from the earth. The sky slowly but surely fell into an inky darkness, and the only lights were the sun and the station. It was space without stars. Except the sun, for some reason. Slowly, the dark void began to light up with a multitude of lights, in a vast array of colors. They seemed like stars. However, as they got closer, it became fairly evident they were not. It was just like the last dream. Flying in from the depths of space, wizzing past the station like a flock of birds, was a whole bunch of flying eyeballs. The flock seemed bigger this time. Hundreds upon thousands, all flying to earth like they had some sort of goal. The two women watching them seemed panicked. After all of the eyeballs passed the station, the grand finale came about. That one super-huge eyeball flew by, close to the station. Too close. It winged the station, smashing the frame to pieces and shattering the glass. Then everything went dark.

I woke up again, in another cold sweat. My head hurt, like I had taken a brick to it. Everything felt blurry. I looked around the room. The light up display on the alarm clock said 5:07, a whole two hours before it was supposed to go off. It seems this time when I awoke, I didn't wake up Katie with me, as she was still sleeping soundly right next to me. My headache seemed to persist even after a few minutes of sitting up in bed, and it was too late to go back to bed, so I got up. I figured a quick morning shower might clear my senses. I stumbled into the bathroom, trying not to look in the mirror. I didn't want to look into my own eyes again. After turning on the water and, you know, I gently stepped into the flowing water. It felt... Nice. Like my headache was going away. After staring up at the showerhead for a minute, I finally took the time to actually wash myself. My pain was gone, but... I swear I could hear something. Nothing intelligible, just a soft, gentle murmur echoing from far away. It almost sounded like gentle cry. After a little while, it faded away into the sounds of flowing water. After I got done with the shower and changed into clothes, I decided I might as well go down stairs and make some coffee.

The morning progressed fairly regularly after that. After making that coffee, I decided to sit on the couch and turn on the news. That lasted for about five minutes and then I got sick of it. It's nothing but sad crap, anyway. I turned off the television and decided to just sit in peace and quiet, sipping on coffee. At this point, it started again. It came without a headache this time, but it came regardless. That quiet, gentle murmur that I heard in the shower, but just slightly louder this time. Despite peaking my head up to look for it, it seemed to come from all around the room, very faintly. I could almost make something out of it this time. "Please..." Just faintly. I couldn't help but get up and look around the room, and then the whole house, but nowhere I went did it seem to get any louder. Eventually, the sound faded away, and I gave up. Figured I must have been hearing things. After about two hours, Katie finally woke up and came downstairs, giving me a hug. She asked me why I was already up, and I told her about everything that happened. Another sympathetic cuddle from her, followed by some reassurance. "Don't you worry about it, sweetie. We're gonna go out and have fun today, that'll take your mind off of these nightmares, I promise!" The way she said it, the pure confidence, it's the kind of attitude that makes me fall in love with her all over again. The day after that went rather well: The two of us went out and about with friends, doing stuff like throwing some bread to the ducks at the lake, taking a walk in the park, and then watching a movie. Giant robots were involved.

After all the events of the day, Hun and I dropped our friends off and then headed home. Whilst it was fun to be out and about, getting back to the privacy of home was quite a relief. After changing into something more comfortable and checking up on Rambo, I decided to just sit down and rest. That's when I heard it again. That damn murmuring. It was still just barely audible. But I could still hear those words again. "Please..." Just a little less faint than last time. I almost think I heard something afterwords as well. "Please... H..." But it was still too quiet to make it out. Katie sat down next to me with a bowl of chips when I shushed her. "Wait, wait, shush." This was the point where I wanted to confirm if I was just hearing things in my head, or if this was really happening. "Listen. Do you hear that?" I asked her. Both of went dead silent for a minute or two. "Please... H..." It came again, ever so faintly. I was afraid Katie wouldn't be able to hear it. She turned to me with a weird expression on her face. "The hell was that?" I was relieved for a moment. I wasn't just losing my mind. There really was a sound. After that I got worried, because that ment there was a reason for that sound, and it couldn't have been a good one. The sound happened again, just to confirm that it wasn't a one off thing. Katie immediately got off the couch and rushed upstairs. After a minute or so, she came back downstairs, carrying a baseball bat and a pistol. "Let's go find what that is, okay?" She asked me. She seemed nervous, but so was I. I got off the couch and nodded to her. She gave me the pistol and kept the bat for herself.

