Julianna St. Geme

The Man with Black Eyes

It was a dark, stormy night when I heard a loud clamor coming from my basement. I had

been in my bed for only an hour when the noise shook me from within. Though terrified by the

sounds, I assured myself that the noise was nothing more than a creak in the floor. So I rested my

head back on my pillow and slowly closed my eyes when, suddenly, I heard the noise once more.

However this time, the noise was much louder than before, as if a large animal had somehow

made its home downstairs. I decided I would not be able to sleep another second without the

resolving the problems down under. So with one quick shift, I headed down to the basement, and

with each stair Idescended, my heartbeat grew as loud as the ominous noise. When I reached the

final step and my foot pressed against the cold, hard floor of the basement, the noise suddenly

ceased. For only a mere split second, I was able to let out a brief breath of relief when all of

the sudden I was pulled aside by an unmoving force. I quickly realized that the noise was not a

creaking floorboard, but a large size man threatening to take my soul. His visage was nothing

less than horrifying. He appeared to have a scar on the side of his face, as if he had been slashed

with a knife. His eyes were dark, almost black, and his hair long, dark, and stingy. In a rough

voice, he ordered me upstairs and told me to do everything he said or he would mark my face in

the same way his was. So I followed his grip up the stairs in unhindered fright where he began

tying my arms and feet to a chair. He then proceeded to tell me a story of the death of a young

woman whose name he believed began with a B. He told me she lived alone and one night while

asleep was awoken by noises that lead her to a deeply demented murderer. He told me that this

woman was beat and killed, only to be left with an enormous slash across her face. I assumed

this story was my own. Real or fictional, I knew my fate would be the same as the woman whose

name began with a B. So I closed my eyes in terror as the man pulled out a knife, and just as he

began lifting it towards my face, I opened my eyes and found myself lying in my bed with the

sun glaring through my bedroom window. Apparently my brush with death was nothing more

than a simple nightmare. So I headed downstairs, directly to my front porch where I picked up

the newspaper. As I was walking back inside my house, peaking at the front cover story of the

paper, my heart began to vigorously pound. The cover story was about the murder of a woman

name Becky who was killed in her home last night. However, when I reached my kitchen, still

struck with terror, I saw the most horrifying thing of all: a chair with two ropes aside a large

knife, soaked in cold red blood.