Borrowed Sight

Horror Fiction for Top In Fiction - Eye See You Event Contest

I stood barefoot in a hallway that reeked of old blood and disinfectant, the kind of place memory forgets but nightmares hoard. The walls were tiled in sickly green, cracked and bleeding rust like open wounds left to fester. Mold formed on the grout in black spider leg tendrils. The air hung thick with the tang of iodine laced with something fouler, something acrid and left to sour. The lights flickered above me, sputtering like they were going to die. The floor sucked at my feet with a surreal damp chill, the tile slick, my legs trembling with every breath I took.

I looked down.

Something dark had been dragged across the floor, a smear, a streak too thick for water, too deliberate for an accident. It glistened in the half light like oil, but it smelled like iron and bile.

Somewhere distant, a woman was screaming. Not in pain. Rage. The kind that tears a throat raw. I turned to run and woke up gasping, the white bandages still wrapped tight around my head like a funeral shroud.

"Try not to rub them," the nurse said, pressing gently on my wrist with fingers that were too cold to be alive. "You’re healing beautifully."

Beautifully. That word never suited me. I’d lived for too long in the shadows of other people’s faces, where mirrors showed only outlines. Until now.

Two days later, they unwrapped my head. For the first time in eight years, I saw the world in color again. Light hit me like a fist. My right eye burned at every flicker, every movement. The left was still mine. The right? It didn’t belong to me. I didn’t ask where it came from. That’s the kind of truth you don’t want to own.

The visions continued, they weren’t just dreams. Not anymore. When I closed my eyes at night, I was haunted, there was no peace. Only memory.

Red light flickering over metal walls. A child curled in a corner like a broken toy. Boots thudding down a concrete hallway. Always! Always a buzzing fluorescent bulb overhead, pulsing above a locked door. My stomach clenched. My breath rattled.

I’d wake choking, heart hammering like I’d been drowning. Some mornings, blood crusted my nose and dried against my upper lip.

It got worse. Daylight didn’t stop them. I saw flashes, quick cuts of horror in mirrors, in puddles, in the glare of my phone screen. Once, brushing my teeth, I looked in the bathroom mirror and saw a hospital bed behind me. Wrinkled yellow sheets. The stink of antiseptic and despair. There was no hospital bed in my apartment.

"You should talk to someone," Jean said, sipping her coffee. Her eyes flicked up to study me like I was a splinter she couldn’t dig out. "Post-op trauma is real. So is PTSD."

"From surgery?"

"You were blind in one eye for years and only saw shadows with the other. And now you’re seeing things."

"I’m remembering things."

"Yours?"

I didn’t answer. My coffee was cold. Bitter. Like burned paper.

The breaking point came at the metro station, shoulder to shoulder in the rush hour crush. A man brushed past me sharp cologne over B.O. Our eyes met.

And I remembered him.

Not a feeling. Not deja vu.

His face smashed against a tile floor. Mouth bloodied. Wrists zip tied. My…no, her, shadow stretching across his body like the blade of a guillotine. Rage boiling up, thick and hot. The feeling of a boot connecting with flesh.

He turned away like I didn’t exist.

I stumbled behind a kiosk and vomited. No one noticed. No one cared.

I dug until I found her name. The donor.

Lisa Dunn. Twenty-seven. Declared brain dead after a car crash. Organs donated. Cremated. End of story.

But it wasn’t.

The hospital records were spotless. Sanitized. But her brother still had a blog. He’d posted a photo.

Green eyes.

I had always had hazel eyes.

Now I had one green.

I stood outside the long-term care facility for an hour, sweating through my jacket, stomach curdling. When I walked in, the stink of mildew tried to crawl into my lungs.

"I’m here to see Lisa Dunn," I said. My voice sounded wrong. Smaller. Like a child caught lying.

The nurse hesitated. "Are you family?"

"I’m a recipient."

Room 209. The hallway was a copy of my nightmares. Green tile. Yellow lights. The buzzing bulb overhead sounded like it had been pulled straight from my skull.

She was a corpse with breath. Shrunk, pale, with skin stretched tight like wax paper over brittle bones. Her lips were cracked. Her eyes half lidded.

I stepped closer.

And everything cracked open.

I was beside the bed. And in it.

I felt the scratch of hospital sheets. The buckle around my chest. My limbs heavy and hollow. My lungs drew in stale air.

A voice slithered into my ear.

You see because I see.

The lights flared. My right eye throbbed.

After that, nothing was mine.

The memories invaded every waking second. Screaming strapped to a gurney. Needles forced into veins. Pills crushed between teeth. My reflection jittered, glitching like a broken film reel.

This wasn’t a hospital. It was a cage. And Lisa had seen it all.

I tried everything black paper on mirrors, blackout curtains, sunglasses indoors. But the eye saw anyway. Always. Watching.

I went back.

But Room 209 was empty.

"Transferred two days ago," the nurse said. "Private physician. No forwarding."

I bolted. Home. Locked every door. Smashed my electronics. I wore towels around my head like a blindfold, but it was no use.

The pressure grew.

I started losing time. Waking up outside. In stairwells. In the shower. My reflection moved before I did. I’d catch myself grinning in windows, even as I screamed inside.

My voice changed. Softer. Confident. Like it belonged to someone who wasn’t afraid.

One morning I woke submerged in bathwater, clothes ballooning around me. My skin white and puckered. I’d been under long enough to forget who I was.

Another night, I watched myself on my building’s security footage. Standing motionless. Staring straight into the lens. Unblinking.

The final entry in my journal:

If you’re reading this, my name is Mara Lynn Jennings. I was born October 9, 1993. I have a birthmark on my hip shaped like a comma. I hate olives. I’m afraid of drowning. And I don’t know if I still exist.

She sees through me. And I see her. Looking in the mirror, I feel her pressing closer. Waiting.

I’ve lost track of time… I don’t know how long I've been trapped here. The lights never turn off. My arms are strapped down. My mouth is dry, tongue heavy like stone. They call me Lisa.

I scream my name and they up the dose.

I scream her name and they write it in the chart.

But I know who I am. I know who I was. Before she crawled in through the eye.

She’s watching me now. I see her in the darkened glass, her smile growing inside my face.

One day, I’ll blink and she won’t let me open my eyes again.

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