Here is the audiobook:

https://youtu.be/-eH9qvFy0hs

Charles smiled, for as soon as the door opened, he peeled out of the garage and made a b-line for the street. As he approached, the soldier tried to wave him down, and even raised his gun. Exercising restraint, he did not pull the trigger, because he knew that everyone was likely going home to meet with their family. He wondered why he was standing there wasting his time trying to make sure no one left their home.

Charles pushed on the accelerator and ran over his own mailbox, and thumped onto the curve, before fishtailing into the street. He corrected the truck and pushed the pedal to the floor, and smiled as he sped down the road.

Once he left the city limits of Paradise, he found himself in the midst of a desert split in half by a single highway. The road stretched far beyond the horizon. Charles received another text message from one of his poker buddies, but he ignored it. It's not safe to text and drive.

The setting sun fell, and twilight gripped the sky. Paradise shrank as the distance between him, and his home grew. Charles gazed down the long stretch of highway, and there he saw the empty space before him peel open.

The eye returned.

Stars, galaxies, and the night sky concealed the top and bottom of the eye as though it were an eyelid. Tucked behind this lid made of space and time, the enormous eye glared upon Charles.

His hands tightened against the wheel as his heart raced. The eye remained fixed on him as he took his foot off the gas and allowed the truck to roll to a complete stop. His fingertips tingled as his palms began to sweat. He wasn't sure if he should proceed forward or turn back.

The truck rolled to a complete stop as Charles studied the eye. He stepped out and walked about ten feet forward. The pupil did not resemble a human's pupil. It was similar to a cat, or lizard. A reptilian eye—hazel iris, flecked with gold and emerald, and a pupil encircled by a slight wash of blue, as though water was inside the eye and falling from the iris into the pupil as though it were a pit.

The eye shifted, and Charles began to tremble. The bottom of the eyelid rested just above the desert's horizon. Charles looked straight up and saw that the top eyelid ended above his head, far off in the night sky. Clouds and a plane passed between him and the eye. It shifted once more and moved.

What it searched for, Charles did not know, but he could tell that by the way it moved, it was searching for something. He blinked hard a few times and waited. What else could he do at this moment?

Stars, galaxies, and the night sky didn't seem to be affected by the eye's movement and remained fixed in place. Much like a bead of oil moving through water, the eye moved down the horizon until half of it was gone. Charles returned to his truck, started the engine, and drove down the highway.

As he did so, the eye moved once more, until its pupil rested at the end of the horizon, thus creating the illusion that Charles could somehow drive into the pupil. The eyelid shut, and it seemed as though the eye was never there to begin with. Charles began to sweat as he realized the thing could move. He pushed harder against the gas pedal because what kind of cop would give him a speeding ticket during a time like this? He eased off the gas because he remembered that there's probably at least one.

Charles had driven for about an hour before he pulled over and topped off his truck. The gas station he stopped at was old, and still had the short pumps built into the ground, and dinged with every gallon he took. Try as hard as he might to keep his Ranger running smoothly, he knew that the ole' girl guzzled gas faster than he could down a bottle of jack on a lonely night. As the truck filled, he double-checked his gas cans, and the objects inside. It took a minute for him to realize the gas station was without a single employee, and he knew why.

He entered the gas station, a drab old place trapped in the eighties, and picked up a few bags of chips, sodas, and beef jerky for the drive to Vegas. The hotdog rollers still rolled, and the slushie machine still spun. The unnerving silence made Charles' stomach drop as he stood still.

Even the cash register was unlocked, but Charles didn't pay any attention to that. He may be a drunk, but he's not a thief. A payphone, next to an ATM, caught his attention; he approached it and then proceeded to lift the receiver.

Busy tone, and then silence. For reasons unknown, the phone did not work. He double checked his items, to make sure he had enough to last a three-hour drive, and then shrugged a twenty-dollar bill into the register.

A smirk crossed his face because he knew that money was useless at this point and doubted this alien creature, or God, or whatever it was didn't traverse the ocean of space to just stare at them. Any intelligent being can do that with cameras.

After the snacks and drinks had been collected, and the most important thing of all: booze, were secured, he cranked his truck and sat idle at the gas pump. He felt like the eye belonged in a drunkard's dream. He shuddered as he thought about the eye and what it wants.

Surely nothing would cross the cosmos to do something good, no, he figured alien beings would be just as self-serving as humans. If a creature came here from another dimension, it would likely do so for reasons that humans don't agree with. He returned to the highway and drove for forty minutes toward Las Vegas.

As he traveled in the black of night, the folds of the sky opened once more, and revealed the eye. It was in a different position than before, but just as big.

His heart didn't drop this time, but it was still rather difficult to figure out what to do. He could tell that the eye was closer to earth than the moon was but was far enough away to appear behind the veil of the atmosphere.

Though it was dark, Charles figured his guess was right. The eye must be somewhere near the—his heart sank, near the satellites. He thought of Lauren, who was likely already in a plane and in the air.

A thought persisted, despite his reservations. It's watching me. In an obtuse sense, yes, the eye was watching him, but the eye was watching everything it could see. Much like when he studied an ant colony before setting them ablaze with his magnifying glass. Charles did not stare at one ant, but all of them. He did not burn just one ant, he tried to burn them all.