Constellations between crashing waves

It's been staring at me for over an hour.

I try to look away but the gnawing thought to check overwhelms me, forces my eyes open to look again, keeps them there. Like a man begging for his life, my mind says.

“Don't look away.”

“Don't look away.”

Even when my eyes are closed, the burning of its stare turns my skin to ash. Then I open them to stop the pain. And just like each time before, it is still there. Swaying ever so slightly, just enough that I could follow the thread that this is all just in my mind. It's just tree branches in that cold night air, just sea water sprinkling the window and not it's spit from each breath. Then I have to remind myself, there are no trees outside my house and worse still, my bedroom is on the second floor.

“Don't look away.”

I haven't moved, laying with my back against the headboard, frozen since the second I saw it while laying down for the night. The blanket is tucked in tight around my waist and legs as if it will do something to stop the intrusion of observing. The moon light reflecting off distant waves of the pacific cast a sinister silhouette of an aberration to my home; and worse, to my mind. The mucus membrane of its eyes glisten against whatever ambient light they catch accentuating each micro movement they make. Not the glowing red eyes of evil rose to haunt me. The kind of thing even the evil tremble in front of. Real abnormalities of our reality.

“Don't look away.” It looks at me as a child does a stranger.

Should I speak? Would it understand the words or not? I am unsure of which I would fear more. The idea that something so grotesque as it could communicate with men, or that this beast was without reason. My lips slightly parted as if to call out to it, calmly. Though it did not matter, as the words caught in my throat like a fish hook. As my eyes locked with it's, my periphery could see its “lips” part in an undulating ripple vertically across its vaguely human shaped skull. Revealing rows upon rows of protrusions covering the open orifice like the baleen of a whale, though from its own movement within its jaw it looked almost voluntarily moving with the “lips” just enough to reveal teeth underneath. This made me question the motions. Did I show my teeth when I raised my lips? It's absolutely ridiculous. It is an animal. No matter how alien to me, it was just that; an animal.

Time passed so slowly. The fear dilated the time around the two of us. Making sure that it was not so simple as to just wait this out. I needed to do something to obfuscate myself from it, I needed to close the curtains. But what will it do? Will it perceive my advance as a threat? Will it cease being an observer and adorn the predatory, primal violence of nature? I have to try, I fear if I don't my wanning sanity will bleed me faster than any talon, claw or jagged nail across the belly.

I pulled my covers back slowly. Its eyes broke from mine to follow the movement of my hand carrying the sheet off of my legs. It appeared almost curious, almost less dangerous. But as I swung my feet to the floor, its gaze returned to mine. My feet hit the cold wooden floor and it recoiled below the bloated window sill, still keeping eyes locked on me just above the horizon of the window. Standing not more than an arm's length from the thin barrier that separated us, my legs felt so heavy they threatened to splinter and cave in the floor. Every warning signal in my mind blared, begging me not to move any closer to the atrocity behind a single pane of glass. Even the cells in my body knew to fear what was in front of me and I was so arrogant as to approach it. Another step and its eyes flicked to my feet and back. In the silent creaking of my home, the unnatural still of the coast I could hear it shifting its weight against my house. Its feet twisting into the rocks that surrounded it. Between each crash of water on ancient rock, amongst the silence it begets, I swear I could hear its breath. Deliberate, precise breath.

As if confirmed to myself that this monstrosity was not some hallucination conjured from a sleep deprived mind, a fear I had never felt before eroded away at me, threatening to empty my bladder and void my stomach completely.

The eyes that lingered next to the peeling paint and cracking windows jostled in their nests, out of excitement, of fear? I could not decipher. Though the movement unnerved me to an extent I thought could not be reached; Still, I proceeded toward it. Determined to pull those shades across those insistently excitable eyes and free myself from its sight long enough to think as a sane man would for even a brief moment.

The feeling of the chord keeping the curtains drawn felt like victory in and of itself. Close enough to see the monstrous morphology of the devil that stood outside my window. Hunched as it was to simply peer through the portal into my privacy. It shifted its weight on two pin prick legs that you may not see in more numerous numbers at the bottom of the ocean. Eerily human digits pushed up against the siding of my home like a child listening at the door of arguing parents. Its eyes were still locked with me as I unfurled that chord to let the curtains fall in front of it.

I expected; something. However nothing was my prize beyond the flimsy partition between me and the dilating pupils of that evil. My feet no longer felt like stone as I moved back towards my bed where I could lay down, a feeling of safety I previously could not afford with eyes from beyond my understanding staring in. Though they still viewed me through slivers of space between the curtains. those wet globes of confusing malice. Staring, right though the slivers that might well have been canyons that only grew bigger as my eyes settled on its.

What choices I had vanished. It would not leave willingly, or out of boredom.

I stood and moved quickly downstairs, stomping as I went. A silent hope it would scare the creature back to whatever dark corners it was birthed from. I grabbed the shotgun that leaned against the door. Something I had only used sparingly and was there far more for my own feelings of safety than anything else.

I threw my front door open, the coastal winds catching it, ripping it from my hands, slamming against the salt torn siding. The sound of those moonlight kissed blue hues rushing up against primordial rocks soothed me even as the devil existed not a stone's throw from me. Those sounds that drew me to the coast to live silently amongst something so infinitely dangerous as it was beautiful. Even with the creature that now accosted me and disturbed my sleep. I know, if given then choice I would of picked those crashing, frothing waves of dark blues and whites on the rocky shore again.

As if remembering where I was by the iron that grew colder in my grip, I turned my head to the corner of the house. It's rawboned form crouched around the side of my house; Just as I remember playing hide and seek with neighbor children. Was it exhibiting fear of me? I could only hope it was and that my false bravado would scare it from my home. I turned to face it, gripping that shotgun tight I pointed towards it, jabbing the weapon towards it aggressively. Waving it, anything and everything to appear bigger, more frightening than a human could ever be to such a monstrosity.

I froze when it lifted an arm from its grip on my house and jabbed it at me, waving it just as I had done. I heard the crunch of gravel and sand mixing under my bare feet as I stepped back without the thought to do so. It moved one amongst its bouquet of pereiopods back.

The moon light caught its pale blue flesh at the corners of its impossible mouth that ran between its eyes like piled scar tissue twitching under anatomy I could not place.

I took two large steps forward, hoping again that it would simply turn and run. I was stupid to think it would. As it moved out from behind the house with two large heaving movements forward I could feel my knees grow weak, a hot stream of urine running down my thigh.

Its proximity to me eroded any thought in my head that I held any control over the situation. So close I could smell the stink of the sea stagnating across its hide. So close it's size dwarfed me as well as everything around it. Its legs moved in undulating order; a kind of anticipation?

Those eyes still locked with mine, hovering feet above me. I raised my weapon slowly, it was following the same movements. Something about its lack of outward aggression. flooded more cortisol throughout me. It's hands held close to It's body, one below the other. The ambient light of the moon reflecting from those leviathan eyes. Little stars in an outstretched black of teeth and chaos. Though I never took my eyes from those stars, I dare say I couldn't even if I had the intention. The cold rounded iron pushed below my chin. The stars blinking, fluttering in the cold moon crystals they captured. More and more appeared in those dark blue waves of infinity. The stars; a constellation of interloper eyes pouring themselves into my mind like poison onto a tongue.

The stars blinked in unison, and despite the fear that had not released me from it's clutches I could only think one thing as my finger fumbled against the rattling trigger.

“Beautiful.” The eyes flickered at my words. Between the tension across my finger and that dreaded click I could hear the symphony assault my senses.

“Beautiful.”

Photo by Sergey Beschastnykh on unsplash and edited by me.