We searched around the entire damn house without finding a single trace of whatever the hell this was. Everywhere we looked, it didn't seem to get any louder or quieter. Upstairs, ground floor, no matter where it was, nothing changed. Except for one place. The very back of the dining room. There was a reason for it, too. When Katie and I first moved into this place, the person who sold us the house urged us to stay away from the basement, to the point where they locked it up tight and took the key with them. After that, we put a big cabinet in front of the door so nobody would wonder what it was. The both of us were standing there in front of it, and at that point, the sound was a lot more audible. "Please... Help me." It cried out. I really would have rather not investigated, but I knew I had to. I helped Katie move the big cabinet to the side, even though she did most of the pushing, and then we took another look at that old door. Another reason we covered it up was because it was ugly as sin. A huge, solid steel monster, flecked with rusty bits and held together with about twenty or so rivets. Then there was the lock. It was a lot more recent, given that it wasn't a part of the original door. One of those big box locks with the ribbing, and the loop was still shiny even after all these years. Katie left the house and came back in about two minutes later, carrying a big pair of cutters from the garage. After a good three minutes of straining against this big-ass lock, and a bit of help from myself, she finally managed to cut it open, the heavy box dropping to the floor with a resounding *CLUNK*. I froze for a little bit, but then Katie pulled the door open, slowly. It groaned like some massive monster, and at that moment something else felt wrong. That smell. Holy SHIT, that smell. It was the most horrid odor I had ever had the displeasure to sniff. It was like an old grave dug up. The smell of rotten meat and wood, along with heady mold, was horrid. Katie furrowed her brow and nearly gagged. "Jesus, smells like a graveyard at ground level." Naturally, we had to go down and see what was up. Katie put down the cutters and picked up her bat, and I got the pistol ready.

Farther down the old steps, the smell was only more horrid. The stairs leading down were made of musty old wood from probably a hundred years ago, never maintained, and simply left to rot in whatever conditions were present. I could hear them squishing with each step and feel them creaking, and I was honestly scared that they would crack and drop us down. The place was pitch black. I decided that this was not something I needed to be doing, and headed back upstairs for a moment to grab a flashlight from the kitchen. When I came back, I lit the place up. It meant I could only hold the pistol with one hand and the light with the other, but I guess I had to make due. Made me wish I had bought that light attachment at the shop for this thing. "I'll probably never use it" I said. What a fool I was. Regardless, we kept heading down until eventually we hit floor. The smell was still god-awful, but we pressed onwards. We had never even been down here before. The first thing we encountered was a massive furnace in the back. Thankfully it had never broken down before. From here we could also hear very clearly that sound. "Please! Help me!" It sounded like a small child and echoed through the whole basement. I could see Katie shivering. "What the fuck?" She whispered to me. I was terrified. Was there a child down here? How was it possible? We turned a corner around some heavy looking crates, and found something interesting. A big ugly pile of rotten meat and bones. Katie gasped. "Oh, Christ. What the hell is this? Is this a person?" I shined the light on the pile, examining it closely. It smelled like rancid meat, that was for sure. The bones in the pile didn't look human. I couldn't really say for certain, but the shape and size lead me to believe some sort of game animal. "It's not human... Maybe a boar?" I guessed. Not sure how a boar would even live around here. Maybe it was imported. So many questions. Well, there was a more important question besides "Why does this place smell like a rotten pit" and this pile of meat didn't answer it. We continued onwards. It almost seemed like the basement was set up purely for storage. Or to be a maze. Or both. It was filled with all these big crates, arranged almost like they were intended to resemble hallways. Then, at the end of all these crates, we found our answer.

