A visitor, A nightmare, A key chain.
A visitor, A nightmare, A key chain
I am walking through the store. My eyes almost hurt from the vibrant colors all around me. I don’t try to look away though. My eyes are locked on a purple bracelet. A baby blue bow. A purplish bandana with orange flames. A ring with an off-white diamond on the top and petals protruding from the bottom. What am I searching for again? I ask myself.
Out of the corner of my eye I see something glistening, I immediately turn my head. It’s a black shell attached to a long cord of thin rope. Next to it are two bright pink metal flowers hanging individually from a chain of thin and shining gold. At the other ail of jewelry, right across from those earrings is hanging a blue keychain with a small girl painting with detail. I stop at a halt.
What am I doing? Why am I here? What time is it? I hold my left wrist up to the level of my eyes. The hands of the clock are needles, dripping thick droplets of blood. The blood has formed a small paddle in the bottom of the clock. I feel my heart starting to beat faster. I lower my hand. I keep moving, I should find an exit. I must’ve overstayed my welcome in this store. I stride through the hallway. Something is bright on my left. I lift my gaze to find the sudden cause of yellow light.
A small sun with red eyes and nose is hanging limp from a black adjustable cord. It has no mouth. Next to it... NO, what am I doing. I take a step back from the magic jewelry and their addicting looking shape and colors. What a weird store. That’s why they don’t have many customers. I look around. They have no customers. Only me. Cold sweat starts rolling down my lower back. I should leave now. I will try to walk again. This time, I must close my eyes. I walk slowly as to not trip. The only sounds my ears catch are my footsteps and my Increasingly rapid breathing as I’ve been walking long now with nothing to stop my path. No wall, no workers, no customers and no exit. What if I ran, I would cover more ground. I do just that. I run as if someone is chasing me. I stop. My breathing is coming in short, and my chest is heaving.
“You should run faster” I jump. Start running again. Who was that! It wasn’t a human voice even though it spoke English. It was breathy and nasal, and it was making a guttural sound. Such combination had made the hairs in my arms strand high up. Not a friendly presence. What is this hellhole!
After what felt like an hour. My feet give up on me. I half collapse to the floor. Holding my thighs to stop them from shaking. How come I haven’t opened my eyes yet? My blood feels cold suddenly at the realization. I immediately try to open them. I fail miserably. Why can’t I just open my own eyes. The temperature of the room seems to drop 3o degrees. Or is it just the feeling of my freezing blood when I put my fingers softly on top of where my eyes are supposed to be. Only to find smooth skin. I try to touch around my face. I feel the bump of my nose, the slight change of texture that my lips have. Cheeks, ears, hair all intact, except my eyes. My hands start to shake, and I just scream, panicking more and more by the second.
“Well, that took you a while” the inhuman voice speaking hoarsely again catches my attention. This time I yell back.
“What is this” I yell getting on my shaking feet. “What have you done”
“I’ve done what was needed.” it says, more quietly now.
I feel something moist on my face when I touch it with cold fingers. I bring the liquid that my fingers have touched to my mouth. It’s salty and familiar. It’s tears. But from were. I touch all over my face again. Thoughts that I must have been hallucinating getting my hopes up. Until…
“Your eyes, though, you did that yourself, I’m afraid” the voice says as I fall to my knees again realizing that the skin that has replaced my eyes is no hallucination.
“Just let me leave, please, let me go home, please” I say sobbing.
“You are home”
I wake up screaming. Right in front of me I see... I see, my bedroom mirror. I get up clumsily and check myself in the mirror. All of... me is intact. My eyes as well. They are red all over though. Doesn’t matter, they are still intact. It was just a nightmare. Probably the worst I’ve ever had. What did I eat last night? Must’ve upset my stomach too much.
The doorbell stops my train of thought and I go downstairs to collect what I’m guessing is my mail. I grab my keys from the table next to the door. They look weird somehow…like they were cleaned during the night. I go over every one of them. They all look similar, but which one is for this door. It’s a blue one, right? But they are all silver, cold to the touch. These aren’t my keys, I realize. I start to panic, my blood rushing to my ears and my hart picking up pace. What is this? Did I accidentally take someone else’s keys? How can they look so like mine. I locked the door the night before. How could I have done that with the wrong keys? As my mind is spiraling, I hear a voice “I can hear you behind the door, I don’t have all day”
I jump, hearing the voice from the other end of the door. So, they want me to sign it, I should be quick. These must be my keys; I’m just being paranoid. My hands start to shake now, and I feel droplets of sweat reach my eyebrows. Come on, just find the key, there are only fifty, it can’t be that hard...Firty!? Keys start falling on the floor, making a terrible clatter. I fall to my knees, my legs no longer able to support me. Which one is it?
Suddenly I touch something that does not have the shape of a key on the floor. It’s solid and round. It fits right in the palm of my hand. It has jiggered edges and a metallic chain protruding at the top. It calms me down, just the feel of it. I lower my body on the floor, and I finally take a normal, nice, long breath. Everything is going to be okay; I tell myself. “Just a minute” I shout at the delivery person. I decide to look at the thing on my hand.
Drawn in detail on a round frame, is a girl. Her dress is yellow, but muddy. She has brown long hair in a tight bun on top of her head. She sits in a brown wooden chair with her knees together and her hands on her knees. Her face is serious, solemn and without emotion. Her eyes are pits of red but not because the photo had flash, and she is looking straight at me. My breath catches again, and my chest starts to hurt. My survival instinct is telling me to move, to leave, to flee. But my mind is still looking at the girl, looking at every part of the picture. I realize the chain is a keychain, with one key attached to it. The key and the keychain are blue. A deep ocean blue. The kind of blue you would see only when you’re drowning.
I realize I haven’t breathed in some time. I try to open my mouth. I try and fail. No matter how much I move my jaw, its like my lips are stitched together. With my other trembling hand, I reach my mouth, or the place where my mouth should be. Instead, I find just skin, warm, sweaty, sticky skin. My heart stops for a moment, and I feel like I’m going to either throw up or faint, but I don’t have much of a choice. Before my consciousness is finally taken, a voice next to my ear shakes me awake. “Let’s go home” It’s the same voice from my dream, if it was ever a dream, maybe this is a dream, and the store was the reality. I look at the keychain again. The girl… I hadn’t notice this before, but she is at the store, at the same store I was in. Behind her are shelves of jewelry. I see the red sun and the diamond ring, the purple bracelet, the baby blue bow. Right behind her shoulder is a dark figure, practically made of shadows, the eyes are red beads, staring into my soul. No mouth.
“Let’s go home” the voice says again, “Where you belong”
