Morning, Honey! Is something wrong?
I Sit Behind The Eyes is a Supernatural Horror novelette written by Nicholas Portwood.
Little Emily is feeling a little weird. She has started enjoying life more and is even becoming a better friend. However, she has also started hearing a little voice in her head and dreaming about doing horrible things. Convinced that something is trying to possess her, she seeks the help of her best friend and his uncle, an eccentric parapsychologist, to identify the nature of the being attempting to control her. However, when the truth eventually comes out, not even Emily herself will be ready to face the full horror of her impossible situation.
This work contains examples of:
- Alternate Identity Amnesia: Emily starts having nightmares about things she appears to have done while under the Entity’s influence. It is actually more of a case of Amnesiac Dissonance. The Entity was repressing memories of things that the real Emily had done before she was possessed.
- And I Must Scream: People possessed by the Entity are essentially trapped in their own bodies for the rest of their lives, with no means of crying out for help except through fragmented one-word yelps, which they can only do while the Entity is distracted by its more alien thoughts. After the real Emily’s soul is destroyed, it is suggested that she might still be trapped in her own body, unable to even do that!.
- Awful Truth: The true nature of Emily’s possession. Namely, that the Entity is actually the good one.
- Battle in the Center of the Mind: Emily vs. The Entity in the final chapter.
- Becoming the Mask: The Entity ends up taking over Emily’s life for good - which is great, because the real Emily was a terror.
- Benevolent Monsters / Reluctant Monster: The Entity is an Anti-heroic version of this. It goes around possessing dangerous people with damaged souls or no souls at all, in order to stop them from hurting others.
- Big Bad: Emily!
- Big Good: The Entity!
- Body Surf: The Entity has been possessing people since the dawn of human history.
- Chekhov's Gun: One of the giveaways that there is something wrong with Emily is her tendency to go off on tangents about the nature of thought, which she calls ‘Psychology-ology’. In the finale, there is doubt over whether it was Emily or the Entity that came out on top, until the girl starts going off on an even weirder tangent than before confirming that it is the Entity controlling her.
- Cloudcuckoolander:
- Terry’s uncle is the strangest psychologist ever!
- Emily has a tendency to go off on weird tangents. Give the Emily we know is actually a Starfish Alien, this makes sense.
- Demonic Possession: The plot revolves around a little girl being taken over by a creature that is essentially a rogue soul. However, in an unusual variation, the Entity is actually the narrator and a really friendly one at that. The villain is actually the girl herself, who the Entity possessed in an attempt to stop her from hurting others.
- Eldritch Abomination: The Entity is described as an invisible jellyfish with a small red light at its centre.
- Enfant Terrible: The real Emily is a genuine Psychopath, who is quite prepared to steal, bully and even KILL to get what she wants!
- Fate Worse than Death: Emily’s soul is destroyed in the final chapter.
- Faux Affably Evil: Emily puts up a rather thin façade to get what she wants. She only apologizes to Erin for cutting her hair to gain Terry’s sympathy and seemingly plans to visit Dennis in hospital in order to silence him.
- Grand Theft Me: The Entity is attempting to do this the Emily. It succeeds…much to everyone’s delight.
- Heroic BSoD: Emily /The Entity, Terry and his Uncle after the séance with the being responsible for Emily’s strange behaviour.
- Interspecies Friendship: Terry gets on much better with the pan-dimensional entity than the real Emily.
- I Should Write a Book About This: The Narrator is the protagonist ( Not the little girl, but the thing possessing her).
- Jerkass: Emily is noted as being much more sociable once the Entity starts to take over. Though nobody knows just how cruel she actually is.
- Loss of Identity: The fate of anyone possessed by the Entity.
- Maybe Ever After: Emily (possessed) remains good friends with Terry. She claims that she finds the notion of becoming an Official Couple disgusting, but also adds that she has not ruled it out entirely.
- Mayfly–December Friendship: Emily and Terry enjoy playing together in the park. What neither of them know is that Emily is really an amnesiac entity that is thousands of years old possessing the real Emily’s mind and body.
- Mayfly–December Romance: It is implied at the end of the book that the relationship between Emily and Terry will eventually evolve from friendship into Puppy Love. However, while Emily’s mind and body are those of a little girl, her soul itself is thousands of years old.
- Mysterious Past: The Entity is so old, it cannot remember its own origins. It might have been one of The Old Gods, it might be an alien visitor, it might even have started off as a human being.
- Nice Guy: Terry is generally a very good friend.
- Non-Malicious Monster: The Entity, a rare case where it's a protagonist. As it turns out, the Entity is drawn to Damaged Souls that indicate true sociopaths, and replaces them, merging with their mind and body into a nicer version of them.
- Not Himself: Emily is much friendlier after she gets possessed.
- Oh, Crap!: Terry when he finds out the truth about Emily’s possession.
- Orifice Invasion / Orifice Evacuation: The Entity enters and exits a host through the mouth.
- Our Souls Are Different: The ‘body’ acts, the ‘mind’ thinks about acts and the ‘soul’ thinks about thinking about acts. Because the real Emily has a Damaged Soul, she has no ability to develop a conscience, which the Entity forcefully replaced.
- Out-of-Character Alert: Although Terry strongly suspects that the real Emily is the evil one, he is not completely convinced until he asks her to recall the most traumatic experience of her life, and she is unable to shed a single tear. Thus, he realizes that she is unable to experience genuine emotion and is actually a Psychopath.
- Perspective Flip: The book is essentially about what would happen if a body hopping Starfish Alien was the hero.
- Really 700 Years Old: The Entity is as old as recorded human history.
- Red Eyes, Take Warning: The only visible part of the Entity is a small red light at its centre. Subverted, in that the Entity only possesses people who are a threat to others and makes them kinder.
- Repeat What You Just Said: “It was the worst MONDAY I’ve ever had!”
- Sealed Evil in a Can: The Entity is trapped in a flask towards the end of the book. Subverted in that it is actually a Sealed Good in a Can.
- The Sociopath: The real Emily is one. Her soul reflects this by appearing as a cracked image of herself. This is an important plot point in the final chapter, as her lack of genuine emotion makes her soul extremely weak and fragile, enabling the Entity to smash it.
- Soul Jar: The Entity is sucked into a flask towards the end of the book.
- Tinfoil Hat: Terry’s Uncle is a big believer in psychic forces and wears one for protection, much to the bewilderment of his patients.
- Tomato in the Mirror: The Narrator is not Emily, as one is led to believe, but the Entity possessing her.
- Uncertain Doom: It is unclear what happens to someone when their soul is destroyed. They might still be trapped in their own body, they might be dead, or they might have been erased.
- Word-Salad Horror: When Emily thinks too hard, she starts blurting out seemingly random words mid-sentence and does not realize until she has stopped talking. This is the first sign that she is being possessed, as the words spell out unnerving sentences like “LET ME OUT!”. It turns out to be the real Emily trying to warn others that she is possessed.
- Would Hurt a Child: Dennis, the school bully, took a rather unexpected dive into a river. The one responsible is quite prepared to kill to silence him.
- Xenofiction: The narrator is the Entity, and "Emily"'s weird tangents are its perspective leaking out.
