1 1.

Maybe horror stories don't necessarily need to give us the worst fear of our lives to be made to go straight to the movies. The story that happened to me was a few years ago, and I haven't really told this for the simple fact that I had death threats if I just dared to make this public or if I reported the fact to the police or if I told anyone anything no matter who it was, I was going to be killed before I told the whole truth and this is when I'm realizing it. A few hours ago a guy is outside my house, looking at my room as if he were a mannequin placed in the exact position. He is wearing a big hood that covers most of his face and for that reason I don't know who he is or if it is a person or could be "them", I have no idea, but I am very afraid, besides, the phone has stopped working and going out to the neighbor's house to ask for help or a call would be a precise act of suicide. Well, hopefully before the phone stopped working I was able to make the call with the police about the man and in passing I was determined to tell him the whole story if I was really going to die or if "they" found me after so many years, however, at that very moment that signal was lost.

What else is left, from tonight I will not spend the next day breathing.

I don't have any reason in mind why the police haven't arrived and it's been several hours since I made the call, although, what can you expect from the people of this shitty city, they all let themselves be sold for a few tickets and I think "they" did what they can do best to put my case aside.

Too bad... I'm crying my eyes out.

Now I find myself locked in the closet where I keep the mops, brooms and any kind of detergent and flannel, with my body shrunk as much as possible and with a knife that I will not let go for a moment, because it seems that "they" have entered my house and are looking for me everywhere, I hear their footsteps, and it is evident that they will find me at any moment... I will kill one of them, I will kill the first one who dares to open the door, I don't care if it is one of the neighbors or "them", I will stab him without thinking twice and if I can I will try to kill those who accompany him, no matter who it is, I will kill the first one who opens the door.

It all comes down to the night I met one of "them", when I was heading to a gas station after a long day of work. What's more, that day they fired me and I, for one, am very happy because that job I had was a prison and I was a prisoner who went there voluntarily. I don't regret having been fired from my job; at least I was able to break the face of that old zombie of the boss who was exploiting each one of us, at least I was able to be the hero of many of my comrades when they saw that someone had really given their due to that slug with legs. I left work with honors, I have to presume that, however, the strong demand that the boss threw on me was about to take away all the things that I still had left at that time, now, all I have left is a messy house with dirty clothes on the floor, beer cans and bottles on the furniture or the dining room table that to tell you the truth is almost gone because of the humidity from the beer or the food stuck on the table. I barely had enough money from the settlement to pay off some debts, before the power and water were cut off and I was homeless in my own house.

I don't know, but I think that if I hadn't dared to hit the boss that day because of his dry way of being, I never would have met "them", in fact, maybe that was the action that triggered the reaction of having been face to face with one of them, or maybe I was destined to meet him as they said so much, although if I think about it, I don't want to imagine how many more people would go through that or how many more are going through that these days, maybe thousands, that's why there are so many people who disappear. Other facts that make me believe that this was millimetrically planned were that none of the gas stations around the city were open, even though it sounded a little strange or silly, but they were open so that I and my car that was fainting because of the low level of gasoline would go exactly to that gas station, and of course, at first I had my suspicions and it wasn't until the terror began: at the moment that I assimilated the facts and was looking for a way to escape from them.

It was Thursday, I remember it very well because the next day I was planning with some of my co-workers to go out drinking, while they were already paying us and we could get out of our minds to spend the money on just drinks, some that I never got to be present to drink.

I had it in mind, that gas station I had never seen before in my life, or maybe it went unnoticed by me for a long time until that Thursday night when I shot out of work and went home, without having paid off any debts there and then. I was surprised by the fact that the gas station was very different from all the others, the ones that were closed. Although that didn't catch my attention much to be like a lunatic looking at the place, because, as fast as I got to the gas station, I was about to push the car because of the critical level of gas, and as usual I asked one of the workers to fill the gas tank to the top because I have money (how lucky that the boss gave me the settlement before I started bombarding him with my clenched fists and only the check had been stained with a few tiny drops of nose blood). Another car had also arrived at the gas station, right, it was there before I arrived and so far it was not advancing to fill up the tank of the other man's car, it was weird all that. Of all the closed gas stations in the city, only the one where I had arrived was open and there was only the man whose gas tank never filled up and me.

