Eyes In The Wallpaper

 The house didn’t just have walls; it had pores. At night, the wallpaper, a peeling, jaundiced floral pattern, seemed to sweat a thin, oily sheen. Elias sat in the center of his living room, a single bulb flickering overhead like a dying heartbeat.

I always feel like somebody’s watching me.

For three weeks, the sensation had been a physical weight, a pressure against the back of his skull like the cold barrel of a pistol. He had checked the locks until his knuckles bled. He had stuffed towels under the floorboards and taped over every vent, every keyhole, every sliver of glass.

But privacy was a luxury for the living.

He turned his head sharply, his neck cracking in the silence. Nothing. Just the shadows stretching long, spindly fingers across the floorboards. But the air felt thick, charged with the musk of wet earth and rot.

"Who's there?" he rasped, his voice sounding thin and alien in the tomb-like quiet.

No answer. Only the rhythmic drip-drip-drip from the kitchen sink, a sound that morphed, in his fraying mind, into the cadence of heavy, labored breathing.

He looked at the mirror hanging on the far wall. It was tarnished, the silver backing bubbling away until his reflection looked like a man viewed through a cataract. As he stared, his reflection didn't blink when he did. It lingered a fraction of a second too long, a coy, jagged grin spreading across the glass-man’s face—a smile that revealed far too many teeth.

And I have no privacy.

Elias scrambled backward, his chair clattering to the floor. He lunged for the front door, clawing at the heavy iron deadbolts he’d installed himself. His fingers slipped on something slick—not dust, but a viscous, dark jelly coating the brass. It smelled of sulfur and stagnant pond water.

He hammered his fists against the wood, screaming for neighbors who weren’t there, for a God who had checked out of this zip code long ago. The house groaned, the foundation shifting with the sound of snapping ribs. The walls began to bleed that same oily, black sludge, bubbling up from the floorboards like tar.

Who’s playing tricks on me?

Elias spun around, backed against the door. The flickering bulb above finally popped, showering him in sparks and hot glass, plunging the room into a deep, velvety black.

In the sudden dark, he heard it: a wet, sucking sound, like a boot being pulled from deep mud, directly behind his left ear. A cold, damp breath fanned the hair on his neck. It smelled of a thousand funerals.

A hand—or something shaped like one, its fingers far too long and tipped with jagged, obsidian shards—curled slowly around his throat. It didn't squeeze immediately. It caressed, its touch searing his skin like dry ice.

"I see you, Elias," a voice whispered. It didn't come from the room; it vibrated inside his own marrow, a wet, rattling vibration. "I’ve always seen you. Behind your eyelids. Under your skin. In the gaps between your thoughts."

Elias tried to scream, but the hand tightened, and the black sludge on the walls surged forward, rushing toward him like a tide. It wasn't just watching; it was consuming. The walls weren't walls at all; they were the throat of the house, and he had finally reached the stomach.

As the wet, dark mass pulled him down into the floorboards, he felt a thousand needles prick his flesh—the sensation of eyes opening all over his body, looking inward.

The house fell silent. The front door remained locked.

Once again, there was a faint, rhythmic sound in the dark. Drip. Drip. Drip.

But it wasn't the sink. It was the sound of the house digesting, waiting for the next soul to notice the eyes in the wallpaper.