《Storm of the End》Chapter XVIII.VI: Eyes
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Jared practically tore open the driver's side door, sat in the driver's seat and put the key in. It wouldn't turn. I guess it was too good to be true. A loud cracking noise came from behind the house... the thing had broken the fence. We would have to keep running, maybe hide in a house once we got out of its vision. Hopefully it couldn't shoot those spikes very far...
"Wait!" Sarah said, opening the back door and picking something up off the backseat. It was a key! She handed it to Jared and we all almost smiled when the key turned and the engine roared to life. The four of us scrambled into the car and Jared prepared to back up. Both of us looked into the rear view mirror and cursed as we saw the massive eyeball filling up the view of the mirror. Jared slammed on the gas, sending us back the way we came, back towards the house we were hiding in... back to whatever had crashed in front of the house.
As the eye creature slithered after us, a large shape gradually came into view through the rain, just over a dozen feet ahead of us, in front of the burning house we had been in. I didn't get to stare at it for too long, because Jared quickly did a u-turn before we came too close to it. But what I saw... it was enough.
A cube shaped structure as big as the house was smashed into the street, a small crater around it. Here and there around the shape I could see about six or seven of the caved-in faced humanoid things. Each of them were carrying something, and they brought it on the side of the cube facing us... Attached to that side, was the upper body of what looked like a much larger version of the humanoids. For the moment I saw it, it was facing us. It had a similar concave face like the rest of them, except it had no face. Just a gaping hole that was glowing with a bright red, like a furnace. Unlike the others, it actually had huge hands with incredibly long and thick fingers. I saw one of the smaller humanoids come crawling out of the hole where its face should have been. I saw it come crawling out, and plop onto the street. Moments later, one of the humanoids carrying what I recognized as the mattress from the house we had been in walked up to the larger humanoid and lifted the mattress up. The big one reached one of its massive hands out, pinched the mattress between its fingers, then tossed it into the hole in its face. As we swerved and drove away, I saw another one carrying a chunk of fence towards the big one.
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My mind did not even have enough time to process the insane sight I had just seen, or enough time to ask myself any questions, because as soon as we had turned the other way the eye thing was waiting for us on the right side of the street.
Jared swerved hard, went to spin the wheel with his missing hand... if I didn't reach out and grab the wheel, we wouldn't have made it. Sarah screamed as we just barely missed the thing and almost went crashing into the nearest fence. Jared regained control and I heard an impact as something hit the back of the van.
It was one of the spikes from the creature, lodged into the back, with four eyes impaled on it, each of them staring at one of us. I shuddered as I noticed that one of them still had its optic nerve attached, flapping around behind it in the wind.
Was it just shooting that at us in an attempt to impale one of us, or did it serve some other purpose? The fact that the eyes still had life in them made me think that maybe the creature could see us remotely through them. Either way, there's no way I wanted to drive around with those things staring at us. But right at that moment, we had to get as far away as possible from the thing.
Our ragged breathing eventually returned to its normal pace as the eye thing faded into the distance. Luckily, it couldn't keep up with the van.
As my nerves calmed, I glanced at the gas.
It was only missing about a quarter.
I took a deep breath, "Jared, stop. We should take out that spike... God knows what the hell it will do if we leave it there."
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"Yeah, both of us should go out, just in case." he said as he brought the van to a stop, and the two of us got out and went around to the back of the van.
Jared shivered, "What the hell... I just don't even know what to say anymore..." he muttered as the four eye balls stared back at us, leering.
The spike was halfway lodged through the metal on the trunk of the van. I reached my hand out to grab it, but as I did the optic vein of one of the eyes suddenly jolted up and wrapped around my wrist!
"What the- agh, ah!" I shouted as I tried to recoil away, but it wouldn't let go. All four eyes stared up at me.
It tugged hard, trying to drag my hand onto the tip of the spike and impale it, but Jared took out a knife from his pocket and cut the vein, freeing me. Maybe it was just the rain, but it looked like the eye actually started to water, despite no longer having tear ducts. Did it feel pain? Was it a part of the large eyed creature? Or was it a separate consciousness entirely?
While the eyes were locked onto Jared with a look of apprehension, I grabbed the base of the spike and pulled with all my might. I succeeded in pulling it out, but the force when I freed it sent me falling onto my bottom while the spike flew up into the air and landed a few feet away. Jared stomped hard on the eyes and the four of them popped under his foot.
They were definitely lifeless now.
This time, I drove.
Jared agreed that driving with one hand wasn't a good idea.
As we drove away, I glanced back at the spike.
Three of the eyes had been completely squished, while the fourth was just barely intact, though lifeless. The rain pattering on it made it look like it was crying, and...
I swore that the look in the eye was an expression of relief.
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