Unblinking Eyes by David Kubicek

Shelby first saw Jack when he came into the deli where she worked and ordered a Reuben sandwich. He ate it slowly at a table near the far wall. He never took his eyes off her, and she never saw him blink.

He left long before her shift ended, but the incident had so unnerved her that she peered cautiously out the back door to make sure he wasn’t lurking around the parking lot before she stepped out into the crisp October afternoon.

The next day, he came in again and ordered a Reuben sandwich. When she rang him up, he deliberately touched her hand, and she jerked it away.

“I’m Jack,” he said. “You and I are destined for each other, Shelby.”

The corners of his lips twitched up in an unsettling smile. He went to sit at his usual table where he ate his lunch and stared at her.

She glanced down at her nametag. With trembling hands, she unpinned it and shoved it in her pocket.

Jack came in the next day and ordered a Reuben sandwich. She rang him up abruptly. No other customers were in the store, and Janet was down at the other end of the counter restocking meats.

“Take your sandwich and leave,” she said, her voice husky and low. “Don’t come in here again.”

“You and I will be together. Forever.”

A chill crawled up her spine.

“I mean it,” she said.

He smiled that creepy smile and went to eat at his usual table and stare at her.

After work, she felt someone watching her as she walked to her car. She glanced around uncomfortably, but the parking lot was deserted.

Shelby wasn’t scheduled to work the next day. That morning she sat up on the edge of her bed, set her bare feet on the icy floor and glanced out the window. Her heart stopped, and she struggled to breathe.

Jack sat cross-legged on a dumpster behind the dry cleaners across the alley. He was staring straight at her. She snatched her phone off the nightstand.

A police car came. The officer got out and walked around the house. Then he knocked on her door.

“No one’s out there,” he said.

“He was here.”

“What did he look like?”

The officer wrote down the description on his note pad, but she was sure he didn’t believe her.

“Call us if he comes back,” the officer said, and left.

Shelby pulled the curtains shut on every window. She didn’t turn on any lights. For the rest of the day, her nerves singing like electric wires, she flitted from window to window, parting the curtains a crack and straining her eyes for any sign of movement.

She had plans to go out with friends that evening. Jack had not returned so she felt more at ease. But when she stepped out the front door of her building, a jolt went through her, and she dropped her keys. Jack sat cross-legged on the hood of her car, parked at the curb. He raised a hand in a wave.

“Stop following me!”

He smiled his creepy smile. Her mouth suddenly dry, she snatched up her keys, rushed inside and slammed the door. She considered calling the police, but when she carefully parted the curtains in her living room and peered out, Jack was gone.

In her dream that night she saw Jack die. Headlights swept over him as he stood on a strangely familiar country road. He stared at the oncoming car with his twisted smile and unblinking eyes. Brakes squealed. A shuddering thud. The car raced off, its tires spinning gravel behind it into the night.

Shelby saw herself standing over Jack. Strangely drawn to his rumpled and bloody corpse on the road, his face the color of fireplace ashes, she knelt beside him.

His eyes sprang open. She gasped and fell back on the gravel. With painful slowness his head turned toward her. His eyes, cloudy and unseeing, sent an icy shiver deep into her soul. His mouth moved like the mouth of a ventriloquist’s dummy.

“Shelbeeeee…we’ll be together. Forever…”

She screamed. The dream dissolved around her, and she found herself sitting up in her familiar bed in her familiar bedroom, her nightclothes soggy with cold sweat, her heart pounding like a jackhammer.

In the morning, Jack wasn’t waiting on the hood of her car. He didn’t come into the sandwich shop that day, nor the next day, nor the day after that. Shelby was glad he was gone, but she was on edge, expecting him to pop up at any moment.

Friday night she had a standing dinner with her parents, who still lived on the farm a short distance from town. She thought about canceling but convinced herself that there would be no way he could get at her in her car.

Shortly after turning onto Old Dairy Road, she became restless. Then she realized why the road in her dream had seemed familiar. She was on that road now. She had driven this road for many years going to and from town.

Jack suddenly appeared out of the night, directly in her path. Her headlights washed over him, glinted off his unblinking eyes. She stomped the brake. The car slid, spewing gravel behind it. A shuddering thud.

The car roared off the road, flipped, tumbled. Shelby was thrown free and landed face-down in the long grass as the car continued to roll out into the meadow where it came to rest on its roof.

A cold, bony hand, as if from a graveyard corpse, gripped her shoulder and rolled her over. She shivered and could not stop shivering. His face was badly decayed, but she recognized those unblinking eyes. His ragged lips moved, his voice low and guttural, and he formed words with difficulty.

“Shelbeeee…Weeee’ll beeee…together now. Foreverrrr…”

—

Lincoln, Nebraska, author David Kubicek’s books include the novel In Human Form, short story collection The Moaning Rocks and Other Stories, and the Cliffs Notes for Willa Cather’s My Antonia. He’s written hundreds of articles for the Midlands Business Journal, Nebraska Life, Humanities and other publications. He’s edited two short story anthologies, The Pelican in the Desert and Other Stories of the Family Farm and October Dreams: A Harvest of Horror (with co-editor Jeff Mason). His story “Ball of Fire” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. He hangs out at https://davidkubicekwriter.com.