Part 3

Rick felt his stomach crash into his tonsils with a bang.

Those eyes.

It felt as though they were piercing his soul, and corrupting it with creepiness.

"What do I do?" He thought, turning around and walking the other direction as though he had intended to.

"He's in between me and my house, I have nowhere to go, it's raining and I'm in short-shorts." He looked over his shoulder and saw that the hooded man was gone, leaving only the bench he had been sitting on behind him. Rick released an apprehensive sigh of relief and turned around and started the now eternally-long walk home.

As he walked he could not stop invisioning those eyes. They stayed in his mind like tree sap stays on your hands forever. He remembered a time when he had foolishly carved a pine stick with his new pocket knife and covered it in sap. He had taken the knife inside and started washing it off. As he rubbed it with his fingers, he had suddenly slipped and sliced open the heel of his hand. At first it hadn't hurt too much, but then searing pain had entered his hand and gone up his arm. That's how these eyes were, searing in his brain and filling his whole body with their image.

As Rick remembered this experience he came closer and closer to home. Suddenly out of the corner of his eye, he saw something move behind the tree he had just passed. Before he could turn around, something hard hit him in the back of the head and blackness took over everything.

Except those eyes.