Prologue
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She sits on her bed, waiting… listening. It is here. Something is here. She can feel it… staring… just staring. She feels the eyes on her as she sways left and right. The eyes…. they follow her with every movement she makes. She stills and feels them still too. But they are still on her. Still staring. She tries to open her mouth to scream but nothing comes out. Stop staring at me, she thinks in her head. “Stop staring at me,” she whispers. She manages to rise to her feet and feels for her stick. She might be blind but she knows that there is a pair of eyes staring at her. She knows when someone is staring. It’s the same way she feels when her father is in her room, just looking at her and wondering how this thing happened.
A chill breeze blows over Felicia’s room and sends shivers up her spine. Why are they staring at her? Why wouldn’t they let her be…. let her live in peace? She has done nothing to anyone to deserve this. Yet they frustrate her every single day.
“Father?” she calls out. No response. “Father,” she calls out again. He should be home. He should be here. Why isn’t he answering? “Father!!!”
This time he does respond. “Felicia?” he says when he gets to her room.
“Father, someone is staring at me,” she says to him.
“There’s nothing staring at you, Felicia.”
“But I can feel it, father. They are here.”
“There is nothing here, Felicia!”
“The eyes are staring from there,” she says and points in the direction she feels the stares coming from.
She hears her father sigh and exhale loudly. He is tired of her. He is exasperated by her. But there is nothing she can do about the way she feels. The eyes keep bothering her.
“Felicia, I have no idea what you keep going on and on about but there is no one in this room save for you and I. It’s just you and me kid.”
“But I can feel them,” she says, on the brink of tears. “They won’t let me be. They won’t leave me alone!”
“Would you stop this nonsense right this moment, Felicia? I won’t let you drag me out of bed for this nonsense again! There is nothing, absolutely nothing in this room. No one! The only things where you are pointing at are your dolls! Now go to bed!”
She hears her father walk away and the door slams shut in his wake. He doesn’t understand. She can feel them.
Slowly, she gets on her feet and walks towards them, directing herself with her cane. There is only one way out of this. She grabs the dolls and walks back to her bed. One after the other, she begins to pluck their eyes out, tugging at them with her teeth when they are too stubborn to come loose.
Soon, she is done removing their eyes. She feels peace momentarily. The stares are gone. She lies on the bed, willing sleep to come.
Slowly sleep starts to creep in on her. And as it does, so do the stares….
