Have you ever paid attention to how the toys blink in Toy Story? They kind of blink one eye at a time. It’s called “offset blinking,” and according to Google, it’s used in cinema to signify an out-of-place character.
I don’t think I can ever watch another Pixar movie again.
It was my uncle who was “taken” first. He’d been living with us for a while. “Just til he gets back on his feet,” my mother always said, but he had trouble walking sometimes and was a little hard to understand when he spoke. Dad had stopped keeping a six-pack in his garage mini-fridge after Uncle Jack moved in.
He might have been gone for months before we noticed. Maybe it wasn’t Uncle Jack that moved in in the first place. All I know is that, about six months in, strange shit started happening.
At first, it was stupid stuff. Lights would flicker and electronics would stop working while he was in the room. It wasn’t often enough to be obvious that it was because of him, but it was annoying to be in the middle of watching Justice League and have the TV cut out just as Lex Luthor was about to reveal The Flash’s secret identity or have the channel change to My Little Pony. Sometimes the clock radio in his room would come on by itself at night. Dad said it was because it was old and had bad wires, but I slept in the next room, and something about hearing Wild Thing at three in the morning freaked me out every time.
It wasn’t just plugged-in electronics that were faulty, either. One time, I used a calculator to do my math homework–I was never very good at division–and when I brought it in the next day, Mrs. Black said all of the answers were wrong. I wanted to tell her they couldn’t be, but that would mean telling her I cheated. So I kept my mouth shut and asked my friend, Kenny, if I could borrow his over the weekend. I had to trade him my Blastoise card for the weekend so he knew I’d give it back, but I decided I’d rather risk that than bringing back another bad math grade on my report card.
It was my mom that started having trouble sleeping first. She always said she had insomnia as a kid, so she wasn’t too worried at first, but I could tell she was exhausted. There were bags under her eyes, and it took longer for her to do chores than it used to. I heard her and my dad talking about it when they thought I was busy watching TV, but even though I had Teen Titans on, the sound was from The Fairly Odd Parents, and Uncle Jack was snoring in the recliner, which was making it hard to focus on either story.
“Abby, come on. It’s been days.”
“Have you noticed the birds have stopped singing?”
“What? You’re not making any sense.”
“I’ve been up with the sunrise every day for a week, Mark. The birds don’t sing anymore. Not here. I didn’t even notice until I went for a walk yesterday. It was almost deafening a block away after not hearing it for so long. What’s wrong with the birds?”
“You’re hysteric, Abs. You need to sleep. Please. Take melatonin or benadryl or something tonight. Your body is wearing out.”
“I’m not hysteric, Mark. I’m clearer than ever. If I sleep, I’ll be next.”
“Next for what?”
“Look. Look at that squirrel. Did you see it blink?”
“Abigail–”
“You know they’re probably getting a divorce, right?”
I hadn’t even noticed my sister sit down next to me. Her fingers scratched at where her eyebrow should have been, vainly looking for purchase in the form of any hair she may have missed during her own insomnia-fueled pulling session.
“What?”
“Mom and Dad. Dad’s mad that Uncle Jack is here. They’ve been fighting a lot.”
“Is that why you’ve been pulling again?”
Her hand quickly covered her missing eyebrows. “Is it obvious?”
“You might want to look in the mirror. Cover it up before dad sees you.”
“Fuck.” She moved toward the bathroom, quietly as possible, probably glad that our parents were too focused on their own problems to notice her yet. I could’ve told on her for cursing, but Uncle Jack had just woken up, and as he rubbed his eyes and stumbled out of the room, Robin revealed that he had been Red X the entire time. I had more important things to worry about.
It was a week later that Dad started acting funny.
It wasn’t unusual for him to come home late acting like Uncle Jack, but when he walked in at 4 P.M., way sooner than he should have been off work, holding onto the doorframe to steady himself, I got scared. At the time, I thought it was because he was drunk, and Dad wasn’t always the nicest when he’d been drinking, but there was something different about this fear. Something primal.
He stumbled into the living room and sat down opposite Uncle Jack. The TV was playing pure static, but they both seemed completely enthralled. I was more confused. Dad and Uncle Jack were never in the same room together. Dad couldn’t stand him. What had changed?
I was about to go in to change the channel when I was pulled backward so quickly that I would have fallen on my ass if my mom hadn’t pulled me against her. At the same time, she clapped a hand over my mouth. I was in too much shock to fight her as she turned me around to face her. She released my mouth and, at the same time, placed a finger over her own.
“Shhhhhh.” She waved me into the kitchen.
I followed her. The blinds had been shut in the dining room, so I hadn’t gotten a good look at her, but in the light of the kitchen, I saw how bad she looked. Her eyes were wide, almost lidless, and completely bloodshot. She looked like she still hadn’t slept. I knew she had, since I’d seen her passed out on the couch when Dad and Uncle Jack were gone the day before, but it couldn’t have been more than a couple of hours.
