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The Watcher in the Mud (13): With so much rain lately, it's not surprising to find muddy patches throughout the city. Aside from being very slippery, there's nothing notable about most of them. Most. At first, there's only the strange sensation of being watched--and then, you see why. The eyes. There are eyes in the mud. Two, staring up at you, and nothing else. No face, no form. Sometimes the mud is totally flat, sometimes it's sunken into the ground a bit, sometimes it's built up like a small hill--but the eyes are always the same. Blinking, occasionally. Tracking you. Moving, if they need to--with surprising ease. Kick them, disturb the mud, or try to bury them, and they'll simply roll or swivel back into place to continue watching. Even if you try to leave, they'll move until they run out of mud--and then watch until you disappear from sight. If you linger long enough, the eyes will eventually grow heavy and slowly close before sinking beneath the mud.
Suni had decided to hang out in the park with her laptop and write. Sure, it was a little damp, but the tables and benches were dry and as long as she didn’t try to slip ‘ slide across the grass, she’d remain more or less pristine. At least physically. She giggled a little as she thought that there was very, very little left of her mentally that wasn’t corrupted in some way.
And that wasn’t even counting her membership to the Dark Kingdom.
Drawing her legs up onto the bench so that she could use her knees as a stand, Suni typed away, gradually growing aware of a creepy crawly feeling. Like she was being watched. Which was normally not an issue since she didn’t mind an audience, but this feeling was different. Frowning, she peeked out over the top of the laptop and scanned the area. She wasn’t powered up so she couldn’t scan for auras. Besides which, it was broad, goddamn daylight! She wasn’t about to go changing when there were still people wandering through. She might be crazy, but she wasn’t crazy. Or stupid.
Grumbling, she returned to her fic before the sensation returned as strong as ever. Closing the laptop, she sat up and looked around. No one was around. She didn’t even see any birds. She was about to concede that okay, she might actually be crazy when movement caught her attention. Standing up and walking the whole three feet, Suni frowned, then began laughing wildly as she found the source of her unease. There, in one of the bigger mud puddles, were two eyes. Eyes that were lazily blinking before swiveling up to focus on her looming form. Crouching down, she reached out with a finger to poke one of the eyes and laughed again as it pulled back slightly before re-positioning itself. Okay. She’d seen some strange stuff in this town, but these eyes might have to take a place in her top five. Deciding to experiment, she straightened up and began walking in circles around the puddle. Then, she walked to where a smaller mud puddle lay a few feet from that.
The eyes followed her consistently.
Pausing and staring back at the eyes, she found herself wondering what the point of this was. The Negaverse was…. reasonably good about spreading the word if they were about to unleash a new creation. And she hadn’t heard a thing about eyes hanging out in puddles of mud. So, not us, she thought firmly. She’d never heard of anyone on the other side being able to create creatures. And the Velencians were more tech based as far as she’d been able to determine. Besides, they were busy exploring and trying to find a way to fix up their home planet. What possible use would there be in creating random a** eyes when you were here trying to repair a broken planet?
“Ugh,” she groaned, idly flipping the bird at the eyes. “Bored now. You’re not even interesting once y’get past the novelty.”
Completely over this bit of strangeness, Suni decided that she’d be better served going to the library to write. She could see the eyes watching as she packed her stuff, including an emerald star charm she'd found and began walking away. And she could see them following her from puddle to puddle as she walked away.
She wasn’t sure at what point they went away completely since she’d forced herself to ignore the various puddles. All she knew was that once she got out of the park, there were fewer puddles and the feeling of being watched gradually faded.
Word Count = 604
