“Dali’s Eyes Are Looking At Me” by Bethan Dee

I was so sure, beyond any unreasonable doubt, that what I was experiencing was a dream. There was no space on earth that stretched beyond infinity, so white and pure and pristine. Yet, there I was, occupying an impossible space. It had taken me the longest time to even figure out how I was even ‘standing’. Usually, you have some notion of the ground – land or turf beneath your feet – a mostly imagined sense of gravity centering your core. But there was no conceptual idea of a ground. A translucent amalgam of a surface was the best way to describe it. I traced my bare feet across the pristine crust, gently, in case it decided to disappear on me completely; lest I doubted its notional existence for a mere second. I twisted what I presumed was my own body this way and that hoping that some semblance of a destination would appear before me. But the effort was fruitless.

So, I am in a dream, I concluded. A very clean dream, at that. Except that…well, every so often, I would catch small glimpses of blurry black spots; fuzzy and unstable and disruptive against the pure white space. I hoped that those blemishes would make themselves more known; hoped they’d convince me thoroughly that the space I was occupying was a mere figment of my imagination. I wanted them to transform into weird references to my life, that would burst forth from a loud and confrontational breach in my memories. I wanted monsters and old teachers to appear, to start clawing at my body, to drag me in worse and worse directions. I wanted familiar buildings and landmarks to blink into existence, for highlights and shadows to liquefy and cumulate into an amateur oil painting.

​But none of those telltale signs appeared. Everything was just too…still. I looked down at my hand; a hand that I always thought looked too old for me. Every dry crisscross, every discoloured knuckle, every uneven nail, they were all perfect. If this was a dream, then there should have been a flower or some other kind of symbolic object sprouting from a claymation version of my hand.

No, I was simply going to have to acknowledge that right now, this was reality. But in order to not terrify myself completely, I convinced myself that it was a disjointed form of reality.

Drugs then, I must have been on drugs. No. I don’t take drugs. Not for fun, not even for the opposite of fun. In fact, I’ve never taken them. So, I’d taken them unwillingly then. Oh God, that was a despicable thought. Why did I have to think that? It was a completely logical answer of course, but I reprimanded my brain for even coming up with it.

​Instead, I tried visualising a path that could have led me here, to this vacuous space. Flashes of low quality detective dramas bled into my mind, complete with dramatic head turns, and ludicrous outcomes. What would they do? I wondered. What would those unhinged, pretentious assholes do? They’d start from the beginning. They’d try to connect the limited pieces of information they could find, in order to form the most logical conclusion.

​Comforted by the absence of a polite society, I voiced my concerns out loud. “How did I get here? How did I fall asleep?”

That was the path I was going with; that I wasn’t participating in the real world.

​Falling asleep was natural, the very opposite of this entire situation. What’s an unnatural way of falling asleep? Just the slight consideration of that question coaxed disturbing images to the forefront of my mind, and with it came flashing images of hands grabbing me, of a bright light and the sound of a whirring machine. Was that part of this fake landscape too? A hyper-fixated debut of horrific images, designed to make me question my entire existence?

​Such big questions naturally resulted in a wayward pace, and I subconsciously began to traverse the white space. I squinted at the blurry horizon, hoping that an answer would crawl out of the disappearing infinity. No…nothing came.

​I attempted to explore the space with my subpar eyesight, watching and waiting for something to appear. And something did appear. But not something I’d hoped for.

​I cast a glance over my shoulder and when I saw it, I had to stifle a scream. A large, human eyeball, devoid of skin, eyelashes, and tendrils, was floating just a few feet away from me. I turned my head away in fright, squeezing my eyes shut and burying my face into my chest.

I could still see it though, as a phantom image imprinted on the back of my lids. The monstrous thing; it had looked so lifeless and empty. It made me think of the dead orbs that stare back at you when passing by a fishmonger’s stall. But it didn’t look like it belonged to any cod or salmon. No, it was a human eye. White, speckled with pink veins surrounding a blue iris and a black pupil. But the size of it – no that was far from human. A colossal squid was the more likely owner.

But it had moved. I was sure it had moved, and entirely of its own accord too. I wanted it to just disappear, to erase itself from existence. I slowly unscrewed my avoiding eyes, and tentatively looked back. The black void of the iris bore into my soul and it felt almost perverse that it retained a shiny, moist coating. Again, it moved, just minute vibrations, but enough to make me know that it was…alive.

​I turned away again, my heart thumping against my chest, and for the first time since I found myself existing in this clinical space, I wanted to wake up. It’s just an eye, I told myself. I have two of them in my head. People look at me with them every single day. But there was something so grotesque and inhuman about the fact that it was detached, and just floating there. I was somehow scared that its overwrought voyeurism would consume my entire being – that it would swallow me whole.

​“It’s just an eye…” I told myself, the sheer ridiculousness of the words lending comfort to me. I boldly attempted to look upon the monstrosity again. But I wish I hadn’t.

The black spots I had previously thought were simply blemishes had transformed into millions upon millions of detached eyes, all looking at me, unblinking, unflinching. I let out a horrific scream, cowering away from the almighty volume of detached body parts. The dreamscape I’d assumed to be blissful had suddenly turned into a putrid world of bulbous, frogspawn eyes, throbbing and sliding against one another. I clawed at my face, scratched at my arms, eliciting jolts of pain in the hopes of awakening from this nightmare.

“Wake up! Wake up! Wake up!” I screamed into the void.

​

I looked down and to my horror I saw that the very ground I was standing on had turned into eyes, and my feet slipped against their collective slimy membrane. I fell backwards, losing my balance and my sanity as I screamed out desperately into the void.

I shut my eyes and braced myself for a horrifyingly grotesque impact, but instead I felt something more solid catch me, something that was gripping my arms and legs tightly. I finally felt a slight breeze whip at my hair, and I could hear muffled voices – actual human voices. I tried opening my eyes, but they were so heavy, the new source of light surrounding them, too bright. I could smell something too, something familiar. Is that…disinfectant?

“Eyes for this one…fascinating.” A woman’s voice, close by. I peeled my eyes open slightly but was met with blurry, unfocused figures; two large and imposing people either side of me. Their heavy grunts sounded the least bit feminine to me – how many people were here? I couldn’t think straight, I couldn’t even decipher which way my body was positioned.

“Bring the next one in,” I heard the woman say, as I succumbed to unconsciousness.

∞

Bethan Dee is a young aspiring author based in the UK, who is currently studying creative writing and publishing at Bournemouth University. She is interested in inserting extraordinary happenings into mundane circumstances, as well as creating memorable and beloved characters. Currently, she is working on a contemporary sci-fi novel which she hopes to self-publish by the end of this year.