I Can See the Monsters

Three years ago, the global outbreak of the Dark Strain plunged me, along with the rest of humanity, into permanent midnight.

And then, this morning, I opened my eyes and the world was there again. It was nothing short of a miracle.

My heart hammered against my ribs, wild and euphoric. I couldn't wait to run downstairs and tell Dad.

But as I sat up and looked around my bedroom, the breath completely left my lungs. My body went rigid.

Across every single wall of my room, smeared in thick, frantic strokes of dark paint, was the exact same warning. The letters wrapped around me like a brand, screaming in silence:

DO NOT TELL THEM YOU CAN SEE.

---

The sheer joy in my chest curdled into a cold, heavy knot of confusion. Surely, this was a prank.

But who could have crept into my room in the dead of night to paint all of this without making a sound? Mom and Dad?

That was impossible. They were entirely blind, just like me.

Before my mind could spiral further, Dads voice drifted up from the foot of the stairs. Warm. Familiar.

"Breakfast is ready, kiddo!"

I pushed the dread down. There was no time to overthink it. I scrambled out of bed and jogged out of my bedroom.

The dining table was laden with all my favorites: a stack of golden buttermilk pancakes, crispy thick-cut bacon, scrambled eggs, and a steaming hazelnut latte.

"Thanks, Dad," I chirped.

He reached out, his hand finding the top of my head with practiced, gentle precision, ruffling my hair before pressing my backpack into my arms. Over by the sofa, Mom was quietly zipping up her own tote bag for work.

Everything was devastatingly normal.

It had to be a sick joke. Maybe some kids from the neighborhood broke in? I shook my head, desperate to toss the absurd, terrifying thoughts away.

"I'm heading out to campus, Dad."

I grabbed my bag and headed for the front door. I had just wrapped my fingers around the brass doorknob when a hand slipped over my shoulder. It was utterly soundless.

"You forgot your cane, sweetie."

I forced out an awkward, breathless laugh. "Oh, right. Guess I'm just in a rush."

Dad pressed the collapsible white cane into my palm. His tone was breezy, almost conversational.

"Your vision came back, didn't it?"

My pulse spiked. I hesitated, biting the inside of my cheek, debating whether to tell the truth. But then Dad chuckled, tapping a finger against his own temple near his eyes.

"I don't know how it happened," he said, smiling softly. "I woke up this morning, and the blindness was just... gone. I was actually going to suggest we skip school and go to the hospital to get checked out."

A massive wave of relief washed over me.

"Wait, you can see?" I gasped.

"Sure can."

Whatever the hell was written on my walls, it didn't matter. Dad would never hurt me. The tension drained from my shoulders in a long, shaky exhale.

"Oh my god, really? Dad, my sight came back too! Just this morning, I"

The smile froze on my face.

A sudden, wet tearing sound echoed in the foyer. I looked down, my brain struggling to process the visual. The sharp metal tip of a mobility cane was buried deep in my abdomen. Blood, hot and shockingly red, poured over the white shaft, pooling onto the hardwood floor.

My eyes tracked the length of the cane to the hands gripping the handle.

Mom's hands.

My lips parted, but all that came out was a wet gasp. "Why...?"

Dad was standing right in front of me, staring at my face. His eyes were entirely dead. He didn't answer.

Instead, he raised his hands and shoved me backward with a brutal, mechanical force.

There was a sickening thud as my body pitched backward down the porch steps. Then, a sharp, deafening crack. I felt the spine in my neck sever.

A gurgling sound scraped up my throat. The blood pooled around my head, thick and warm. I couldn't move. I couldn't breathe. My vision began to blur at the edges, tunneling into darkness.

But in my final, fading second of consciousness, I looked up. Dad was standing at the top of the stairs, looking down at me. The gentle, paternal warmth had completely melted off his face, leaving behind something utterly hollow. Something that wasn't human at all.

I gasped, my eyes flying open.

I was staring at the walls again.

DO NOT TELL THEM YOU CAN SEE.

My chest heaved as I sucked in greedy, panicked breaths. I looked around wildly. "What the hell...?"

I yanked up the hem of my shirt, staring at my stomach. Smooth skin. No blood. No gaping hole.

Had I... reset? Was it morning again?

I sat in my familiar bed, surrounded by my familiar things, but a creeping, suffocating terror wrapped around my throat.

What is happening?

Downstairs, the voice rang out again. Cheerful. Warm.

"Breakfast is ready, kiddo!"

I squeezed my eyes shut and forced myself to breathe. Hiding up here wouldn't do any good. If I stayed, they would eventually come up. I needed to take control of the narrative.

I pasted a smile onto my faceor at least, what I hoped looked like oneand opened my bedroom door.

I nearly screamed.

Dad was standing inches from my door. Ramrod straight. Completely motionless.

My heart stalled, but survival instinct kicked in. Without missing a beat, I unfolded my cane, tapping it rhythmically against the floorboards, acting exactly as I had for the last three years. I walked forward, pretending I couldn't see the man blocking my path.

He didn't speak. He just turned, his footsteps falling perfectly in time with mine, trailing me down the hall.

