Look at me. Don’t look at me. Look at me. Don’t look at me. Don’t see me.

If you look, you’re mine. I both love and hate that moment. It hurts my feelings when people scream. The hurt makes me feel justified when I eat their eyeballs and their tongues. Rude jerks. I’m not that ugly. My eyes are just like goats’ eyes. Nature made our eyes this way. Goats aren’t evil. I… might be evil.

You take the last bus from the city, the only bus I ever meet. It’s easy in my long dark coat to slip into the hurried commuter crowd. You’re the one who stands out, with your blue hair and your hoodie, among the suits. Everyone else heads to the parking lot to hide away in their cars, their recirculated air. They rush back to their houses and families. Only you walk alone. Or as now, with me beside you.

You’ve taken this bus twelve days out of the last thirteen, human I think of as Soft Hair. I don’t know what your face looks like, because your head is always bent over your phone, half covered by a fall of straight hair. I only see the outline of your nose and small chin.

I follow you from the first time you step off the bus at night. Or at least the first time I spot you. I suppose you could have been around before. People I don’t see don’t exist for me. People behind walls, in moving vehicles, far off places, sunshine—they aren’t real. Only lonely night people live in the world I walk through.

I trail behind you for the first week. You seem tired and sad. Your shoulders droop and you listen to sad music through little strings that connect your phone to your ears. If you glanced over your shoulder at me, I’d move closer, gradually closer and closer behind you. Maybe I’d catch up with you the first night, maybe I’d drag the process out. The anticipation is more fun than the actual eating of eyeballs, which honestly are not especially yummy. Sometimes people don’t come out the next night, and escape me, and that’s all right, too.

But you never turn around. It’s frustrating. You look tense when I see you through the window of the arriving bus. Your shoulders hunch if people crowd you. You relax once you’re alone, walking the packed-earth road to your house. I suppose you can’t hear me with your music-things in your ears, but do you not feel my darksome aura? Does my ominous presence not make your spine tingle with crawling dread?!

You are insensitive.

On your unlucky-number-seventh night of bus-arrival, I start walking beside you. You tense a little, but don’t look up. I know where you live, an old house that I never paid attention to before because whoever else lives there doesn’t come out at night. The third time I pass your house I say, “Bye,” as you turn aside, but you don’t look around. Maybe you can’t hear me with the music in your ears.

The following night I say more loudly, “See you tomorrow,” and you make a vague, surprised noise like a goat snorting. The pace of your steps changes for a second, as if you hesitated.

The night after that, I tell you, “Good-night,” and you mutter, “…night” in return. Your voice is soft, like your hair. But you still don’t look at me. I make myself keep walking. I don’t want to rouse your suspicions, not yet. It’s novel, drawing the hunt out as long as this.

Your sixth time walking beside me, halfway between the bus stop and your home, you say suddenly, “What music do you like?”

This flummoxes me, as I’m not expecting you to speak—you haven’t acknowledged my presence at all the other nights, except when I spoke first—much less ask a question about me. One I don’t have an answer for.

Of course I’ve heard music. Through open car windows mostly, snatches of melody whisked away on the wind. Sometimes in summer people play music outside in their gardens, although less and less often. Now more people listen to those little machines in their ears, like you have.

I have keen hearing. I can hear your music, faintly. A woman with a high, small voice sings about being sad and alone. Your music makes me uncomfortable.

“Not this kind,” I say, and you twitch, one hand raising toward your ear before dropping back to your phone.

You scroll through a list of some sort before unplugging your ear device.

A voice washes over me, rich and warm as summer shadows. Oh, this is much better. This is… nice.

I’m not used to nice things. Warmth, softness. Suddenly I want to reach out and touch your hair. I want to know if it’s as smooth as it looks. I want to see your face.

But then this would be over. No more walks, no more music. Anyway, touching you before you look, before you scream, that’s against the rules. Although now that I think about it, I don’t know where those rules came from. No one told me; I just know.

“I like this,” I say, and the sentiment sounds too big.

“Allison Russell,” you murmur. “I love her voice. And her lyrics. They’re like poetry.”

“I don’t know what poetry is,” I tell you, and you stumble. I’m not sure if the little surprised sound you make is a response to my answer or to tripping.

“Well, it’s words arranged in a certain way to… to have rhythm, or images, or, like, layers of meaning? It’s a way to express feelings or ideas that are hard to get into words. I guess that’s why it’s hard to define.” You make a sound, a tiny crumbled-off fragment of a laugh. I don’t hear laughs very often, and never from you.

“I’m not very good at explaining stuff like this,” you say, as if concluding. But then you add, “I’ll bring you some poems tomorrow, okay?”

“Okay,” I breathe.

We don’t say anything more until we reach your house. As you unlock the front door, you repeat, “Tomorrow.”

As if I would forget.