Sitting in the middle of the floor was something roughly the size and shape of a basketball. I didn't actually see it until I bumped my foot right into it. I freaked out a little and pointed the pistol and light at it. It was an eyeball. Not a human eyeball (Unless there are sixty foot humans running around the place), but an eyeball. It was trailing muscle tissue and nerves and had a dull gray iris. The fact that there was a giant eyeball in our sealed off basement wasn't the worst part, though. The worst part was that it was moving. It scurried around the floor like some sort of giant slug, but significantly faster. I kept the pistol pointed at it for a moment, hoping it wouldn't jump up and attack me. It didn't. It just sort of scurried around, bumping into things. Yeah, it never stopped and turned around. It just ran headlong into things. Not only was it a crawling eyeball, it was a blind crawling eyeball. Isn't that kind of pitiful? I certainly thought so. After determining that it wasn't about to attack me, I holstered the pistol and crouched down to get a better look at it. When we first bumped into it, I could hear Katie swearing under her breath. At this point, she seemed more surprised "The fuck are you doing? You're getting closer?" She asked. I looked back up at her. "I don't think it's a threat. Seems fairly helpless." After watching it bump into my shoe again, I gently reached down and touched it. The surface was slimy, as I thought it would be, and little strings of fluid reached between my fingers and the eyeball. At this point, I heard a loud gasping noise, and it wasn't Katie. The little thing jolted away from my hand and moved back a foot. After that, it did something really weird. I pointed its pupil directly up, and shot away from the basement floor, almost like a bird taking off. This flight ended very quickly when it smacking into the ceiling with a low *Plup* and crashed back down to the floor. I couldn't help but laugh, even if I did feel bad for it. It was at this point that I wanted to try and help it. I walked over to it and wrapped my hands around it, just to make sure it didn't fly away from me. I stood back up and turned around to Katie. "See? Not so bad, even if it is kinda squirmy." I told her. It was twisting and turning in my hands, and even pulled away a little like it was trying to take flight, but couldn't escape. I thought I was safe at that point. I was... Not entirely correct. After a minute of holding it, it did... Something. I saw the iris on the big eyeball light up, like an oven coming on, but faster. After that, what seemed like a blast of heat came out of it, right into my hand. I jumped back and dropped the thing, and Katie jumped back too. It wasn't especially damaging, whatever it was... It was like... Have you ever opened an oven and had that big burst of warm air hit your face? It was like that, but more concentrated. It didn't leave any lasting injuries, even if my hand was bright red and stung. Katie, meanwhile, reared up with the baseball bat, ready to swing. I stopped her with my good hand. "Have you lost your damn mind?!" She asked me. "Wait, wait, hold up!" I warned her, "I don't think it was attacking. Or, you know, not like actively. I think it was trying to get away." When it was back on the floor, the poor eyeball was frantically sliming around, leaving a trail of fluid as it tried to escape. I also noticed it was yelling much louder. "PLEASE, HELP ME!" The poor creature was scared to death.

I decided I wanted to help. I went upstairs (Right after making Katie promise not to squish it with the bat) and grabbed a dog carrier from the downstairs closet. We were gonna get a dog, but then I found Rambo and decided I liked him better. Anyway, I came back downstairs and set the carrier near the eyeball. It seemed to have calmed down just a little, gone back to gentle pleading rather than frantic screaming. Using my hands, I gently guided it towards the open cage until it was near the door, then quickly lifted it inside and closed the carrier. "Gotcha!" It felt pretty good. "Alright," Katie said, "You've got your freaky fuckin' eyeball. What are you gonna do with it?" I took a moment to ponder it, and then came to a descision. "Well, we can't just give it to anybody. Most people would probably, I dunno, freak out and kill it? I suppose we can keep it in our bedroom?" Katie narrowed her eyes at me and crossed her arms. "That's a joke, right?" She wasn't pleased by the idea. "It's not so bad." I replied, "The carpet with probably keep it from beating itself up too much, and it is fairly warm in there." She narrowed her eyes more. I decided to use puppy dog eyes. She can't resist. Finally, she drops her arms and sighs, "Fine, we'll keep it in our room. Better not cause a ruckus."