I sat at my usual spot at the dining table. Only then did Dad pull out his own cane, tapping it lightly against the kitchen tiles, fabricating the auditory illusion that he had just walked into the room.

A cold sweat broke out across my spine.

He can see. He can see perfectly fine. So why is he pretending to be blind?

Has he been pretending for the last three years?

I ate my pancakes in suffocating silence, using my peripheral vision to watch him. He looked exactly like my father. The same laugh lines, the same tiny mole near his left eye.

But the way he sat was wrong. He didn't eat. He didn't blink. He just sat directly across from me, his dark pupils locked onto my face with a terrifying, predator-like stillness.

My breath caught in my throat for a fraction of a second.

Instantly, his hand shot across the table, pressing against my forehead. "You feel cold, sweetie. Didn't sleep well?"

I forced a weak chuckle. "Probably just kicked the blankets off. I'm fine."

His voice was dripping with fatherly concern, but his facial muscles were completely slack. It was like watching an animatronic doll.

I forced myself to keep eating, meticulously mimicking the clumsy, cautious movements of a blind person. Halfway through my eggs, I purposely fumbled my fork, letting it clatter to the floor.

I bent down to pick it up. As I did, I peeked through the space beneath the table toward the living room.

Mom was on the sofa, methodically packing her bag. Normal. Ordinary.

Except her head was turned at a sharp, unnatural angle. Her unblinking eyes were fixed dead on me.

She was faking it too.

The air in the room felt like it was turning to glass, fragile and sharp. I couldn't keep this up. I was going to crack.

I grabbed the fork, sat up, and kept my eyes fixed firmly on the empty space ahead of me.

"I'm full, Dad. Gotta head to class."

I stood up quickly.

"Hold on a second."

Dad moved with terrifying speed, stepping directly into my path. I froze, my muscles locking up. He knew. He had to know.

Then, he let out a soft chuckle and slipped my travel mug into the side pocket of my backpack.

"You forgot your coffee, kiddo."

I kept my chin down. I couldn't let him see my eyes.

He patted my head. "Alright. Dad's off to work."

"Bye, Dad."

I intentionally fumbled with the straps of my backpack, buying time, waiting for him to leave first. The rhythmic tap-tap of his cane faded toward the front door. The latch clicked shut.

I exhaled, the tension draining from my muscles.

But then, the knob turned again.

Without making a single sound, the door cracked open. Dad stepped back inside on the balls of his feet. He held his cane suspended an inch above the ground. Absolute, terrifying silence.

He crept back into the living room, sat down on the sofa next to Mom, and together, they stared at me. Unmoving.

---

A violent shudder ripped through me, my clothes instantly sticking to the icy sweat on my back.

He didn't go to work. Why was he back?

I bit the inside of my lip so hard I tasted copper, forcing myself not to process the horror. I gripped my canethe one Id made sure to grab this timeand tapped my way to the front door.

As I walked out, I saw them rise from the sofa. They followed me.

I walked down the sidewalk, tapping my cane, staring straight ahead, while my "parents" stalked me on their tiptoes just a few feet behind.

It wasn't until I crossed the iron gates of my boarding school campus that the suffocating weight of their stares finally vanished.

When I slid into my seat in the lecture hall, I immediately scanned the room for Dustin. He was a few rows ahead of me, sitting rigid. The professor was droning on at the front, his eyes glazed and vacant. All the students around me had the same hollow, unseeing gaze. Everyone was blind.

But Dustin was shifting in his seat. Twitching.

The second the bell rang, Dustin grabbed my arm and dragged me into the boys' restroom, shoving me into a stall and locking the door.

His breathing was ragged. "Gemma, have you noticed anything weird?"

My stomach plummeted, but I kept my face utterly blank. "What do you mean?"

"My parents," he whispered, his voice trembling. "Something is really wrong with them."

I raised an eyebrow, gesturing for him to keep going. He checked under the stall door, paranoid. Seeing him like this made my own hands curl into fists.

Satisfied we were alone, he leaned in, his lips barely brushing my ear.

"I can see. It came back this morning."

A shockwave hit my chest. I opened my mouth to say Me too, to tell him everything.

But then the image of my own blood pooling on the hardwood flashed in my mind.

DO NOT TELL THEM YOU CAN SEE.

I swallowed the truth like broken glass.

"Wait, really?" I faked a gasp of awe. "That's amazing! I wish mine would come back. But what does that have to do with your parents acting weird?"

Dustin looked terrified. He started rambling about his parents standing over his bed, about them tracking him with dead eyes. I murmured comforting words, validating his fear, but I locked my own secret tight behind my teeth.

The warning bell rang.

Dustin looked like he was on the verge of a breakdown. A pang of guilt hit me. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe we were in the exact same boat and we needed to team up.

Then, without warning, Dustins hand shot out, his index finger jabbing directly toward my left eye.

Every instinct screamed at me to flinch. But the sheer, paralyzing terror of what my father had done to me overrode the reflex. I forced my eye to stay wide open, my face completely slack.

His fingernail stopped less than a millimeter from my cornea.

