The Eyes of My Love

I catch his eye from across the room of our 11th grade English class. Butterflies emerge in my stomach making me wonder if it's anxiety or the beginning of a crush. For the next few weeks our eyes find each other everywhere: the hallway, the lunchroom, class.

I'm sitting in the lunchroom, pretending to listen to my friend rant about her relationship problems. All I can think about is how if I was with him, we would never have those problems. Suddenly my friend stops talking and looks behind me with concealed annoyance. I turn around, feeling the large presence behind me. Butterflies ram into my stomach lining as I look into his eyes.

He lets out a beautiful breathy laugh and asks for my number. I eagerly put it into his phone with shaking hands. I can feel him staring at me with his dark brown eyes. His face has a smile with an emotion I can't quite place. Originally, I believed it held something sinister, but that thought was quickly shooed away as I look into the eyes of the man of my dreams.

Eighteen months pass and things are amazing! My friends try to make me break up with him. They say that he is possessive and aggressive, but they don't know what I know. He's just misunderstood. He comes from a broken and negligent family. it's not his fault that everyone thinks he's weird. Although everyone has their quirks. He's so beautiful that I can overlook them. For one, I'm not allowed near his house. One time I dropped him off after a party because he was in no condition to walk home, and he lashed out at me. He even apologized. It's not his fault though! He's already told me a million times that I'm not allowed near his house and I didn't listen.

I still don't know why my friends freaked out when they saw the bruises. I told them the truth and everything! I told them it was my fault, and they were still mad at the love of my life! From that day on I decided that I don't need to associate myself with people who don't support me and the one I love.

Now it's just Jack and I, and I couldn't be happier. After five years of dating, we get married! It's one of the happiest days of my life! We finally move in with each other. I convinced him to let us move into the house I was never allowed to see. I have no clue why because it was kept very nice. The lawn was mowed, and the gardens were tended to. The inside was even better. It was a beautiful two-story open floor plan. I loved everything about it! The only thing that was bad about the house was the souls that scream in the basement.

Jack held painful eye contact as he told me on the first night in our house together. He told me that this house is the house of a murderer and people would be killed in the basement years ago. He assured me that nothing would hurt me, as long as a I stayed out of the basement. I vowed to him to never even look in the direction of the basement and we laughed it off.

The screams became a source of comfort for me. The nights when there were no screams, I was unable to fall asleep. I know it sounds weird, but it helps to know that someone is there when I go to sleep alone every night. It was something to get used to when Jack started sleeping in the same bed as me and the screaming stopped.

Years pass and we have a beautiful baby girl. Jane, named after my great grandmother who was unidentified in a rollercoaster crash. Her cries were a comfort to me ever since the screaming down below ceased. Maybe that's why I was so concerned when the cries of our baby began to get increasing more muffled and towards the direction of the basement. I slowly got up from bed, heart pounding and breathing rapidly. This was the only time in my life that I feared what my husband may do.

I am not dumb. I know why he didn't sleep in the same bed as me and I know that ghosts aren't real. I know what he did in that basement, and I figured out why I was never allowed over his house when we were younger. I know that my husband was talking about himself when he was referring to that murderer. I just didn't care. I love him too much to let that small thing come in the way of our love. I draw the line when it comes to my baby girl.

For the first time, I defy my husband. I open the door of our basement and the crying ceases with a gurgle. My heart leaps into my throat as I descend the stairs and see the horrible scene in front of me. I look into the eyes of the love of my life and see the same expression that he had when we first met. His sinister gaze meets mine. My eyes travel to the form in his arms. My baby girl's eyes glazed over staring at nothing. A painstaking rage flows through me as I slowly take my baby out of his arms.

I weep once she in lying lifelessly in my grasp. I look into his eyes, and I can't ignore his actions, not this time. I let him kill all of those people because I loved him, but not my daughter. She will never get to grow up and become her own person. The only memory that is left of her is her lifeless body.

The man of my dreams, the murderer I overlooked, my abuser who I loved enough to ignore his fatal flaws, is the killer of our daughter. Somehow, someway, I blink, and my sweet baby is no longer in my hands. She is replaced by the eyes of my husband. One in each hand. I gaze to the floor of the damp basement and see my eyeless husband lying next to our daughter.

The vicious murders didn't matter to me, I never thought he would've killed our daughter too.