I told her. I told her but she didn’t listen. “But I don’t want to go to bed, the man with no eyes is waiting for me in the closet!” Was I not clear enough? I thought I was being pretty clear. Maybe she forgot about the dreams. I told her about them, but maybe she forgot. Or maybe she didn’t take them seriously. I’ve heard adults don’t tend to put much stock in things like that. But I know that it’s more than just my imagination. The noises coming from the closet now are proof enough. I know he’s real, and I know he’s coming for me. He’s been clawing his way into the waking world slowly for the last several days, and now he’s ready to come for me. Maybe if I had been braver I could have gone in there and gotten some kind of proof. Maybe then I could have gotten my parents to do something about it. I don’t know what, but surely they could have done something right? But I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t bring myself to search around in there, even after they opened the door to show me there was nothing in there. I was too scared. Now it’s too late. I can hear the fumbling around on the other side of the closet door. The man with no eyes can’t see, he can only feel. But he can feel me. I’m alive, and I have eyes. He can feel both of those things, and he is coming for me. I think he wants my eyes. Or maybe he just hates that I have them and he doesn’t. I’m not really sure. The dreams were never clear enough about that. He is coming for me though, I know that much. He’s found the doorknob now. I can hear it turning. I want to scream, but I can’t. I want to get up and run, but my body won’t move. I can’t do anything but watch as the door to the closet slowly opens, and I see him on the other side, the gaping holes where his eyes should be almost seeming to glare at me. He’s tall. Probably was an adult before whatever turned him into this. But I don’t think he’s human anymore. That is if he ever was. As he makes his way toward me everything about him seems wrong. The way his body is so thin and long. The way he almost seems to slide towards me rather than walk. The way the holes where his eyes should be almost seem to glow with some dark reddish light. This thing isn’t normal. It isn’t natural. It can’t be. Again I want to run, to scream, to do something, but I can’t. I’m rooted in place, able to do nothing as that thing comes for me. It’s reached my bed now. The long thin arm is reaching towards me, almost moving more like a snake than an arm. I don’t know what he plans to do to me. I don’t want to know. But it’s too late now. I can tell that much. I still can’t get my body to do anything. For a moment I wonder what will happen when I’m gone. How will my parents react? I have no answer for that. I don’t even know what they will find. The thin serpentine arm grabs my leg, and suddenly the man with no eyes is being pulled back into the closet, and I’m being pulled in with him. It is so fast, much faster than his approach, and in those brief moments my mouth finally begins to let out a cry, but it’s too late. Barely any sound has escaped my lips before I’ve been sucked into the darkness that now fills the space where my closet should have been. It’s all a void now. It’s just me and him. The man with no eyes has me. I’m within his domain now. Another serpentine arm is reaching out towards me. Reaching towards my eyes. He wants my eyes after all. Both arms are at my eyes now. Once again I’m unable to move. I’m not sure if it’s because of fear, or because I wouldn’t know how to move here. We’re just floating in a void. I don’t know how he can move here. Clearly he can though. The thin long fingers pushing onto the edges of my eyes are proof enough of that. They dig into my head. It hurts, more so than anything I’ve ever experienced. Not that that should surprise me. But something is wrong. I think it is anyway. I’ve never had my eyes ripped out before, but I don’t think it should feel like this. It feels like something is being pulled from every part of my body towards my eyes. And it feels as if I’m becoming thinner. Thinner and longer. Then it hits me. He isn’t after my eyes. He is after freedom. He was once human, but that was before the man with no eyes before him turned him into what he is now. The condition he is in now is a curse of some sort, and he can only be rid of it by passing it on to me. I can feel as my eyes are finally pulled out of my head, and so much more with them. Even without my eyes I can feel as he puts my eyes into his head, and the humanity he took with them passes into his body, before it fades away. He has been reduced to nothingness, just like he had wanted. Now the eyeless curse is mine, and I float in this void, a child sized version of the monster that took me from my room.