So then we took it upstairs. It didn't seem particularly bothered by being in the kennel on the way up, and didn't try to do that thing. The heat thing. I took it into our room and let it out of the cage, and it naturally slimed around like it did in the basement. It had gotten a little quieter than when it was in the basement, but it still just kept saying "Please, help me." Over and over. Was that all it could say? Maybe it still thought it was in danger. Regardless, I tried to keep a good eye on it. Heh. After that, Katie and I tried to seal up that big basement. The both of us agreed it would be a bad idea to bring the police into this. Finding the dead body of some exotic game animal in a basement you had never been into was probably not gonna fly too well, so we decided it was for the better if we just sealed it back up and pretended it never existed. In absence of a giant padlock, Katie shoved a steel rod into the door, and we put the cabinet back in front of it. Hopefully nobody ever gets curious. Finally, after all that insanity, it was about twelve o' six. We both went upstairs and hopped into bed. Katie kept the baseball bat with her.

That night, I remember dreaming again. This one was really foggy, and frankly didn't unnerve me as much as the other ones. It was close to the ground, if that makes sense, and there was a few dozen bricks scattered about, and a warm orange glow. I also felt like I was being watched. This went on for... A while. Eventually, I woke up. I didn't jump out of bed slathered in sweat, which was a welcome change from the past two nights, but I did feel kinda sticky. Slowly raising myself up led to the root of the sensation: There was a big trail of slime going across the bedsheets, across me, and across Katie. She was still sleeping soundly. Looking around, I saw the trail of gunk heading across the bed, across the carpet, and around the room twice. It finally ended inside the closet. At that point I was just hoping that this stuff came out easy, or I was in trouble. I crawled out of bed and went into the closet to check up on the little creature. It was resting on a pile of dirty socks, which it had saturated with slime. Well, at least it wasn't yelling anymore. Now it was making some kind of weird squishing noise. At this point I was wondering what exactly this all meant. The nightmares about flying eyeballs and then exactly that showing up in our basement. I decided that maybe some coffee could help me think.

After going downstairs and brewing some brew, I sat on the couch and took the time to think about all this. The first two dreams very heavily centered on massive flocks of flying eyeballs. When they came, the sky was always darkned by their presence. Now, there was a flying eyeball in our basement. Surely they were related. Was the eyeball itself doing this? Was it trying to tell me something? I had a thought. Maybe those eyeballs were coming to help? Maybe this little one was stranded. I didn't know why it end up in a sealed basement, but that wasn't even the strangest thing to happen. I decided I needed to come clean to Katie about all this. Later on, she came downstairs like she always does. She was wearing those pajamas that really show off- Er, make her look really cute. She sat down next to me on the couch, with a stern expression on her face. "Your little friend left a trail on the bed." I looked away a little bit, unsure of what to say. Eventually, I replied with "It's just vitreous fluid, or something. It probably comes out with water." Trying to reassure myself. Katie sighed and leaned on me, pressing her weight into me. "You're just lucky you're such a wonderful person or I would be pissed. For how smart you are, you can do some stupid stuff, babe." I chuckled lightly. "Yeah, same goes for you, Ms. 'I work on cars all day and walked into a sliding glass door'." "Shaddup." She jokingly demanded. After a little bit of relaxing, I decided now was the time. "Hey, Katie..." I asked her. "Hmm? What is it?" She wondered. I told her the whole story, about what the nightmares were all about.

