Chapter 2: Scoptophobia
Fulgur just wants to sleep. It has never been easy for him but it has never been this hard too. The day has dragged on, leaving him weary and spent.
Still, he manages to get through, making sure his pets are fed and his books are tidied before lugging his worn self to the bathroom to finally get ready for bed.
He can feel his whole body sink in the cool sheets with a sigh.
Limbs growing heavy, he takes a deep breath.
The nightmare begins.
----
He opens his eyes to a dark room with nothing but a mirror inside. The darkness felt alive somehow--as if something was moving within it. Unsettled and lurking.
He looks to the mirror, his reflection distorted as if under water--then the colors shift and twist as if swallowed by the room's shadows and he opens his eyes to someplace else.
He looked down and his hands were smaller, more delicate.
There was never a time in his life wherein he was ever delicate.
He looked up again and in the reflection was a boy, smaller, bright violet eyes with even brighter blonde hair.
"Sonny! Come here!", someone calls out and his body turns. Oh. He's Sonny. Or at least he's in a memory in Sonny's body.
He walks closer to the woman who called him and feels a pat on his head.
"Come, let me show you to everyone. You're such a smart, smart boy."
Fulgur feels himself nod as he--Sonny, is ushered into a crowd of people--praising him in kind words that felt all too sweet.
“Look at him! Such an intelligent child!”
“So gifted!”
“He’ll be an amazing man someday, like father like son, eh, General?”
His throat thickens beneath the saccharine words making it difficult to swallow but Sonny just shakes his head to dispel the feeling and continues smiling within the memory, but Fulgur can tell it lingers.
Sonny continues to walk, the path lined with strangers–people and faces Fulgur does not know. They flank either side of the path, compliments and commendations on their lips.
“As expected of your son.”
“Truly a startling talent.”
“So advanced in tactics and his physical scores are astounding.”
He walks forward--Sonny walks forward and the smile on his face feels brittle on Fulgur as the sound of words slowly dwindles while the tightness in his chest surges. It no longer feels like sugar down his throat--no, now it feels like tar, dark and viscous and suffocating.
Still, he keeps walking. Sonny keeps walking. He puts his hand over his neck in an effort to lessen the feeling but his hand feels colder. He looks down again and he is no longer in the body of a child.
It seems that the more he walks, the older Sonny gets but Fulgur sees no end to the path they were both walking. Just more people on either side, words like genius, talented, remarkable, outstanding spoken loudly, then in whispers beast, feral, monster.
Monster.
Monster.
Monster.
As they walked the crowd grew colder, quieter–faces and bodies blurred but their eyes--their eyes remained.
Monster.
Monster.
Monster. Monster. Monster.
Fulgur does not want to look. The heaviness of the disembodied stares in the ringing silence feels like a physical weight over his body–cloying beneath his feet, tugging at his arms, drowning his chest. His heart–Sonny’s heart beat in a panicked cadence as the eyes grew in size, looking, looking, staring, glaring, looking at him.
His body is tense and clamoring to run. To hide from the eyes around him–but his chest is weighed by the anchor of their stares and all he can do is trudge, one step forward each time as the eyes multiplied, grew and stared.
And stared.
And stared.
And stared.
Run, Fulgur thought. But even his own thoughts have dwindled, buried underneath the eyes as they looked on. Heart drumming so loud his temples feel like bursting–
Run, Fulgur insists.
I can’t, someone answers.
Run, Fulgur tries again. He needs to get out.
Help, someone begs.
Fulgur feels the cold sweat on his skin, but worse still is he feels as if he’s slowly drowning in this darkness marred with a thousand eyes–red and bloodshot–looking, staring, condemning, expecting, fearing him.
Don’t look, someone pleads.
Don’t look.
Don’t look.
Don’t look.
DON’T LOOK AT ME.
But he is swallowed.
The eyes converge into a wave, far taller than anything he’s seen. A deluge of glares occupy every space that the darkness is thinning, for it too was overpowered.
Hands tear into his hair in a scream but nothing escapes as the wave crashes over him.
Fulgur can feel the ground as he–as Sonny held his hands over his head–an adult now trying to hide when nothing can be hidden.
Curled up, trying to be small, trying not to be seen and failing–always failing–the stares a physical sensation of molten sludge slowly burning, smearing his skin, leaving no breath, no reprieve, cementing him in place.
Smothered.
Buried.
Don’t look at me, please.
One final plea before Fulgur wakes in his bed gasping for breath, an uneasy feeling that he’s being watched niggling in his brain.
Was he dreaming…?
The darkness has lifted, the first rays of light coming in through the windows wake him.
He breathes deeply as the last dregs of the nightmare slowly leave him.
Hidden in his room, protected by the sheets around him, he looks around and finds everything is as it should be.
He is safe.
He is safe.
He is safe.
Or is he?
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