I sit alone in a bustling library, scrolling through my phone—earphones in. It’s not a crowded area today, with a few seats still unoccupied and a few people walking in and out. I sat in the lounge area, a soft mini couch cushioning my weight, and a quiet murmur hung about the place. The air was light—not too much light to be relaxing, but light enough to let your guard down. Then I felt it. The uncomfortable feeling when you know that someone’s gaze is on you. I turned my attention to my bag, sneakily looking for the eyes that lingered their look upon me as I pretended to fumble inside it, as if searching for something. My gaze flew past the groups of people sitting around a table to the people studying at the individual desks, but no, still nothing. There’s no one staring at me, yet the feeling persists, slowly worsening. The feeling became more tangible, like those glares were pricking at every inch of my skin. At this point, I was frantic and panicking—hypervigilant about every movement near me, scrutinizing every sound and movement that may hint at the location of where the constant and immutable glare was coming from. The simple feeling of discomfort slowly turned into fear, building up like a volcano about to explode as my heart pounded against the walls of my chest.
A minute passed, and I felt a tingling sensation run down my spine—as if my primal and pre-evolution instincts could detect an unrelenting threat to my very own existence. My fight or flight was kicking in, but I fought the urge to stand up and run, fearing the weirded-out looks from people if I suddenly ran out of the library like a crazy person without a reason more than the sense of something so damning—a danger imminent and unavoidable. Instead, I froze where I sat, my hands shivering and my nape sweating coldly. Right then and there, there was utter silence, and I saw it.
First, it was in the furthest area of the library in my vision—the dark areas between shelves that are illuminated by a broken, flickering ceiling light. It was an unimaginable, inexplainable thing that I can only describe as a tangible version of feeling gloomy. The area around it is covered in a hazy, barely noticeable smokescreen that almost looks like an overlay from a photo, still and unmoving. Its maw, or what I would assume is its mouth, slowly thinned into a perfectly straight line, so accurately that it looks like it was drawn using a ruler and a mass of oil spilled in the ocean—it shimmers, like gasoline spilled with water on the road under direct sunlight, swirling with a myriad of colors comparable to a river of rainbows.
The moment its maw moved, the feeling of being watched became more intense, as if a thousand eyes were all around me, staring—no, glaring. I felt that I was being deduced, as if heaven’s judgment had come upon me. I sat as the creature scrambled its way towards me, its limbs twisting and turning in ways that would not make it possible to move, its body flickering and vibrating like a car on a hazard, and the sound it made as it moved—the most beautiful tune I have and will ever hear. Angelic, but uncanny—definitely nothing on this planet can create that sound. It’s almost like bait, luring me to close my eyes and lulling me into a sense of security and peace. Yet I was frozen—in fear, shock, and repulse. Too paralyzed to even move a muscle. After what seemed like hours, it reached me, rumbling before me. It slowly lifted one of its appendages towards my face, towards my eyes. Its substance-like body suddenly turned into a sharp, piercing object, shaped like it was made to extract something round. It very slowly reached my left eye, and I blinked.
Then, in a split second, there was nothing. Not the appendage, not the smoke screen, not the thing. Only the shimmer floating in the air, like it was meant to be there, remained. In the ten minutes that I sat frozen, I felt fear and panic to no greater degree than in my whole life. After what felt like hours, I was released from the frozen state I was in. I was gasping for air, my eyes were dry and irritated, and my back was covered in cold sweat. I took a glance at the music playing in my earphones as all my senses came back to me, and the last song that was playing wasn’t even finished, and only three minutes had passed. I wasn’t breathing, moving, or blinking in those three minutes, and the library’s ambiance came back, and as if it never left, it continued to be light with quiet murmurs. Not caring for what other people may think, I grabbed everything in one swoop and ran out as fast as I could, catching my breath while I sprinted.
To this day, I have no idea what happened to the library. I still come there sometimes, but I always avoid that floor. Whatever that thing is, it left me with a constant feeling of darkness. The sun doesn’t shine the same anymore, and the trees sway uncannily. Glimpses of shadows appear and disappear quickly into my peripherals. I don’t talk to my friends anymore, and my family’s concern feels puny in the face of this gloominess. I don’t think that creature is related to the library, because sometimes, even when I’m far away, I can feel its appendages caressing the inside of my left eye.