Afterwards, she was sitting there with a stunned look on her face. "You knew about all this?" I wasn't sure how to reply, but I tried my best. "I wouldn't say I knew about it. It just kinda... Lined up, I guess? I didn't start hearing the noise until the nightmares started, come to think of it..." I don't think either of us really had any idea what was going on at this point. Regardless, it was Sunday morning. That meant it was time to sit back and relax. Right after I took care of a few things. All I had to do was feed Rambo and give him some scritches, then take some laundry back upstairs from the dryer. I put the clothes back in the dresser, and heard a small thumping noise. I remembered I kinda closed the little eyeball in the closet. Surprisingly, it wasn't yelling "Please, help me" at the top of it's lungs. Er, figurative lungs. I'm not sure how this thing even made noise. Regardless, I walked over to the closet and opened it. At the very bottom, right where I last saw it, was the little eyeball, facing towards my feet. The pile of socks was gone. No way. It did something with the socks. Did it eat the socks? What the hell. I crouched down and tried to pick up the little thing. The moment I touched it, it made that gasping noise and jumped away, before turning the other direction and taking flight. For about half a second, where it then thumped into the back of the closet. What a pitiful creature. Seems I wasn't going to be transporting it anywhere by hand, so I had to think of something else to do with it. A small idea crept through my head. I went downstairs and grabbed something out of the closet; a ratty old bedsheet that I never bothered to just throw away. I balled it up and set it down in the closet next to the little thing. Maybe it would eat that, too? I have no idea. After that, the day went on fairly normally. That basically means me and Katie just played videogames for the whole day. Finally, at the end of the day, I went upstairs. Before hopping into bed, I looked into the closet to check on the little eyeball. It was sitting there making that weird squishing noise. The sheets next to it seemed like something had been done to them. The very ends of the fabric were unwinding and tattered, like something had been ripping apart the strands very slowly. I'm pretty sure it was eating the bedsheets. I don't know why. What kind of nutrition could there be for an eyeball in bedsheets? That and a million other questions. I decided to just go to bed. Katie eventually came up to join me, snuggling into my side like a big puppy.

I had another weird dream that night, which made it four for four of remembering dreams ever since this whole thing started. To be blunt, I think they only barely fit the definition of dreams anymore. This one was kinda terrifying. I was sitting around in my neighborhood, more or less, but everything had gone terribly wrong. Everything was on fire. The trees were on fire. The houses were on fire. The pavement was on fire, somehow. I'm fairly certain the sky was on fire. Or maybe it just felt like it, what with how hot it was. More than all the fire, though, was something else. There were flying eyeballs all over the scene. Slowly floating around, looking back and forth as if searching for something. Whenever they passed over me, they simply ignored me and continued onwards. Looking up, I noticed that the eyeballs searching close to ground level were not alone. Up in the sky, the entire flock was there, flying around in circles like massive, spherical vultures. At the very center of the whole mass was the biggest eyeball. It was looking straight down, overwatching the entire area. After a little while longer, there was a massive rumbling sound, shaking the earth around me. All of the eyes at ground level stopped what they were doing and flew upwards, re-joining the flock. The single biggest eyeball seemed to focus itself. The big, white iris on it started to glow, slowly, like an oven heating up. You know what comes next. There was a great big flash of light and energy, and everything was annihilated.

I jolted awake in the middle of the night, again. I was once again covered in cold sweat. To be frank, I really starting to hate sleep. Well, more precisely, I hated these damn nightmares. I once again woke up Katie along with myself. "Oh no, not again!" She certainly seemed more worried than I was. I did my best to comfort herjust like she comforted me. "I-it's nothing, hun. Let's just get back to bed, alright? It's gonna be fine." I was just about to head back to sleep when the phone started to ring. I begrudgingly crawled out of bed and walked over to it, lazily grasping the reciever. "Who is it?" I asked. Who the hell calls in the middle of the night like this? "Hey, Sam, you there?" Came the sound of my boss on the other end of the line. "Mr. Grant? What the hell? It's like one in the morning. What's going on?" I was actually kind of nervous. "Yeah, I'm sorry, I just got the memo myself. We can't operate tomorrow, some of the company higher-ups are coming in to perform maintenence on the servers. On the plus side, you get two days off. Paid." Well. That was a relief. "I, uh... Thanks, Boss. That's great. I think I'm going to go to bed." Boss signed off with "Alright. Sleep tight, Sam." What a weird coincidence it was that my boss called me right after I woke up from a nightmare, but I was too damn tired to notice or even care. I crawled back into bed and went right to sleep. "Well... *Yawn* Lucky you..." Was the last thing Katie said to me before she drifted back to sleep as well.

