I had already decided I was leaving the restaurant and the town right away, but I wanted to tell this smarmy fucker off first. Sliding out of the booth, I looked at him levelly. “So what keeps you from telling me what they did to you then?”

He chuckled. “Why nothing, of course.” He reached up and pulled off his glasses. “They helped me to really see.” I stared into where his eyes had been, but now they were just raw, red sockets with the withered remnants of cutaway eyelids curled at the upper edge like a drawn up window shade. He leaned forward merrily to give me a better look. “And I can see so well now.”

Inside the sockets there were endless tiny eyes. They shined in the dim track lights overhead, a flowing, rippling mass of white and red like a froth of bloody milk that was shot through with veins of black that seemed to bind one speckled orb to the next. A thicker grey strand of tissue ran across and into the bridge of the man’s nose before flowing into the other socket where the same shifting horror was repeated. I was already screaming and backing away when I felt rough hands grabbing me from behind.

They drug me back through some double doors that led to a large kitchen, except the back portion was clear of any equipment. It didn’t take long to see this was because the concrete floor had been broken open and led down into the earth.

I had been kicking and fighting hard before, but I redoubled my efforts now. I felt my right shoulder protest and then issue a bright flare of pain as my shoulder popped out of the socket, and I had a moment where I thought I was almost free, but then the hands were clamped on me tighter as they drug me down into the tunnel below.

We travelled along a dimly lit path that was periodically illuminated by work lamps, and more than once we intersected with other paths heading off in other directions. The further we went, the more I felt like these monstrous lunatics were ants carrying me to the center of the anthill. Except I soon realized we were going up again, and I found myself wincing as I was pulled out into the bright lights of what appeared to be a local high school gymnasium.

There were a few people in the stands, but many more were milling around on the floor of the old, run down basketball court. At the center of the court was a tall woman in a floral skirt and a long white coat. As I was drug closer, she introduced herself as Dr. Thurber.