“They can only get you if you notice,” she hissed.
“Mom? Are you okay?”
“Don’t notice them!” Her whisper was somehow even more unnerving that time. “Nothing is wrong. Everything is normal. It’s the birds. They’re infecting us. They’re going to get us all. No one is safe. But you don’t notice. You can’t notice. Nothing can happen if you don’t notice.”
“Mom, have you slept at all? Dad said–”
“He’s one of them now! You can’t sleep! He noticed! Everything is fine.”
She wasn’t making any sense, and she hadn’t blinked once in the time we’d been standing in the kitchen. I was more worried about her than I was about the odd behavior of my dad and Uncle Jack, who were still–
I couldn’t hear the TV anymore.
“Whatcha doing there, Mikey?”
I whirled around. My dad and Uncle Jack were standing behind me. They blinked in unison, but something was wrong. I couldn’t quite place it. They were both standing straight now. They didn’t seem drunk anymore. They seemed…
Different.
The fear rose in me again, but mom said nothing.
“Mom’s… Mom’s acting weird,” I said, talking without thinking. “I don’t think she’s slept. I was trying to–”
“Yes, Abigail. You should sleep.”
“I’m okay, Mark. Thank you. I was just telling Mikey he should listen to the birds. They sound beautiful today, don’t they?”
My dad cocked his head. “Yes. They do.”
They blinked again, and my stomach turned.
“Is there something wrong with your eyes, Dad?”
“No, Mikey. It’s just an eyelash. I’m fine.”
There was a whisper from Uncle Jack, still standing behind him. I barely caught it.
“They’ll all be fine soon.”
My mom smiled, and Dad and Uncle Jack smiled back. They turned, still in unison, and walked back to the living room.
“Everything is normal,” my mom whispered in my ear.
After that, I started noticing things. There wasn’t a gradual shift. I had trouble sleeping that night, and the dreams I had were all about people who weren’t themselves. They’d blink like the toys in Toy Story, and as they did, flakes would fall off to reveal a bird-monster underneath. I went to school groggy and in an overall bad mood the next day, but despite how tired I felt, my eyes were wide open for the first time.
There were no birds–not just no birds singing, but the hawk I saw overhead didn’t cry, and the crows on the side of the road didn’t caw. I turned to my friend, Bobby.
“What’s up with the birds today, man?”
He paused as if to listen. “They do sound cool, huh?”
I was about to tell him that he was nuts because the birds hadn’t made a sound when he blinked.
I caught it this time. My dreams had shown me what I was missing. His right eye was just a little behind his left in the motion. I swallowed the bile rising in my throat and nodded. “Yeah, man. Way cooler than normal.”
We rode the rest of the way in silence, but at every stop, I watched the other kids getting on the bus. They didn’t always blink before they walked past me, but some did. About half of them were wrong.
School was the same. Everyone acted normal. There was no obvious sign that half of my classmates had been taken over by whatever was happening. They talked and laughed like they always did, although I did notice, throughout the day, a few people stumbling on their way to class. By the time we’d have another period together, though, they’d be back to themselves.
Except they all blinked wrong.
At lunch, I heard Susie mention it to Tonya. “I don’t know what’s wrong with Jenn,” she said. “She’s been saying she has an eyelash in her eye all day. I told her to go see the nurse. Like, after three classes, it can’t just be an eyelash. She probably has like, a sty or something. But she just kept saying ‘everything is fine.’ She’s getting on my fucking nerves.”
I remembered what my mom had said. “Nothing can happen if you don’t notice.” I thought about saying something to Susie, but for all I knew, my mom had just been rambling. She hadn’t slept properly in weeks. And I’d had a crush on Susie for three years. I didn’t want to embarrass myself.
By the end of the next class, I’d wished I had. Susie stumbled into me. We both fell to the floor, much to the amusement of our peers. I’d probably be worried about the “Mikey and Susie sitting in a tree” jeers that would follow us for the rest of the year if I wasn’t so focused on her eyes.
She blinked, and I can’t quite explain how, but I knew it wasn’t the same blink that yje others were doing. This time, as her left and then right eye closed and reopened, it was directed at me. They knew I knew. “Sorry, Mikey.”
“N-no problem, Susie. Happens all the time.” I helped her gather her things, trying to pretend I hadn’t noticed. “Gotta be careful of that lose tile coming out of Mr. Self’s room.”
Her laugh gave me chills. It was too genuine. “Thanks for your help! See you later?” Left eye, right eye.
“Sure.”
I watched her leave, and then I booked it. I didn’t care that the day was only half over. I didn’t care that deviating from the schedule would give me away. As I ran, the lights in the building flickered behind me, and I could have sworn that everyone stopped to stare. I needed leave.
I needed to get home.