The next morning I awoke around ten thirty or so. I very nearly freaked and then remembered what my boss called me about. Remembering what my boss called me about also reminded me of that damn nightmare. In particular, the very last thing the giant eyeball did. The charging thing, with the iris getting brighter... Is that what the little eye was trying to do? Something must have been wrong with it, if all it could muster was a burst of heat. Or maybe it's just not big enough. It occured to me that this little eyeball was smaller than any of the others. Things started clicking into place. Was this a baby? I wasn't entirely sure what to do, but I suppose nobody would be. I decided to just get up and be awake. It quickly dawned on me that Katie was not in bed. She's usually gone for work around nine, so I wasn't surprised. Regardless, I decided to get dressed and go downstairs. I did exactly that, but not before checking up on Rambo and the little eyeball. Rambo was fine. The little eyeball had managed to slime its way across the room a few times, before heading right back to the closet. It had eaten most of the sheets now, with only a few scraps of fabric remaining. Well, I can only assume it had eaten them. I can't think of any other way it could just tear them apart. After that, I went downstairs. Katie had made some coffee before she left and put it in the carafe for me. It was a little old, but I suppose old coffee is better than no coffee. After fixing up a cup, I went into the living room and sat down on the couch. After flipping on the television, I saw they were doing a weather report. Normally those are much earlier in the day. Apparently there was some weird, rainless stormfront coming on, composed of densely packed... Pink clouds? Pink clouds moving against the wind, towards our area. With a big one in the center. Oh shit.

I kinda freaked. It's only natural. I had put some of the information together. I needed to take that tiny eyeball and get the fuck away from any society. I chugged my coffee, ran upstairs and grabbed a few things, including that baby eyeball, put it in the carrier, fed Rambo real quick, and then bolted downstairs. I locked both doors and sat on the porch, praying as hard as I could for Katie to get here quick. It was three o' six, which meant she got off work six minutes ago. I sat and waited. The little eyeball was bumping against the side of the carrier, but not making much noise. That's when I saw it. Just barely on the horizon, but I could see it. The flock. A massive cloud looming over the land, slowly making its way across. Panic set in. I tried as hard as I could to not get up and run towards the woods on foot. It was three eleven. Katie, where the hell are you?! Finally, about a minute later, she pulled up towards the house. I grabbed the carrier and nearly lunged towards her. As she stepped out of the cab, she looked at me curiously. "Hey, babe, whats goin' on?" I dashed over to the other side of the truck, put the eyeball in the back seat as gently as I could given the circumstances, and ran back over to Katie. "Get in, now, we need to go!" I nearly screamed at her. "Huh? What the fuck is going on, hun?" Without saying a word, I grabbed her shoulders, turned her around, and pointed at the oncoming cloud. It was close enough now that you could make out some of the largest eyeballs individually. Especially the biggest. From here I could even see smaller shapes dropping out of the main mass. "Oh, fuck." Katie spoke. She opened the door back upand hopped inside the truck, and I hopped in the passenger side. We strapped ourselves in and Katie ignited the engine. After that, we got the hell out of our little neighborhood. "Okay, what's your plan?! Where are we going?!" She asked in a frantic panic. " Smith Woods! Just outside the town limit!" That was my plan. Katie gunned it down the road.

It all started to get worse when the cloud finally overtook our location. The sky went dark like somebody threw a blanket over a skylight. Vrey quickly, we saw them starting to drop down: Eyeballs. Full size, flying eyeballs. Actually, much bigger than fullsize. Probably beachball sized. Anyway, they dropped down and started floating close to ground level, floating around, looking for something. Two of them took an immediet interest in the truck. Those damn eyeballs were crazy fast, too. Katie had gotten the truck up to fifty (About as fast as we could possibly manage on little streets like this without getting killed) and the eyeballs weren't struggling to keep up. Well, I think they weren't. Hard to tell. As soon as we got onto one of the main roads, Katie smashed the pedal, and we went flying down the street. Traffic was oddly thin that day, now that I think about it. Scarily enough, the eyeballs still managed to keep up. One of them got right up next to the cabin and literally looked me dead in the eye. I rolled up the window. Katie hit a small bump, but at this speed it could have been a speed breaker. The impact startled the little eyeball in the back, which began crying again. "Please, help me!" The other two eyeballs both directed their sights to the back of the car, seemingly able to hear it. AFter that, they both flew away. Back up into the massive flock above, rejoining it. Then, what seemed like a whole squadron of eyeballs flewdown, the entire flock shifting gears towards our direction. There had to be at least twenty just in the little group tailing us. That's when it started to get really bad.

