[Alucard]

I recently turned this into my college's literary magazine and haven't received any feedback yet.

I'd like some opinions if anyone is interested. :)




Corner of Your Eye
If you’ve never had the experience of having the lights go out on you in a public restroom, my advice is to do your best to keep it that way. It’s quite interesting how a simple lack of bright fluorescent overhead lighting can change a chamber of hygiene and pearly tile into a mausoleum of filth and despair.
A flickering overhead emergency light was all that was allowed to me now. The crimson bulb was, it seemed, positioned directly over my stall, extending shadows from my tiny cubicle. I knew I was alone in the room; I would have heard any others who came or went and no tell-tale sounds-- the tapping of a foot, the unraveling of a toilet paper roll, a nervous cough—told of any other occupants. Until the moment the lights went out at least. I could hear them now, trying to move quietly or unable to do otherwise, rustling by my stall, feet hidden by the dire shadows.
“Hello?” I called out quietly, tentatively. Silence. The quiet dragged on for several moments while I remained still. Dread began to creep over me for reasons I couldn’t fathom, seeming like tiny insects writhing beneath my flesh. It was only the dark but... I really didn’t want to be here anymore.
Feeling foolish for doing so but unable to help myself, I left the bowl unflushed, fearing to give out such an alarm. The stall door opened (thankfully) without as much as a creak. The flickering bulb spilled red light out into the rest of the chamber, its long mirror standing guardian over the shadowy sink basins. The crimson darkness pooled within each pit seemed a vile offering to some archaic god, a bloody decanter of darkness and death. I shivered and gasped audibly, why the hell was I thinking things like that?
A movement! In the mirror, a shadow shifted, the darkness shivering at the edges. I whipped around, scanning the sepulchral chamber, whispery voices rising again to meet my gaze. The tightness in my chest had not lessened; the simple restroom had been transformed by its lack of light, its single red bulb, a devil’s eye, trapping me within its gaze, a circle of decrepit safety only made so by my own baseless desires.
I turned back to leave, my fear increasing with my own overactive imagination, but as my eyes swept past the mirror I saw something. I wouldn’t let my gaze focus on it, viewing it only from the corner of my eye. It was far away, on the distant wall just outside of the devil’s gaze beside a line of stalls. It was a pale shape, vibrant against the bloody darkness, white despite the crimson that permeated everything else.
I observed it as a peripheral blur, knowing somehow that if I let my eyes focus on it I would run screaming from the bathroom. No, I couldn’t let this irrational fear control me. I was letting a simple power outage rule me, letting fear creep in where it had no place. I took a deep breath, ready to confront the phantom just outside my vision.
I turned before I could talk myself out of it, willing myself not to close my eyes. I was ready (or I prayed I was) ready to meet whatever was there! I turned and saw- nothing… Where only moments before there had been an ivory smudge in the edge of my vision, all I now saw within the demonic red of the bulb’s flickering eye was an empty restroom in all its crypt-like glory. Wait- my eyes froze; it was there beside me, much closer but static in my peripheral.
It was only several feet away at most; its details clearer even at the angle. I realized then that the color wasn’t quite a pale white, it was pallid, the almost-white green of dead flesh left to bleed out in the dark. I clenched my teeth to drive out the thought. Two black orbs stared at me from above an ebony chasm that even in plain view I was afraid wouldn’t resemble a mouth. Then I heard the sound that accompanied the specter: a raspy breathing, air escaping from a windpipe torn open by a rusty ceremonial knife- No! Stop with these thoughts! The breathing was low though; almost low enough that I could convince myself that I hadn’t heard it if not for its ghoulish creator standing so near to me.
I couldn’t deny anything about this tomb any longer; this was something that I could not explain. The fear that rose up from deep inside me was not one of fear of danger to myself, it was not knowing what would happen if I let my fear take me.
I turned away from the room’s only other occupant. I dreaded more to face it than turn my back on it. The glimpse was enough that I was sure I would never forget it. My feet began pulling me towards the door but then I froze. In the mirror to my left, it was there again but… I let my eyes leave the mirror and cross to my other peripheral. Inches. That was all that separated us. Long white hair framed that pallid face. The eyes though, they were as black as night, the utterly bile black of Hell. They stared into me, into my soul, possessing my all and spitting it back as a vile and perverted thing. I could smell it now too, a ripe sweet smell but slightly like mildew. Its cold dampness was too close to ignore. Then that mouth, the black chasm, caught my eye; still issuing its ragged breaths, it curved up in what could only loosely be described as a smile.
“I’ll see you later dear,” it whispered in a voice of blood spilling on an ancient altar, screaming until death finally arrived, a late thing never complete so long as true darkness still existed in the soul of mankind.
The lights came back on. I was out of the restroom in an instant, my heart thundering in my chest, sweat pouring from my body. Though I couldn’t imagine it ever truly would for the rest of my life, the world seemed real. The sun cast its shaft of light through a skylight high about while men and women mingled all around me. With those whispered words, however, I didn’t feel safe even there and I have not to this day. I experienced something that day that cannot be imagined. I was witness to something ancient and evil; somehow, a shadow of the past and the darkness of the other side came together in our own world through the absence of light. I know now that it is always there. Just beyond our sight lie things we fear to think about, things that exist in our nightmares, things that wait and can only be glimpsed in the corner of our eye.

[Quiet Man Cometh]

Not sure what I think about this. From the opening I was prepared for something a little less serious, or something that would at least end on a similiar note to the beginning, which felt understated and almost humourous, than the way it did with the focus on the sinister things in the world. That's my initial impression anyway.

On the construction end, you do have a floating sentence in the last paragraph. This one: "Though I couldn’t imagine it ever truly would for the rest of my life, the world seemed real." There's nothing earlier in the paragraph for the "it" to refer too, so it feels disconnected from the rest of the paragraph.

That's really what comes to mind for now. I wish you luck with your submission. :).