Chapter 29: The Feeling of Being Watched

The bottom few steps of the stairwell were covered in a strange slime that almost smelled salty. At first, I thought it might have been water, but when I lost my footing on the final few steps, I noticed it was more slippery than water was.

The sight that laid before me when I made it all the way to the bottom was something straight out of my worst nightmares. It was a rounded hallway that could easily be described as a tunnel. What it was all made from horrified me, my hands having already started to shake.

Every part of the round tunnel before me was made from eyes, and they all stared directly at me. They varied in size, but there was not a single area of solid ground that wasn’t an eye. Some of them reminded me of human eyes, in shape and color, but they were larger. Some were inhuman colors and shapes.

The eyes followed me as I shifted around nervously, watching my every move. I wasn’t going to be able to move forwards without stepping on the eyes. Stepping through rotting flesh was one thing, but clearly living eyes… I don’t know.

I took my first step forwards as my boot contacted the eye. It stared at me as I started to put weight on it. My foot started to sink into the eye as it started to show signs of panic, trying to move away and look away. The eye was scared, but I had to get through this floor.

Once most of my weight had been put on my right foot, my leg sinks knee deep into the eye as the eye almost pops with a horrifying noise. It almost sounded as if an old watermelon had hit the ground at high speed.

The eye started to leak an almost clear fluid that smelled heavily of salt. It was slimy, and it soaked through my pants almost immediately. This was only the first step on this floor, and I was already tired of it. A new record, I think.

I chose a smaller eye to step on for my next step. It took significantly less weight before the eye popped, and when it popped, it shot the liquid much farther than I had expected. Some of it splashing up and hitting my shirt. It was just a drop, but it felt so gross.

The eyes watched me, and without the other facial features to go along with it, I couldn’t read their emotions. That was until I tried to step on them, and they tried everything in their power to run away. The squirming and turning was hard to watch.

Everything was slippery and hard to stand on. The ‘ground’ was uneven at best, as it was just eye sockets. What horrid kind of world was this where it thought itself full of eyes. The world this floor belongs to must have sucked to live in.

I took a few deep breaths to calm myself. I was acting unusually squeamish. Even though I knew this was one of my fears, I had better control of myself by this point. I could feel the eyes watch me as I did anything, the ones on the ground almost seeming hesitant to make direct eye contact with me.

They didn’t want to be crushed, but I had to make it to the next floor somehow. I decided to try and just not look while I walked. That way, perhaps I wouldn’t be so hesitant to step. While charting a course through the eyes, I started walking.

I was planning roughly ten steps ahead of my current position, I could hear the popping and the wet sound of the eyes trying to turn and move out of the way as my boots came towards them. The slime had filled the inside of my boots before I even made it twenty steps into the floor.

By the time I had made it thirty, my pants were heavy with the slime as well. The slime from inside the crushed eyes was hard to wipe off, and it soaked through clothing, so using a rag to wipe it off would be pointless. I was just hoping that my bag would be safe from getting covered in the slime.

The noises of many eyes being crushed beneath my boots was getting to me. The popping, followed by the wet noise was too much. So, I got out my improvised earplugs that I have yet to use in hopes of them stopping the sound, but they only muffled it. I could spend hours trying to make something to block the sound, or I could do my best to ignore it with my current equipment.

While I walked, I found myself doing anything I could to drown out the noises beneath my boots. I had started to hum songs that I could barely remember. The songs sounded wrong to me, but I didn’t know how they sounded anymore.

That did make me start thinking though. It’s been a year and I’ve already forgotten my ‘favorite’ songs. Some of them faded so far from memory that I can’t even remember their names or who had made them. I guess they just weren’t important for my survival down here, so I just ended up forgetting them.

I almost miss listening to music, I know I have some saved on my phone. All I would have to do is go back to The Hub and grab it. The phone itself was fully charged, just turned off. In fact, after making sure it was charged, it never got turned on again.

I had gotten so used to not having it, that I just never bothered to use it again. I was used to sitting in silence, listening for things that might try and attack me. Perhaps an older version of myself would think its sad that I’ve become like this, but I currently think its fine if it means I can escape.

I continued to hum old songs that were barely pieced together while I continued to step through the floor. The feeling of popping beneath my feet was unpleasant to say the least, but without having to constantly hear the sound, I could deal with it.

However, one thing I had noticed while I was traveling through was that slowly the eyes were becoming less and less human. At the start, I’d be hard pressed to find anything other than a human shaped eye, but now, I was starting to see a whole bunch of different kinds.

