The Stars are Watching Me

I can't sleep. I don't dare to dream. For whenever I close my eyes I can see them, burned into my mind like hot coals. Smouldering.

It all started so innocently, I can remember it clearly as if it happened just last night instead of years and years ago.

I was always a lover of the clear night skies, the millions of pinpricks of light that made up the fan of the milky way captured my attention as a young child. Filling my mind with mystery and awe. I remember the first time I saw them for what they truly were.

I was nine, my father was an older man. My mother and he had three older children and never planned for a fourth, but when they were approached by the state to accept an adoption from another member of the family that had died in a fire they couldn't refuse. And so they took me in.

Well, my parents had always loved me, and so for my ninth birthday we had decided to go camping in the Rockies. We brought all the essentials and drove many hours till the air grew thin and clear, the woods all around us filled with tall sturdy trees the likes of which I had never seen before. My father had called them ponderosas.

It was amongst these tall trees that I first gazed upon these spectacular heavens. The phantasmagorical sight of that vast purple smear captivated me, ensnared my young mind like nothing ever had before or since. That first night felt like an awakening, as if I had never truly seen before.

You must consider the tenderness of my age at this time. My mind was free of stress and fear, thoughts of girls and money had no hold on me. And so the vast emptiness of my mind was nearly destitute, free to become enraptured by the intricacies of the wider cosmos. And what inspired glories they were, for the very next day was my birthday, and my parents got for me a wonderful telescope.

Its construction was plain, a simple white cylinder with a black cap and eyepiece, the stand a bare silvery stainless steel construction. And yet to me at the time it seemed as though its every contour and edge were imbued with that same brilliance that spanned the heavens above.

My parents were pleased to see my excitement at first. But pleasure turned to horror as my excited murmurs turned to screams of terrible panic. For when I looked through that cursed scope I saw not the light of a thousand stars but terrible burning lights, and those lights looked back through me. Together a single baleful eye full of ancient hatred as wide as the sky.

I remember running, my parents chasing me though the darkness calling my name, branches whipping my face as I fled with fearful abandon. The cuts stinging like ice and fire at once upon the tender skin of my youth, but they caught me eventually. Their hands were gentle but their voices were rough. They demanded to know what was wrong, but I never spoke about it. In fact I never spoke again.

From that day I grew more and more distant, at night I buried myself under my blankets to blot out the sky, in the day I moved in fear of the heavens. I couldn't see them, but the prickling in my mind told me that they could still see me no matter how I hid.

I didn’t know it at the time, but I was driving my mother to madness. She took her own life that winter, not knowing that in doing so she only further cemented my own madness. I became worse, so much so that my own father had me committed to an asylum at the age of eleven.

But it wasn’t enough.

Whenever I closed my eyes I saw them, the thousand glowing spots that seemed to draw inexorably nearer with every passing hour. I can feel them in my mind, hear them in the shadows that lurk in the corners of my vision. And at night they scream, not with words, but in hatred for all things bright and kind. Something must have turned them, made them this way. For how could creation be turned so far on its head? What terrible fate could have made them so?

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I had to know more, when I was fourteen I slipped out while the guards were changing positions. My bare feet had slapped the bare tile flooring, the sounds echoing through the silent halls like the slow beating of some twisted heart, but all I could hear was the rushing of the blood in my ears.

My eyes burned as I forced them to remain open for every time I blinked I saw them, those hateful eyes that stared at me from the heavens. Or was it hell?

Maybe the Earth was already damned, I knew that I was. Somewhere deep inside that hateful gaze had left its mark. And it swirled and burned like the eternal flame.

I had continued on, I made it outside at last and looked up. I saw no stars, the night was overcast and the rain came shortly after. I had screamed in impotent rage at the missed opportunity to settle things once and for all, the guards must have heard me as they bundled me back into my isolated cell soon after. The sting of their blows like the fall of feathers upon my numbed skin.

That was six years ago. I have quieted my mind, learned to shut out the scratching in the back of my thoughts. That silent screeching that sounded as grating as nails across slate.

I can't sleep though, even after all the years that had passed I struggled. I am on special medication, most nights I am knocked out with sedatives that force some semblance of rest upon my body, but it isn't sleep. Not really. Not the kind that the body craves so ardently.

I find my mind wandering, thoughts of my parents and the life that was making me feel sorrow deeper than any I had experienced before. It is in the depths of this sorrow that I write this memoir. I don't want the world to remember me as the crazy kid that screamed about eyes in the sky. If I am going to be remembered I will make the proof.

I learned that my father passed last week from the cancer. He never even told me he was sick, but I should have known. His last will and testament named me as the inheritor of everything he had. His letter telling me he had finally forgiven me, but I tore it into a thousand pieces, enraged. I refused to forgive him, if he had only been there for mom instead of drunk. No, he wasn’t going to get away that easily if I could help it.

I had shaken my head at that. No time for such sallow thoughts, I needed to see if he had sent it. My hands delved through the approved contents as one of my handlers watched. This one was new. They were weak willed, alone and untrained. They made easy prey, I stashed them in the large vent with the others and made my way outside. I would not be deterred, the sky was clear and the sun was setting. The sky blood red like my hands.

I was running, it felt good to be free once more. The open air so much fresher than that which I had breathed while captive. The bare dirt tickled my pale toes and the branches that whipped across my thin hospital gown felt like the impotent beatings of the guards. But I truly felt none of it this time, the white and silver form of the telescope was light in my hands as I moved silently as a ghost. It felt so much smaller than I had remembered, but it would show me the truth despite this.

I knew I wasn’t crazy, if I was crazy then why would the stars have chosen me to be their avatar?

I knew what I had to do. I only needed one more glimpse of the stars, and I am telling you I am going to do it.

The light will make me one, the light will make me whole. The light, into the light I will ascend us.

I write in this notebook not to apologise for the things I have done, but to tell you that I will look into that light at least once more. I will laugh in the faces of those dark entities that seem to torment my very soul. I won't let them take me, I won't let them. I won't let them.

The sun is set and the clouds have gone. The telescope is pointed to the great northern star once more and my mind shivers in anticipation. I can hear them already, feel their scratching in my mind.

Tonight is the night. I answer their call. I will not go silently into that void, but instead rage against the eyes that shine from the darkness. I leave this note to tell my story in the case that I am unable. My sticky hands have made this a chore, but it is the most minor of inconveniences.

It is time. I feel them even now. Calling, watching. Endless hate born of ages of misery.

I will be with them now. I have to see, just one more time.

End of Story