Here is the audiobook for this story:

https://youtu.be/-eH9qvFy0hs

Charles guessed this eye was doing the same thing. Studying. Watching. Thinking. It shifted in the sky, and from deep within its pupil emerged three boney fingers. They wrapped around the left side of the pupil, and then three more fingers emerged on the right. Something drew its face from the depth of the pupil and peeked at the world in the same fashion a child would peer through a window.

The fingers clasped at the edge of the iris and touched the whites of the enormous eye. Charles studied the massive eye, while slowing down on the highway. It was then he saw it, something resembling a head within the pupil.

Four eyes tucked beneath ebony chitin folds reflected what little light was available. Charles swallowed the knot forming in his throat and slowed the ranger. The head and fingers of the creature retreated into the pupil, and then time and space itself froze as the eyelid closed.

Once again, the eye vanished into nothingness. Charles felt himself freeze in time as ribbons of clouds stopped rolling and dust froze in the air. He could not move his limbs or even his eyes. All he could see at the very bottom of his field of vision was that the speedometer on his truck read thirty-eight miles per hour, yet he did not move.

The eye. He knew the eye and what he saw had something to do with the frozen moment in which he found himself. Folds of space split open and revealed the veiny bottom of the eyeball. It rolled upwards until its iris and pupil arose over the horizon. Time resumed, and Charles felt his body quake as the passage of time returned to normal.

He skidded off the road and careened into a cactus, over a few small boulders, and then a large one. Charles turned the wheel, but his attempts were in vain. The ranger bumped and bounced over too many cacti and small boulders until Charles collected his composure and steered the Ranger back onto the road. But now he heard something knocking near the back of his truck. Ca-Lunk, ca-lunk, ca-lunk.

He bit his lip because he knew what the knocking meant. Something damaged the transmission, likely a boulder. Though he felt the need to check on his vehicle, he knew that if the transmission were broken, there'd be nothing he could do, and the truck would eventually die.

Charles progressed toward the massive eye and as he stared at it, it stared at him. A single black tendril slithered and spiraled out of the eye's pupil. It crashed into the earth about twenty miles away from where he was. He jolted in his seat and the shockwave of the impact pushed against him.

Another tendril, black as pitch and as wide as a building erupted from the pupil, but this one impaled the earth less than a mile from where he was. A plume of dirt and debris erupted from the point of impact as the black stalk pierced the planet. Another tendril emerged, and then another, and another, and soon, there were more tendrils than he could count.

Charles continued to travel onward, toward the eye, and by now, he knew he was halfway to Las Vegas. Unfortunately, the Ranger began to sputter. It jumped as he tried to drive faster, until at last, it accelerated no more. Once the Ranger rolled to a complete stop, he left the truck and looked up at the eye.

The whites had become bloodshot, and now the eye looked infected. From the pupil of the hideous eye were countless tendrils gouging the planet. They began to glow a soft orange and the air around him felt hotter than it usually did. Charles gave this thought no heed as he gazed up at the sky.

Military crafts buzzed around black stalks which fed into the pupil. He prayed for his daughter's safety and opened his bottle of jack. Small segments of bright orange flowed up the stalks and into the pupil. Charles closed his eyes and imagined this was all just a nightmare.

Lauren looked out of her airplane window. She tried to count the black tendrils but could not—there were too many. They harpooned through the sky and impaled the earth. One right after another. They seemed to come without end, and Lauren wondered how they were going to survive this plane flight.

She grabbed David's hand and questioned whether they would have been better off in the Bahamas but decided against it. The eye was visible down there, and it's likely that these tendrils were puncturing anything the eye could see.

As the pilot wove past tendril after tendril, Lauren watched helplessly as some of the tendrils tore through planes, buildings, and the earth. Her stomach turned as she watched the tendril dig deep enough to expose the orange glow of liquid iron, only for it to be hidden by dirt and debris as it was pushed around while the tendrils dug deep, and then deeper.

She noticed that the black tendrils didn't always appear to be black. There were sections which glowed orange, and she guessed that this thing, whatever it was, was drinking the liquid iron core of the planet. Each tendril, no more than a mouth, no less than a straw. They sucked the liquid layer from the planet and left behind a gaping chasm in its wake.

The solid iron core of the planet reflected what little light it could, only for it to be concealed by dirt and debris. Smoke emerged from these gaping chasms as the core of the planet burned all that touched it. And one by one, for each tendril, a new chasm was born. Lauren gazed at the planet below and refused to look out the window on the other side of the plane, because the eye would be ever closer. She pulled the blind down and looked away from the world below her. David squeezed her hand, and this brought her back from the edge of destruction she had just witnessed.

He said, "it was a beautiful wedding."

Lauren glanced at her engagement ring and wedding band. She thought of the reception, and her father walking her down the aisle. A beautiful wedding held outside in a vineyard, a wonderful reception where her friend's band played their hearts out. She couldn't remember ever seeing her father so happy. She missed him in that moment.

She said, "don't start dooming and glooming us." The sound of explosions erupted outside the plane. Lauren wanted to lift the blinder and peer out the window, but she knew ignorance truly is bliss.

Though she tried to ignore the possibility of death, she flirted with the idea of heaven.

She thought, if a tendril impaled the plane, would I be greeted by my mom, Bethany, and Sarah? Would they be grown now? Older?