From the first moment I had a bad feeling about that man, maybe if I had listened to that feeling, nothing that was going to happen afterwards would have happened. He was dressed up, elegant. I could even say that this man must have been a very important businessman or an investor or a politician, although his face was not familiar to me, but he could have been a person from another city who had to be in a hurry to be on time for his next work session, instead, all that was wrong; the man in the elegant clothes was very calm as if he had all the time in the world to wait for the tank of his car to reach the top. He was looking at me without taking his eyes off me. At first that bothered me a lot while it made me uncomfortable because of his strange smile that extended to the height of his nose. I wanted to put that aside because the tank of my car had already been filled a few moments ago and one of the workers was asking me something like if I wanted a bill or something like that, for my part I shook my head and only paid for the entire amount of gasoline that filled the tank, but for a reason that I do not know or do not have a reasonable explanation so far is that I was the only one to have seen the other man... or it was a ghost, perhaps that gives a good explanation for the events of the next few minutes.

I got out of my car so fast to ask him what was wrong with the man or why he was looking at me, but the simple fact of getting out of the car and taking a little walk around my car and being face to face with the subject, made my blood run cold. His look was so strange, his eyes, if not dark brown, were absolutely black or I could tell that he had no eyeballs or it could be the reflection that caused that strange effect. I felt very bad in those moments as if the simple fact of having dared to see that subject had been a foolish act. I felt my chest, on my left side, to look for a cigarette before I exploded and started yelling at the man because I am a guy with little patience and feeling the nicotine getting inside me sometimes works to relieve me or keep me calm for as long as the cigarette lasts. I found a cigarette inside my shirt pocket, put it in my mouth and as soon as I could I looked for a lighter or a matchbox.

--You know that's really silly? -said the man in the fancy clothes, I think, or I think it was something like: you're an idiot, you don't realize what you're going to do.

For my part, I frowned in sign that I had not heard or understood what was said.

--What? -I replied immediately, taking care that the cigarette in my mouth didn't fall out.

The man smiled nonsensically.

--Lighting a cigarette at a gas station is as bad an idea as trying to look at the sun with a magnifying glass -he continued, when he calmed down to talk.

I held out my arms as a sign that the guy would stop meddling in things that don't interest him, and apparently he was able to read my thoughts, unless I spoke without realizing it.

--You should save that for later, when you're far enough away from the gas station.

Yes... I will never forget those words.

--It's my life and I do whatever I want! -I said, and after a few days I'm glad I said that to one of "them".

The man laughed again in a feigned manner.

--Boy, so far you believe in free will... You think that you are the one who controls your life, the same people like you even realized the truth.

I kept a cigarette in its original place.

Those words intrigued me enough that I was very worried and could not wait to get back in my car to smash the accelerator until I got away from the gas station or perhaps encourage me to hit him also as the boss and I was ready for that, total, I was already with a strong demand from the boss and if that guy also dared to put a strong demand on me for hitting him (so it was noticed by someone very important to show up in front of everyone with a slight scratch of fight in his face), I no longer cared about anything because in the end I had nothing left to lose except my freedom and maybe that was taken away from me after seeing that I only conceded with a house that would easily be worth only forty dollars because of the state it was in, and maybe I shouldn't have been thinking about winning over my freedom because that was exactly what I lost that day, I lost my freedom.

I don't know what the problem was with that guy but he laughed as if he had a laughing balloon inside him because every moment he laughed simply and I was terrified of the way he did it, as if he were a balloon that was inflating, just like a child trying to inflate a balloon, in every attempt to keep air inside him and expel it into the rubber body, however, the air escapes every time and the balloon moves up and down to the edge of bursting. That's how that guy was without the eyeballs: inflating his abdomen like a toad and deflating it when his laugh was over.

All right, from those moments on, that's when the real terror started to show in my skin and I think the guy liked that, for a reason I don't know, it seemed to me that he was sniffing my fear as any person would when he sprayed a big cloud of perfume in the air.

--A...g, you finally showed it to me -he said without warning (I think he was referring to my fear) and I could see the teeth of that being, which was certainly not human.

I remember my younger brother, Richard Parker, the naughty boy who could never sit still for a couple of seconds without making an apocalyptic mess at home. That in the past. I remember when I was a kid and somehow or other he loved to be chewing on the edge of the walls. Yes... mom could offer him the best feast a prisoner destined for death could have, but Richard only wanted to slobber on the edge of the walls and eagerly tried to chew on the structure with his newly sprouted teeth. But, as you may be guessing, his teeth had yet to take on any resistance and his teeth broke in the same way they came out: as one. The image of her smile at a certain point turns out to be a bit funny, really. As soon as we saw him smiling, we saw those broken pieces like fangs or broken glass under his gum. Like Richard, the guy at the gas station who never fills up his car had those same teeth that scare you at first.

