Short stories

You dream of the red eyes every night.

You don’t know who the eyes belong to, but they follow you throughout your dreams in a most unsettling manner. They bore into your very soul, filling it with fear and self-loathing. They remind you of your father and the anger he used to take out on you and your mother, whenever he saw red.

Now the eyes are starting to haunt you during the day too. You search the face of every passer-by for those menacing blood-red irises. You spot them lurking behind trees, peeping out from rows of stationary cars. You are sure that they are out to hurt you. Just as he once did.

Your formerly busy social life grinds to a halt, as fear of the red eyes takes over. At night you pour yourself glass after glass of wine…white not red…and vegetate in front of the television. Your mother speaks gently to you down the phone, reminding you that it was all over long ago, that your father has been gone for fifteen years.

For a long time he was locked up for what he did to her, but no one ever realised what you saw that night.

You are five and hear the screams. Climbing out of bed, you run to the kitchen and peep silently in. Your mother has disappeared and a wet trail of blood leads to the open back door. Your father sits at the sturdy table, carving letters into the pine with the tip of a sharp knife. Later you discover they read W-H-O-R-E, but you don’t understand. You run away to huddle silently under your duvet, pretending to be asleep until a policewoman finds you. You never see your father again.

 So how can you be sure he really is dead?

(originally published on Your Messages)
(c) Catherine Walter 2007