Day Sixteen: The Monkey with No Eyes

I am sitting alone in the cafeteria. Dr. Night is quite overload with work, so he couldn’t accompany me to lunch. However, three nurses are standing in each corner, watching me with hawk-like eyes. I don’t think I would do something that would set them off, but I guess it is a precaution.

I glance down at my fig pudding and study it, making sure there is no deadly, pointy object hiding under the beige, fluffy cream. Carefully, still thinking there might be something in there; I scooped a tiny amount on my spoon and drop it upon my tongue. I don’t feel anything poking my gum, but I am still going to stay on my toes.

I glance around and see the mute boy sitting a table across from mine, reading Great Expectations. I lean forward to get a closer look, but then I see two pair of emeralds rip away from the thick novel. Quickly, I turn away. I don’t want to appear like a stalker. Strange…Why should I care about what he thinks of me?

My eyes shift over toward the table again, and I see Ana sits down next to the mute boy and begin moving her lips. The boy peeks over his novel and makes little nods and gestures back to Ana. I wonder what they are talking about. I thought. With curiosity, I quietly walk over there and try to appear invisible to their eyes, yet be able to hear what they are saying.

As I am walking, my right foot gets caught on something slippery and I am tumbling down to the tiles floor. I land in the white puddle and get my patient gown all wet. I can’t feel my right foot. It really hurts. A bone in my foot feels like it is broken right down the middle, and I can’t help it and cry. I see the mute boy’s and Ana’s eyes glue onto me, but I don’t care. I just want to get up, but my right foot won’t let me.

Suddenly, I feel a pair of arms slip under my leg and lift me up from the spilled milk. I also hear the clicking of footsteps. I rub the unspilled tears out of my eyes and glance up. I see the mute boy’s face up close. I see a small scar slithering just below his right eye all the way to the start of his cheekbone. It is in a shape of crescent moon. I also see a single, black highlight in his white hair, hanging a little over his left eye. I shift my eyes over to my right and see Ana staring at me with her dark eyes.

“That was some hard fall you took,” I hear her whisper to me. “But don’t worry; we are taking to you Nurse Astrid.”

I nod in response and glance back up at the boy.

“Hey,” I begin to say. “I never got the chance to say thank you for saving my life two days ago. So thank you, sir.”

A shy, small smile cracks in his face as he nods in silent. I see him mouth the words, ‘You’re welcome.’ and then he sets his eyes back ahead. I lay there, resting in his arms as I see Nurse Astrid walking toward our direction. I see her face distorted into the oh-no-what-did-Kylie-try-to-kill-herself-with-this-time expression. I hate that face so much. She stops in front of Ana, the mute boy, and me and glues her eyes on me.

“What happened this time?” Nurse Astrid asked in an emotionless voice.

“I slipped on some spilled milk,” I answer in embarrassment. I could feel the heat suddenly rising in my cheeks.

“Yeah, Uriel and I think her foot might be broken,” Ana answers. “She looked like she was in serious pain, and she was struggling to get up from the ground.”

So Uriel is the mute boy’s name, I thought. I was right.

Without speaking another word, Astrid leads the way as I grasp onto Uriel’s arms and glance ahead. I really don’t want to be in Astrid’s office again. Her office gives me the creeps for some odd reason. Maybe it is the fact that her room seems so small and tight, making people who enter in her office claustrophobic. Or maybe it is the fact that Snicker candy wrappers are blanket over the carpeted floor in a strange pattern. It can also be that the walls are so white and blasé with no flaws. Maybe the clock hanging on the wall doesn’t have a second hand. Only a minute and hour hand. Or maybe worse of all, the thing that sends my paranoia skyrocketing is the monkey-carved coconut that meditates on the edge of her desk that stares at Astrid’s visitors with hallow sockets.

With my paranoia acting up, we arrive at the entrance of Astrid’s office. She shoves her sixth key on the key ring and twists it, until she hears a click in her ears. She then opens it, and we enter in her office as I tremble. My paranoia is being such a violent earthquake shaking my insides right now.

Then I see him…the monkey with no eyes staring at me…

Oh God, I feel his hallow eyes staring right through me, even though it can’t possibly being staring at me. I mean it’s not real, right? Yeah, it can’t possibly have a beating heart.

I don’t know why, but ever since my third day in the facility when I first encountered the monkey with no eyes, it always made me superstitious about it. It is such a strange statue. I developed my paranoia of it when I first laid my eyes on it.

Uriel set me down on the chair as the monkey stares right dead in my eyes as I stare back at it empty sockets. My grip grows tighter on the arms as the monkey king continues to stare at me, trying to pierce my soul with his hard, sharp glare. The room seems to melt around me as if the sun was only an inch away from the puny office and is burning everything, and I can suddenly hear the slow ticking of the clock right in my ears as if it is whispering right in it. I can feel the monkey’s empty sockets still staring at me, so I keep my focus on it.

“Kylie,” I hear a voice said, but I don’t answer back.

“Kylie.”

“Kylie.”

“Kylie.”

No matter how much the voice called my name, my eyes can’t tear away from the monkey with no eyes. I don’t know why, but I just keep staring into it. Maybe I want to prove this inanimate object that I am not afraid of him. Or maybe I am just simply an animal caught under his gaze.

“KYLIE!”

I then tear my sight away from the monkey and set my eyes on Nurse Astrid.

“What?” I ask.

“I need to check out your foot. So just hold still, okay?”

“Okay.”

I fix my eyes on the monkey and see something strange. A black butterfly is perched on top of the monkey’s head. Then the blind monkey’s mouth began to open and a huge black wing covered in vermilion blood begins to slowly squeeze out of the inanimate object’s mouth. I stand up to run, but a swarm of flying black butterflies glides over me and knock me down back to the chair. Before I can even blink, the butterflies wrap around both of my arms and legs and hold me down. I try to break free, but the group of butterflies is impossible to break free.

Then I see one of my inhuman stalkers towering over me with his huge, black, bloodied-up butterfly wings covering his whole body like a cloak. His white teeth glittering along with his azure skin blazingly and exquisitely under the bleached light. His turquoise hair flowing down to his chest as black sockets where his eyes are supposed to be staring at me with a malevolent smile lingering across his blue face.

“Hello there, Kylie.” He answers as a black tongue plays along his azure lips.

“Butterfly…”

“Awww…isn’t that a cute nickname for me. Anyway, let’s get this over with.

As he approaches me in an agile movement, I sit in the chair paralyzed for I know what he is going to do, but I am trapped. Astrid can’t see him, so there is nothing I can do, but endure it.