I took a deep breath. My legs did not obey me because they were already bathed in that terror that caused me to see that man, who surely was not human, looking at me without ceasing to pay attention to me. Seriously, I turned to the left and the man did too, not to mention when I moved to the right or when I started to back up, when my legs obeyed me; the man also took a step so that he always kept that same distance from each other.

--Stop! -I warned him with a voice that was too broken.

My legs were shaking uncontrollably and my blood was freezing, or well, that way I felt it because of the shaking I felt inside and as the seconds passed I was moving outside and forced to shake.

--Oh! Mr. Parker, are you very scared? -he said and my skin froze.

How did he know my first name, or well my last name, and for sure if he knew my last name, he knew my first name, that was the question I was asking myself at that moment as I went backwards and the man without eyeballs was advancing towards me and I think he was cheating (yes, I don't know where my mind was at that moment to be thinking about the rules of the game about whether I took one step backwards and the guy took two steps to approach and catch me).

It was obvious to me that something bad was going to happen and I better squeeze my legs to get up the courage to run as far as I could to get to my car, start it up and step on the gas. Besides... if that non-human thing got in front of my car, I wouldn't think twice about stepping on the gas and killing it. I took another deep breath in order to give my head a first command: turn as much as you can to calculate the distance from my car and see how much I have to hurry my legs to get there as soon as possible. I was nowhere near my car, I could even reach back with one of my hands and there was one of the doors of my car. I could look for the door handle if I wanted to get into the car one way or another and throw myself into the seats and crawl over them to get behind the wheel to re-accommodate myself. Even though that was my first choice, I had another one that said to shoot out the other door of the car, where the driver's seat was, because the possibility of the guy trying to grab my legs did not go away if I took the first choice.

--Wow, you really do make great plans, Jason -he said.

I was pretty scared at the time for two reasons. The first was that he did know my first and last name. The second was that he could read my mind. He was reading my mind without me knowing it or well from the beginning I was aware of that, but I didn't pay much attention to it because of how unlikely it sounded. However, what was already swimming in the sea of my thinking was that I was aware of my plans, what I was going to do and who can fight someone whose ability is to read minds; no matter how hard you try to escape, that guy may know what you are thinking or what you are going to do and it sounds unlikely that you can escape by trying to surprise that mind reading being.

Suddenly, perhaps in the same way that I arrived at the gas station, a cab peeked out on the road and it was obvious that I was going to fill up the gas tank. As I assumed from the beginning when I distracted my thoughts to see the cab approaching with its lights on as if the place was covered by dense darkness, which was just the opposite; the cab entered the gas station and stood in front of my car. I had the idea that maybe those in the cab would want to cut me off before wanting to escape. I looked back at the guy with the car's tank that never fills up and noticed that his smile was even more macabre than before, it was more elliptical as if his lips wanted to pop out of their sockets or lengthen whatever was left of his face.

--Until they finally arrived! -exclaimed the man.

Out of stupidity I looked back at the newly arrived cab. Out of it came two men with the same image of the guy with the car's tank that he never fills up: with elegant suits that one could assume were very important people, but they also had that characteristic of their eyes; they didn't have eyeballs, there was just a dark void above their noses and before their eyebrows. Even though they didn't have eyes to see me with, I had a feeling in a part of me that I was being watched in one way or another. They also smiled. My breathing became so agitated that I could not control it and if I had been one of those with asthma problems, I would have surely been dead while trying to find my inhaler in the midst of that terror.

--Is that him? -said one of the men who got out of the cab, which by the way, the man in the cab was one of them, just as he had no eyes, only two holes in him.

--Of course it's him! -answered one of "them", the one who was with me from the beginning.

The men near the cab smiled, so much so that they made me shake and start shaking my head from side to side in search of a possible way out of that hell, but as expected, I deduced that the other men who had just arrived must also have that faculty of being able to read minds (maybe human or not, who knows if their way of communicating was through their minds, although I don't doubt it very much). Already my breathing was only in my throat and I did not go from there to any further because I felt my lungs being squeezed so that I could faint from lack of breath.

--What are you standing there for? -said the guy to the men near the cab-. Catch he!

It was like an inborn urge. I moved my head from side to side with my eyes dilated as much as they could, they sure were. On one side was the first of those non-human things very close to me and then there were the two men near the cab, who to some degree were no longer very close to the cab but now very close to my car and consequently very close to me. My hands were shaking a lot, and so were my legs, and it was lucky for fate or heavenly help that I did not faint from fear.