From fish to land animals. There was a wide array of different types, some of them being much larger than any I had ever seen before. Something that was the same across every single eye was that there were no eyelids, of any type. The eyes were always open, and they were always watching me.

The sounds were getting louder as the average size of the eyes was steadily increasing. So, I hummed louder to try and counter it. I was no longer humming songs I used to know, instead I was just humming whatever sounded good to me. Tunes that might have been from something, but I could no longer place them.

Eventually, I stopped humming, as it started to sound more like a droning noise, and I was getting tired of it. My throat didn’t particularly hurt, but it was numb from humming for well over two hours. The tunnel I was walking through suddenly came to an intersection, something that was unusual for a floor like this.

I had almost gotten used to being able to walk in a straight line from beginning to end. I decided to go right, as right could never be wrong. I laughed quietly at my own awful joke, trying to distract myself from the awfulness of this floor.

Eye horror has always been a bad topic for me. I used to enjoy all kinds of horror media, right up until anyone went for the eyes. Even if it isn’t my own, it still horrifies me when I see them irreparably damaged or mutilated.

For example, if some dumb idiot is forced to walk over them and crush them. Just an example, here, not referencing reality in any way. I was somehow able to keep my cool despite being face to eye with one of my larger fears.

At this point in the floor, I could safely assume there wasn’t anything trying to kill me. I was creeped out with how the eyes constantly watched me no matter what I did. I was being watched, observed, and the eyes never even flinched at the others being destroyed. The only times they flinched was when I stepped on them.

In all honesty, I wasn’t sure what to think of this floor, beyond the obvious fear. Sure, the eyes watched me, but there wasn’t any real danger. Or was there? The eyes that were always watching me, were watching me from every angle at all times.

They could see everything about me if they observed for long enough. I started to feel anxious. Were they judging me, was something judging me? Was this a single creature that was filled with tunnels of eyes or were the eyes their own sentient beings. What did they do when I wasn’t looking?

If this was a creature, what was its goal? What did it gain from observing me so closely? Perhaps it is forced into action by the entity controlling the floors, just like everything else. Even if the eyes are individuals, the same will most likely apply. The ones that try to look away at the last second before they get crushed are maybe breaking control right before they die.

Wondering about it left me with a few questions, but I had mostly figured out what was happening, now only if I could figure out why I was being watched so closely. Was there some sort of secret about me that watching me would solve?

I didn’t think so. I wasn’t the most interesting guy when you boiled it down. Just an average guy doing his best to survive in extraordinary circumstances. Why did I even end up here? Was it punishment for some actions I took?

If so, why did they wait almost a decade before deciding to punish me? It probably isn’t punishment, and if I had to guess, it wasn’t because I was special. Realistically, what reasons would some all-powerful entity have to bring someone to a place like this?

I could only think of one thing. Something that the demon of floor eighteen had told me time and time again. I was just something to be toyed with. As lame as it sounded, that’s probably all there was to it. Some big shot playing with lives and worlds just for a little bit of fun in their infinite life.

If there was one thing that I’ve learned over the year down here and the many above in reality, it was that the simplest answer was usually the correct one. It didn’t ruin my motivation in any way, but it was a bit of a kick in the head.

Even if this isn’t the correct deduction… I wonder. Why me?

Alas, I’d just take it up with the entity itself. I’m sure they’ll talk to me at one point or another. Whether I make it all the way to the bottom or find some way to escape before that. I will escape this place, one way or another.

Just then, the hallway started to shake. It felt like a small earthquake had started, I wanted to brace myself against a wall, but unfortunately, there was nothing other than slimy eyes to grab on to. The eyes were coated in a thin layer of slime, so grabbing them was a bad way to steady myself.

So, I dug my feet into the flesh beneath the eyes in hope of sturdy ground. I managed to keep my footing for a while and was feeling pretty stable. The shaking however, never stopped. I was going to have to keep moving, despite the shaking. I was probably going to fall over if I tried to move from the spot I was standing.

I wasn’t really given a choice though, considering I had waited for ten minutes, but the shaking had not stopped. In fact, it had gotten stronger. With a bit of hesitation, I continued my journey into the tunnels of eyes. I was feeling a little sick, as the eyes moved to watch me, even while I was swaying from side to side with the shaking.

I was never one to get motion sickness, but it seems like this floor just ticked all the right boxes for me to feel it. The shaking was staying constant now, and I was finally starting to get used to traveling on the unsteady ground.