The next night you say, “Hi,” without waiting for me to speak first.

“Hi,” I echo. It’s not a word I use. It’s a word I know, a word I’ve heard, often, but never directed at myself. It’s small and friendly. Hi.

You take out your ear things. Tonight your music has no voices, no words. It sounds a bit like rain.

“I made you a little book.” You take a small rectangle of folded paper out of your pocket. “I copied some of my favorite poems. You can tell me if you like any of them, then I can pick more. If you want.”

You hold out the book. As hesitantly as I’ve ever done anything, I put out my hand and take it. My nails are heavy and black but yours are blue and torn and you don’t comment.

I touch the little black marks, the soft paper. I’ve seen letters on billboards and magazines, but I’ve never touched them. “I don’t know how to read.”

“Oh.” You sound pained. Not in the way people sound pained when I eat their eyeballs. This sound is new to me, yet the pain is familiar.

“I can read you a couple, if you want.”

“Yes,” I say quickly. “Please.” I’ve seen people reading, but never close enough or long enough that I figured out how it worked. I hand the paper back to you, a little reluctant because I like the way it feels on my fingertips, and the way it smells like paper and ink and your skin. You smell of cinnamon and tea.

You walk until you’re standing under a street lamp. The lamps are far apart, so the circles of light they cast don’t overlap. No one walks at night around here and all the drivers have gotten home. For the first time I wonder, what is it like in the daytime, this neighborhood? Are there people out gardening and walking dogs? There aren’t so many houses in this area at the edge of the city: a few old places like yours, and some new construction occupied by people who only go places in cars. It’s a little peninsula of the city poking out into the woods where I hide in shadows.

I stand just outside the circle of light. If someone does drive past, they won’t see me. Only you, with your head bent and the yellow light turning your hair violet, like evening. What would a human think of you standing there, alone in the night?

“Okay, this poem is my favorite one.” You clear your throat. “I won’t be offended if you don’t like it, though. Poetry is subjective.”

I don’t know what that means, but I say, “Okay.”

You clear your throat again, shift your weight. Then you read.
“In our eyes, the tears are always there

Waiting to be spilled again

Wanting to flow afresh as if 

any flood could wash away our grief.

Could transform, transmute—

Transfigure yourself, alchemical heart

Replace your tear-dimmed eyes

With eyes of hope and gold

Calcine the stagnant tears…”

Thinking about eyes of hope and gold, I lose track of your words and only catch hold of them again as you finish, “Joy cannot be nourished on tears. Replace the fear-dimmed human eye with gold, with animal iris amber fierce, and we shall make sweetness from this.”

“Animal iris amber fierce,” I whisper to myself, trying to trap the words in my mouth so I can lick them later. Words are delicious; how did I never know this? No wonder humans use so many.

“So you liked it?” you ask.

I’ve been staring blindly into the night (I can see in the dark, but right now I’m not looking) and as I turn my attention back to you, your head dips as if you were watching me through your hair.

But you don’t scream so I must be mistaken.

“I should go,” you say. “My granny—I moved here to help her—she’ll worry if I’m late. Next time I’ll tell her I might come home a bit later.”

“Next time,” I say.

I walk beside you to your house. When you crack open your front door, you pause and turn a little and for a moment, with some unfamiliar sensation that hurts my chest, I think you’re about to look at me.

But your hair still veils your face as you tell me, “Have a good night.”

“You, too,” I murmur. “You have a good night, too.”

Night fourteen. One day out of every seven, there is no bus. Nothing for you to walk home from. I don’t know what to do with myself.

It’s stupid. Of course I don’t wait at the bus stop every night. I can go other places, went other places before I met you. A week ago there was no bus and I went to a place deep in the woods, where men in a shed were making things with strange chemicals, and when one of them came outside to eat some of the chemicals, I followed behind him closer and closer until he turned and his mouth fell open, teeth all dirty and rotted, and I gobbled his tongue before he could scream.

If I ate your eyes and your tongue you would always be with me. But you wouldn’t be able to read to me then. You wouldn’t say “hi” or “tomorrow.”

I hate this thought, you not speaking to me again. I hate that I don’t know what to do tonight without your music, your poetry, your voice.

I never minded quiet before. I say aloud to myself, “I like poetry.” It sounds like, I like you.

Maybe I will find some of those dark glasses people wear in sunlight. Then if you looked at me, if you ever did look up, it wouldn’t count. You wouldn’t see my eyes, you wouldn’t scream, you wouldn’t hate me.

I could know what your face looks like, and maybe I could touch your hair.

Editor’s Note

Writers often go straight for the scary stuff when writing a tale, but people forget that horror and darkness can be used to show the light. This tale is so well done and so hearty. It speaks of the heart-stopping power of words and poetry. There’s a lot to love here (and such a subtle wee twist of distress at the end).

Read the interview with Mir Rainbird.