Without warning, I turned to the right, where there were none of those non-human creatures and where there was nothing, only loneliness and if I was lucky I could escape from them, although... their cars!, shouted a voice in my head and made me reason that if I could get out of their sight, they would not hesitate for a second to go to their car and start chasing me like a fearful rat. But things took a different turn in the final after all. Maybe I forgot the detail that they can read my mind and were aware of my intentions and went right before I did. They were about ten feet behind me, maybe more, the fact was that they were not far away and I could see perfectly that horrible face with only a nose, eyebrows and a mouth that every moment was getting longer and going out of its orbit or what could be considered human. Even if I turned right or left or wanted to run in a zigzag, the two men who were chasing me knew perfectly what to do and when to do it with that monstrous speed that increased every second as if what was chasing me was not a man but a horse or a lion or a tiger or a puma...

One of them grabbed me by the collar of the white shirt I was wearing and pulled me in. If it hadn't been for the man holding me at the exact moment, I would surely have been shot to the ground and perhaps I would have broken my head and been unconscious for a few moments because of the pain, or perhaps I would have died from the blow, although everything took a different path?

--We got you, boy! -said one of those beings. I don't know if it was the one who grabbed my shirt collar or the other one.

Of course I resisted what he was saying:

--Let me go!

I shook my legs like a child who wants to escape from some children who want to beat him up, and in the same way I shook my arms to get rid of the hands of those non-human things, that my stomach turned when I saw those flaccid old man's hands they had, as if they were a rotten jelly mass. Everything was impossible. No matter how much I shook, the men wouldn't take those rotten Jell-O hands off me and they were... They were forcibly dragging me into the cab.

I managed to notice in the distance the store where the man had come from the gas station who was also talking to a lady, I could see him perfectly behind the glass door of the store and I shouted:

--Help me!

However, I believe that my cries were not heard by the people because they did not make the slightest movement to see me or perhaps my cries for help could not leave my mouth, and never did, because of the terror that enveloped me from head to toe.

--Let go of me! -I shouted to the men who were pulling me closer and closer to the cab, but they kept on smiling as if they enjoyed my terror.

One of the men opened the door after the driver.

--Stop causing us trouble. Get in!

They pushed me into the cab while I was still screaming at the top of my lungs:

--Help me! Help!

Just like before I started shaking my legs all over to get out of that hell.

--Get your hands off me! -I howled.

--Oh, my God! -said the man in the cab who was watching me with those holes in his face-. This one is a rebel, not like the others.

--Don't worry -said one of the creatures, who was closing the door.

I wanted to go out the other door, if only one of those things hadn't been blocking my way, making sure I didn't plan to do that.

--Help! -I shouted once more.

--Could you shut that human up! -shouted the cab driver.

--Quiet -the man on my left spoke again-. He's not going to be a problem for us right now. Hold him, Kevin -he said to the man on my right-. Don't let it be like that again like that girl we killed.

--Yes -answered Kevin.

He wrapped his left arm around my neck, and anyone would have thought he wanted to choke me somehow or other to possibly knock me out. How I wish things had been that way, instead it was something even worse. The man to my left was digging something into his sack. At first I thought it was a gun, but when I remembered him saying, "Don't let it be like that again with that girl we killed", my heart stopped beating like crazy, although it could be that it was a gun and maybe that guy killed that girl because there was no other way, because he wanted to get away. He didn't pull out a gun like I thought, instead it was a syringe with a needle that must have been about four or five inches long and as thick as the tip of a pencil.

--Hold him, Kevin, don't let him move.

--Yes.

Kevin took his arm off my neck and put his hand on my face as if he didn't see anything.

--Let go of me! -I shouted at the top of my lungs as I shook my legs and watched that giant needle come near my neck to pierce it-. No!

I felt the cold needle go through my neck and pierce the flesh in such a way that my screams stopped all at once as that thing on my left smiled as I also deposited the contents of the syringe in... The needle had gone through my neck and had hit my throat so that... So that they would pour that pharmaceutical liquid, which I'm sure was an anesthesiologist type, down my throat and I would swallow it to calm down.

--It's done -said Kevin.

--Start the car -said the man to my left- and hurry up before anyone notices.

The cab driver nodded with a long smile that didn't escape my mind as the sounds were accompanied by a long echo for me and when I heard Kevin say, "It's done," I heard him say: It's dooooooone. It was the same with the lights that seemed to flicker until they burned out in the darkness.

--That's theeeee last oooone? -said someone, but I didn't recognize the voice with those echoes.

My body was slowly falling asleep, and it was too soon for my eyes to close.

--Yesssss.