Once again, as if to prove me wrong, something once again changed. The tunnel I was travelling through was starting to get smaller. I was starting to slouch down to avoid the eyes as I walked underneath them. The shaking was making it hard to walk forwards.

Finally, I fell over onto one of the larger eyes as I tried to duck under an eye. The shaking paired with the slimy substance inside the eyes made it too hard to walk. My legs were tired and sore. So, as I laid on top of a large eye without it popping somehow, I had a short rest.

The eye itself seemed panicked while I was laying on it, but as it was coated in slime, it moving around barely changed my position. It felt softer than I expected. Without thinking too hard about it, I was tempted to have a quick nap, but decided against it as I still had plenty of energy.

I just needed to rest my legs for a few minutes before I was back up and moving through the tunnel that was getting smaller and smaller. At this point, I was soaked through with the slime, making it pointless to really care about keeping myself clean from it.

Walking for a bit through the tunnel while slouched over, I realized my bag was catching some of the eyes as I tried to go under them, tearing them open. I didn’t notice until I checked behind me and saw a bunch of torn eyes on the top of the tunnel.

I didn’t even notice the extra slime covering me as it all felt the same whether it was a light coating or literally dripping off of me. I think a part of me wants to feel sick, to be scared and panic, but it isn’t worth my time at this point. I’ve changed.

It is just another thing I have to deal with. I’ll clean myself once I get to the stairwell to avoid getting sick as best as I can. I was actually surprised that I hadn’t gotten sick since floor ten. I’ve felt ill, even unwell at times, but never sick.

I wonder if my body has gotten used to dealing with all the rot and decay around here. I would hope so, considering how many of these later floors are in serious need of some cleaning. Not to mention the floor where the ocean was full of rotting flesh to the point where a pier well above it was covered in it.

Well, thinking about all that was all good, I had to focus on the tunnel that was now too small to crouch through, I had to literally crawl on top of the eyes. I took off my bag and put it in front of me and I pushed it through the tunnel that kept decreasing in size.

At some point, I was forced to pop the eyes just so I could fit through the tunnel. I was tempted to turn back, but I had come too far to even consider the thought for more than a second. I just needed to push through, no matter how utterly disgusted I was.

Once I had been travelling for a while prone, my bag that I had been using to push my way through felt like it had finally hit no resistance, but it was heavy, as if there was nothing on the other side. With a bit of strain, I managed to hold my bag up and shimmy through.

Instead of carefully crawling through, the weight of my bag, paired with the slime, saw me sliding out of the hole. I was expecting to land on a pile of eyes as the tunnel widened, but there was no tunnel. I was falling into the void of nothing that felt all too familiar.

Without panic, I see the eyes. There were so many eyes on the colossal creature that I had fallen out of. The orifice I had managed to fall out of was the side of the creature. The further I fell, the larger I saw the creature was.

At first, I had though it might have been a giant wall of eyes, but that wasn’t the case. As I got further, I saw that the creature had well defined legs, four of them. It was some sort of almost indescribably quadrupedal creature that walked through the nothingness.

There was nothing other than me falling faster and faster, and this massive creature covered in eyes. I wanted to panic, I wanted to try and do something about the fact that I was falling, but I didn’t do anything.

I put my bag back onto my back, as there was no air resistance to stop me from moving around. I was a bit worried about spinning, but there seemed to be some kind of force to stop me from dying like that. I fell into the nothingness for around ten minutes before something happened.

A slight flash of light, and I was laying down safely on the concrete of a stairwell. Outside of the stairwell was the familiar void of nothingness, and a shining red exit light. The next floor was going to be a boss floor.

Unfortunately, I didn’t see an elevator anywhere around, but that was fine. I had enough supplies. My food and water were all packed in plastic or containers. My clothes however, I was a bit worried about. I took off my soiled and dirty clothes and tossed them into the nothingness outside the stairwell.

I checked inside the bag, pleasantly surprised to see that none of the slime had gotten through the fabric of the bag. I carefully grabbed some water and extra rags from inside my bag and got to cleaning myself a little. I used water as sparingly as I could as I cleaned myself.

Eventually, I had managed to get all the slime off, but that salty smell was still quite strong. I’d clean myself better, or maybe even trade for soap the next time I went back to The Hub. It might make cleaning like this more pleasant and easier.

Either way, it was time to descend and figure out what this next boss was going to be.