Dustin tilted his head. The panic on his face evaporated, replaced by a chilling, clinical emptiness. He stared at me for a long, agonizing moment.

Slowly, he lowered his hand.

"I guess so," he muttered, his voice entirely devoid of emotion. "We should get back to class. Maybe I'm just losing my mind."

"Yeah," I breathed.

Cold sweat trickled down my temple. He had been testing me. If I had blinked, Id probably be dead on the bathroom floor.

I made the right choice. I couldn't trust anyone.

---

After the incident with Dustin, I existed in a state of hyper-vigilance. Everyone was a threat.

I went through the motions. Classes. Lunch. Small talk. Heading back to the dorms. I played the perfect blind girl.

My plan was to lay low for a few days, gather supplies, and figure out a way to run. But during afternoon cleaning duty in the library archives, I found something.

A diary.

It was shoved behind a loose baseboard. The cover was worn leather, with several frantic, red warning symbols etched into it.

I frowned, tracing the cover. More importantly, it wasn't written in Braille.

Since the Great Blindness hit, almost all printed text had been converted to Braille. Traditional books were incinerated or recycled as scrap. Written words simply didn't exist anymore.

Who wrote this? Was it the same person who painted my walls?

The other students were busy sweeping. No one was looking. I smoothly slid the book up my sleeve. I didn't dare pull it out until I was back in my dorm room, safely hidden beneath my heavy comforter with a flashlight.

---

The entries were a chaotic mess. The sentences were disjointed, punctuated by grotesque, scribbled illustrations.

At first, my heart sank. It read like the fever dream of a terrified child. I risked so much to steal this, and it was just nonsense?

But as I flipped the pages, a cold knot formed in my gut.

March 7: Toby and I got our sight back a week ago. He didn't believe the writing on the wall. He said it out loud... He's gone. I looked everywhere. Mom and Dad keep dragging me from town to town. I don't know what we're running from. I'm so scared.

April 1: He's dead. Toby didn't run away. He's dead. His body was shoved in the... No wonder I couldn't find him.

April 7: Dad has Toby's watch in his pocket. They killed him. But they loved him the most, didn't they?

April 15: They asked me today if I could see. I said no. It's the only thing keeping me alive.

I stopped reading, my breath shallow in the stale air under the blanket.

Was this real? If it was, why were the dates marked 2036? That was ten years from now.

And if the parents were on the run, why would they murder their own kid? The logic was completely fractured.

I rubbed the goosebumps on my arms, the parallels to my own life sinking in. If telling the truth meant death, did I have to fake being blind forever? What if I slipped up? Would I get to respawn again?

Something deep in my bones told me no. I only had one extra life. This was it.

The later entries grew shorter. The handwriting was erratic, deeply panicked. Several pages had been entirely blacked out with heavy ink, masking whatever horror the author had witnessed.

May 2: There are more people running now. We passed three groups on the highway. What are they so afraid of? Is something chasing them?

I looked back. I saw it[heavily blacked out]. I pray to God I never have to look at that thing ever again.

May 10: I finally found others like me! It's not just Toby and me. There are so many whose sight came back, and they're all hiding. They're hiding in the...

I clawed at the pages, frantic. Hiding where? Who is chasing them? Why the hell did they ink out the location?!

I carefully tore out the page with the heavily blacked-out illustration and held it up to the beam of my flashlight. The light barely pierced the ink, but I could make out the faint silhouette of... something.

It was vaguely humanoid, but the proportions were horribly wrong. Was that a person?

I flipped to the end. The remaining pages were ripped out. There was only one entry left on the inside back cover.

If you are lucky enough to read this, RUN.

Run right now. Do not hesitate.

I shivered. Run?

My eyes drifted to the very last line, scrawled in tiny letters at the bottom corner.

I wish I had stayed blind.

A profound, bone-deep chill swept through me. I pulled my knees to my chest.

It might have been paranoia, but the hair on my arms stood up. I felt like I was being watched.

I whipped the blanket down and scanned the dark dorm room.

Empty. Just me and the moonlight filtering through the blinds.

A hallucination. It had to be.

Knock. Knock. Knock.

I jumped, nearly dropping the flashlight.

"Gemma?" It was the dorm mother's voice, muffled through the heavy wood. "Pack your bags, sweetie. Your dad is here to take you home."

My stomach dropped into a bottomless pit.

Boarding school students only went home on weekends. Today was Monday.

He knew. He figured it out.

I looked back down at the diary. Run right now.

If I got in that car with my "father," I knew with absolute certainty that I would never see the sun again.

"Okay! Just a second!" I called out, forcing my voice to sound tired and compliant.

I shoved my wallet, the diary, and a water bottle into my backpack. I opened my window, slipped out onto the fire escape, and dropped quietly into the bushes below.

The night was pitch black, a thick, suffocating overcast hiding the moon. Normally, running in the dark would be terrifying. But I had spent three years living without light. The darkness was my element.

I sprinted toward the woods bordering the campus, heading for the county road.

Suddenly, from the tree line behind me, I heard it.

The crunch of dead leaves. The wet, frantic sound of heavy footsteps.

Something was hunting me.