One of the eyeballs started to glow, its iris lighting up like the inside of a kitchen oven. "Katie! Faster!" Was all I managed to scream before a brilliant oraneg beam of light flashed past the car, making the asphalt almost detonate from impact. Literally a fucking laser. Katie smashed the pedal in as hard as she could, the engine roaring with incredible ferocity. Thankfully, we were nearing our destination. Old Smith Woods, right outside of town. Brilliant beams of light in every color blasted past us, striking asphalt, street lights and even other cars, cutting through them like spears of light. We were very nearly there. Katie slammed the brakes as hard as she could, throwing me against the console and knocking around the little guy in the back. "Out! Quick!" She yelled at me. The eyeballs that were chasing us apparently weren't very good at stopping, because they streaked right past us and didn't stop until they smacked into the treeline, falling to the groundI hopped out of the cabin and grabbed the carrier from the back. Its occupant was still yelling. "Why are we doing this again?!" Katie shouted at me. "We need to be far away from town! You saw what they could do!" Katie seemed a little angry along side her major panic as we started to run into the woods. "Are we seriously risking our lives for this?" If she had a better idea, I would have loved to hear it. Regardless, we headed deeper into the woods. The treeline was thick enough to slow down the eyeballs by quite a bit, some of them even too big to fit. That didn't stop them entirely. As we ran, more beams burst through the forest behind us, tearing through entire trees, shattering the trunks adn leaving scorches in their wake. Finally, up ahead, I saw our destination.

A massive clearing in the middle of the woods. I ran to the middle of it and put down the carrier. The little eyeball inside had seemingly stopped yelling during our run through the woods, and was now quiet. I popped open the door and pulled it out, careful to avoid having the eye face me or any part of me. Katie caught up at this point, and stood next to me, holding my arm. Just in time, too. The other eyeballs had found the hole in the canopy above and about eleven flew in, circling the area. One of them got very close, looking at the eyeball in my grasp. They all stopped. The closest one to me drew just slightly closer, making a deep gurgling sound. The smaller eyeball in turn responded with lighter noises. At once, all of the eyes returned to the flock. The area was silent for a moment. Then, the giant eyeball slowly came down. It cast its shadow over the area like a meteor coming down to end the world. It was three feet from us when it stopped. Katie gripped my shoulder tightly. Everything seemed to stop for a moment. There was a deep rumbling. It was gurgling. The eyeball in my hands started to wobble franticly and tried to take off. I simply let go. The little thing flew straight ahead, smacking into the pupil of the bigger eyeball with a small splat. After that, it slipped into the watery surface and disappeared. A few moments of silence passed. The surface of the pupil began to ripple like a small pool, and then the little eyeball popped back out, unharmed. It flew around in little circles, and then smacked back into the massive eyeball, making a sound kind of like a gurgling purring noise. The massive eyeball stared at the both of us for a few moments, and then started to rise up. Just like that, every one of them started to fly away, back into the flock. After the massive eye rejoined their ranks, the whole mass simply floated away, higher and higher, until I couldn't even make them out anymore. Finally, they were gone. Katie and I stood there in stunned silence for a moment. She looked over at me with a blank expression, and then hugged me as tight as she could. I hugged her back as tight as I could as well. We both decided to head back home.

After all that nonsense, the whole town was filled with police and construction workers and repairmen and news reporters. Word was spreading across the country about a flock of flying eyeballs coming down and wreaking havoc. Strangely enough, the whole craze blew over as soon as it came. It was like people came to check it out, and then left, like some kind of weird tourist attraction. People had their damaged possessions replaced and the roads were fixed up, but other than that, no one cared nearly as much as you would think. It also seems there were other effects. When the swarm came, surveillance and recording tech stopped working, and it all turned back on as soon as they left. People couldn't even get pictures. Digital files would be corrupted, and film would fail to develop. Everybody who was there for it still remebered the event, but they just didn't seem to care, with plenty saying "It probably won't happen again." It was some weird shit, but to be frank, I was just glad it was all over. I'm also glad all the panic made it so nobody saw us blazing down the road. What a relief. After that, things more or less went back to normal.