The Stare - a short story

April 12th, 2008 |

The Stare – Copyright © 2008 Slim Palmer

Rudge had stared at the thing for almost twenty-five minutes – he’d looked at his pocket watch to check – and all it did was stare back at him.

Those blank features. No eyes. No mouth. No nose. No ears. No hair. And yet it just stared. Evilly stared.

The hand didn’t help. A single finger pointing at him. Not the index finger, no. The pinkie.

He’d even moved seats by one unit but the damn thing kept looking at him.

Come on Rudge, he chided, do something. Don’t just stare at it. Pick up your tools and do something.

The figure still stared.

There was a blank space on the desk in front of him waiting to be filled. “Do SOMETHING Rudge!” it screamed at him.

The figure stared and the hand pointed.

If it had hair, or breasts, or even shoes he could have done something. Made a start.

He could feel his groin getting hotter – almost to the point of being uncomfortable – and a fine trickle of sweat descended from his armpit onto his waist to be soaked up by the blue cotton shirt under the lab coat.

The figure stared and the hand pointed.

Perhaps if he moved again? Moved to the other side so that it wasn’t looking at him? But no. All the spaces were taken and it would be highly inconsiderate to cause a fuss this far into the project.

He shifted, uncomfortably in his, hard plastic, straight-backed high-chair and the figure still stared and the hand still pointed.

‘Problem Rudge?’ asked the voice behind him.

‘No, no. No problem.’ he answered, without looking around but covering the blank space with his arms.

Why me? Why now? Why… this? He continued to stare between the figure, the hand and the blank.

You’ve done this hundreds of times before. You come in. You take a seat. You look, for a few moments or so, and then you start. What was different today?

‘Twenty minutes.’ stated the voice, which had now moved to the other side of the room.

‘Shit!’ thought Rudge, ‘Come ON!’ he stared at the blank and then met the stare of the figure. ‘Little bastard.’ he muttered under his breath.

The figure stared back and the hand pointed. It was mocking him.

He had to do something to fill the blank but his palms were sweating and he knew that if he picked up a tool of the trade that it would slip out of his hand as if it were greased.

Another trickle of sweat descended waist-wards and it seemed to beat time to the scratching noises that were the only sounds in the otherwise silent room apart from his racing heart and the clock on the wall.

‘Five minutes, please.’

‘Fuuuu-ck!’ Rudge’s brain was in overdrive but all he could see was the stare and the blank. This was so important. Fail this and he would be… be just another… another… statistic.

That stare. How could something with no eyes stare? It just could. It was eating into his head and boiling his brain.

Pick. Up. A. Tool.

Just as he felt the five minutes were up he threw the blank into the middle of the room, clattering his chair to the floor in the panic, and ran away from it slamming the door behind him.

As he stormed down the corridor he crushed the piece of charcoal that he was still clutching and raised his voice which he hoped the whole sixth form could hear: ‘Bollixed by a bloody artist’s mannequin!’

Sorry, comments are closed for this article.