Glass Eyes - A short story and study in Poe

Glass eyes

(Originally found written in the journal of the institutionalized and criminally held person of Helry Wilsslossen and translated from its original language and form after the writer's passing.)

I stared into her face. Watching her, she was expressionless. And as I talked to her I wondered how long it had been since she had stopped smiling. She was no lost soul; she was, in that moment, the only lost soul. I watched her blank and blind face closely as I recited my lessons to her. I wondered if she was awake and listening or sleeping behind those vacant eyes again.
I paused to watch her wrinkles slither in their permanent frown.
And received a firm smack across the knuckles for it. Her aim, for being so blind was perfect. Painfully perfect.
She believed in education the way it used to be.
So I recited further, hurrying across the phrases so as not to receive another whack. Reciting, watching. Those dead and stern eyes. One crept slowly across the room. It always sweeps by me as if I'm not there. This time was no different. It swayed in it's pre-destined pattern and back across the room as if following a plane across some unseen horizon. She never looks anyone in the eye. It makes it hard to look her in the face when you talk to her. She's so creepy.
I've been taking lessons from her for about three months now. They say learning English is the hardest thing in the world. They say she's the best teacher and that she makes it easy.
As soon as I am good enough I will not take lessons from her anymore, I can't stand her eyes. One is a white glass marble and the other black glass. Some say someone switched one on her in the middle of the night; it was long ago and on a dare. Others say it was the doctor's idea, their way of warning the world of her evil.
She is evil too.
Just one time meeting her and you realize quickly how dark her soul must be.
She never has a kind word for anyone in the world. And when you cross her path an unearthly chill attaches itself to your spine for eternity in moments. As her hellish glare fixes upon you for those eternal moments, it seems as though you have fixed eyes upon hell and the devil, cruelty embodied. It's enough to stop a grown man in his tracks. And when it does stop you she wrenches back that arm of hers to clobber anyone in her way. She is her own seeing-eye dog, and she scares even vultures and pit-bulls.
I watcher her in her chair, the slow creak beneath us rose high in pitch and stifled every breath, every word. I choked on my lessons and ran screaming for the door. She sat there and stood the chair still turning her gaze to the sound of my running screaming lead-heavy feet. With her cold and angry gaze she shut the door before I could reach it. I could scream for help if I tried but it would be no use, not even the cats dared enter the realm of the old woman. I was on her territory, I was free game, I was helpless.
Cutting words, the blade in her sibilants and the bite in her phrases cut me down to the beast I was in her eyes. How dare I run from an old woman set upon helping me. I could hear the door lock of its own accord as she scolded me. Glass eyes wandering she rose from her captive seat and approached me with the nimble swiftness of a tiger. Claws and fangs at the ready. I tried to dodge. Intuitively she swiped the air where I was going and boxed my ear firmly enough to set me to the ground.
I told my self to calm down, to stay to my senses! I had to pay attention to her every move! "Imbecile!" How could I let my guard down so much so as to let her eyes catch glimpse of my knowledge. I knew she was evil and now she was aware that I knew!
I felt the uncontrollable urge to gouge out those glass and crust eyes of all-seeing hatred. With my bare hands I wanted to grab them and throw them to the pits of hell where they belonged. But she was the work of the devil and was imbued with the kind of true evil that senses such things. i needed to escape before she ripped the flesh from my bones and devoured all the evidence.
My body was soon to be her prey, my mind her playground. I could not let the devil's work consume me, I ran for the window. She clothes-lined me, causing me to fall forward into the tall panes of icicle-thin shards. I hit the window, luckily, with enough force to break it. In falling to the ground I thought only of how lucky I was to escape her fatal grip.
The witch-woman slew words at me but I made it to town before she could curse me with her foul speech.
I was a fool for wanting to learn from her. She is not the work of the devil, she is the devil, spewing her teaching upon the minds of the unsuspecting.
She had to be removed, one look at those eyes told of the torment she had caused.
Her skin was cracked and jagged like bark torn by metal teeth. Like shadows of dead trees lurking in the windy night, her limbs were deformed making instead branches which reached out in the night and grabbed small unsuspecting children's dreams to turn them into clawed nightmares.
Writing and festering her skin boils and cracks ready to turn to dusty white poison which she mixes in the water at night. She is determined to kill the town.
Her hair is a white-grey mass of not-hair. Rolled into it's knot behind her skull it leaves the public unsuspecting. But I know better, I have seen her put it on at hours untold. It is comprised of cob-webs and spider-poison. Infested with the netting of black-widows she keeps it close at hand to snatch up her young and tender prey and lure them to her dinner-table.
She is a sneaky one.
And worst of all are those eyes. The source of hell's evil itself, they sweep and sway in their unsuspicious turn watching for the one true soul who will kill her, converting all who lay in her path. I have seen them fix on me, nights long ago. I crept to her room to slip a silver blade to her throat. But the eyes sweeping in sleep glistened and swept and came to the door as I crept my shoulder neatly through. They stopped on me, they stared at me and her whole face contorted to an anger fiercer than the fiery wrath of hell. She, in silence, summoned all the demons of the depth to restrain me and so help me God I fled in terror.
But tonight with the nectar of the Gods at my will I am sworn to save the world from her beating black will.
May those sticks of hell's magic, those fingers of bony jackal’s teeth never again grasp throats as the trees grasp the wind.
Tonight being the night I am fated to; I creep into the room where the wind whistles through the shattered window shards. She sleeps here, and her chair seems poised as if her soul is resting far back in it unable to reside within the blacked charred self it once owned. Hell-bound her silent self lies. She is apprehensive in her sleep and her glass eyes sweep more slowly than usual. I must creep to the beast and slay it before it sees my presence and sounds the alarm.
A red light so dark and sinister radiates from her evil black eye. It must be projected through the curdled blood of the fated few who have tried to slay her before me. But I must not fail, I mush not let her corrupt another towards the devil's evil ways.
Sweeping it spots me as I creep. It stops and locks upon my own gaze. Stunned I move to the side attempting to side-step its attentions. It follows my eyes and surrounds me in the shroud of evil that I know shall be my death. I collapsing to the floor am paralyzed by her icy touch. It must me the trained spiders, for I cannot move. And the ever burning gaze burns a hole in my heart. I can hear my soul bleeding. Fresh blood for her hungry floor-boards. May she know my sound well. Thump-thump, Thump-thud, I bleed and her thirsty hell shall suck of my heart till morning, till death. Thump-thud, all I hear is the slow beating of my fists, my departure. I am here to release her of this world, and she, grateful is now free to capture the nether-realms. More evil than Beelzebub himself, I have made a mistake, she has awoken from her beastly exile upon this earth and I shall be no more a hero than Prometheus.
Weep no more little flame, we must enjoy what we can of our decent from the holy and into the darkness. Now is the time of the new reigning evil. I have unleashed it and it shall forever gaze upon me through Glass eyes.