No Exit by Taylor Adams 2

Ed chuckled, returning to his seat. “Kick his ass. Please.”
But she didn’t pick up her cards. Neither did Ashley. They
quietly regarded each other across the table as the wind
growled outside. A gust blew through the broken window in
the men’s restroom, rattling the door on its hinges. The
temperature in the room was dropping, but so far no one had
noticed.
“Fortunately for you,” Ashley said, “the card game War is
entirely luck. You know, unlike the real thing.”
Darby studied his eyes. They were vast, emerald-green,
flecked with amber. She searched them for something
recognizable, something human to relate to — fear, caution,
self-awareness — but found nothing.
Eyeballs are on stalks, she’d learned randomly, back at an
art gallery in October. She forgot the name of the artist, but
he’d been there mingling with the crowd, sipping a Dos Equis,
gleefully explaining that he’d incorporated authentic autopsy
photos into his work. To Darby, the shape of the human ocular
nerves had looked disturbingly insectoid, like antennae on a
garden slug. Something about it made her skin crawl. Now,
she imagined Ashley’s big eyes hanging in their sockets, firing
electrical signals along those drooping stalks into the coils of
his brain. He was a monster, an alien bundle of nerves and
flesh. Utterly inhuman.
And he was still watching her.
“Unlike the real thing,” he repeated.
The playing cards sat between them in two ignored heaps.
Questions fluttered in her mind like trapped birds, things she
desperately wanted to ask aloud but couldn’t. Not while Ed
and Sandi were within earshot.
Why are you doing this?
Why abduct a child?
What are you going to do with her?