I slammed the door behind me so hard that it made the lights flash, not thinking about who might be home but making sure to lock it behind me. I knew my sister had stayed home sick with Mom today, but if they needed to keep their cover, Dad and Uncle Jack should still be out for a few more hours. It should be pretty safe.
I started for the stairs, figuring I should pack a go-bag, when I saw my sister standing at the top.
“You’re home early,” she said, rubbing her eye. She must have just gotten up.
“Yeah, I, uh, I must have caught whatever bug you have. Wasn’t feeling great. Are you doing any better?”
“Huh? Oh, yeah, I’m okay. I was mostly just dizzy earlier. I’m better now. Just need to get this stupid eyelash out of my eye.”
I froze, two stairs from the bottom.
My sister had trichotillomania. It’s a hair pulling disorder, and for her, stress and insomnia make it worse. It’s been a big deal for years, and it’s one of the main reasons she and my dad fight. That’s why she never has any eyebrows.
It’s also why she hasn’t had eyelashes since she was nine.
“I just remembered: I left my backpack in the kitchen. I need to grab that.”
She cocked her head at me. She stopped rubbing her eye. “Wild Thing” started playing on every radio in the house. “What’s wrong, Mikey?” She blinked. Left eye, right eye.
“Nothing! I’m just–I’m just not feeling good. That’s all.”
She took a step toward me. “Do you want to hear the birds again, Mikey?”
“Wh-what?”
“Do you want to hear the birds again?”
I was still searching for an answer when my mother appeared behind Liz with a knife. She plunged it into my sister’s back before I had time to process what was going on. My sister turned to face her attacker and was met with a firm shove that sent her tumbling down the stairs. I let out a sob as I watched her fall, even though I knew, whatever that thing was, it wasn’t my sister.
As the light left her eyes, the music faded out.
The blood pooling at the base of the stairs was thicker, darker than any blood should be. It smelled sweet, and it made me want to throw up. Whatever had taken over my sister had died facing me, left eye half-closed and mouth wide open.
I couldn’t scream as I watched my mother kill what used to be my sister, but when I looked at my mother again, I did. She looked even worse than she had when I left, but it wasn’t the bags under her eyes or pale skin that got to me. As I followed the trail of blood up her face, I could see that my mother no longer had any eyelids.
She seemed even more inhuman than whatever had taken my sister as she stared at me, chest heaving, far too gone to fully process that she had just murdered what used to be her only daughter.
She approached me, and I stepped backwards, slipping slightly in the too-dark blood still coming from the body of what used to be my sister.
“Don’t run, Mikey,” my mother said. “I figured it out. They can’t get you if you don’t close your eyes. We’ll be safe. You and me.” She pulled a switchblade from her pocket and flipped it open. “I was too late for Liz. But there’s still time for you. We can stay safe. Together.”
I tried to run, but I tripped over my sister’s body. My mother was on top of me before I knew what was happening. “Shhhhhh. It’s gonna be okay, baby. I’ve got you.” She held my eye closed with one hand as I felt the knife press into the lid. “I’ve got you.”
The pain was like nothing I’d ever felt before. I’d never known what truly excruciating pain was like before that moment. I could feel everything, and it was so close to my brain that I could hear my skin being removed from my body. That sound will never leave me. I tried to fight her off, but my vision was blurred by the blood pooling into my eye, and I was in shock. As she started on my left eye, I could feel myself passing out. The last thing I heard was the door bursting open before everything went black.
I woke up in a hospital room. They told me my mom had had a psychotic break, killed my sister, my dad, and Uncle Jack. She’d seen the Alfred Hitchcock movie, The Birds, as a kid, and it had really messed her up. She started seeing flashes of the movie when she closed her eyes, and the longer she went without sleeping, the worse it got. Eventually, she decided that the only way to keep herself safe was to make sure she never slept again. She thought she could “save” me by doing the same to me.
When the police tried to take her into custody, she said she’d die before she became one of them. She stabbed herself in the throat with the same knife she’d been using to remove my eyelids.
Apparently, they got to me fast enough to save my eyelids. I don’t know much about how the medical stuff works, but when I woke up, I had bandages on my face, and they told me it would hurt for a while, but I should regain almost normal blinking function.
My right eye, though, given the fact that that eyelid had been completely removed, would probably always be a little behind my left, though.
I smiled grimly. At least I had an excuse to give if anyone noticed.
Not like those other fools.
Eyelashes. Ha. It was always a terrible excuse. But no one had taken the time to really study the humans before we started. We were too hungry.
I know how it works, of course. Michael’s mother never had all of it right, but who can keep things straight when you’re running off so little sleep? It wouldn’t do me any good to tell you all of the details, anyway. It would ruin our fun.
But we’re out there.
And now you know about us.
That’s what matters.
Keep an eye out. Watch your family, your friends. Pay attention to how they blink. It’s a subtle difference, but who knows? Maybe you’ll get a head start.
But we’ll get you all, eventually.
You’ll know we’re there when the birds stop singing.