*Do Not Read*

The crack between the closet doors—that slice of primordial light in the musty dark—demanded investigation.

Look, the lights said. Behold me.

I shouldn't have. I should have kept my eyes and ears closed, tucked between the textures of long coats and cardboard boxes, coughing on dust, batting at the spiderwebs alighting on my neck. I should have minded my own business. I could have.

Then again, maybe not. That seductive crimson light and the flailing shapes and colors beyond were so insistent. A jubilee of flame had erupted in the room mere feet from me.

Damn me for looking. Abandon all hope ye who peak through the closet when your aunt admonished you so clearly, so adamantly, "Don't look, no matter what you hear, understand? Just plug your ears and close your eyes 'til the light's're gone. Don't look!"

Well, I looked.

Was it reverse psychology? She had to have known that the first thing an inquisitive, transgressive, idiotic child like me was going to do after such an explicit warning was to do its exact opposite.

I saw things through that crack between the closet doors. Things I'll never unsee. Things that made me immediately question the known world and the rules of its operation. The world is rife with supposed experiences such as these, things considered hearsay until witnessed firsthand: spotting a cryptid, a ghost, a UFO. The world, or your conception of it, cannot outlast such encounters, can they? It all goes sideways. Everything you thought you knew. All you can do is recalibrate. Change the knowns, the givens, the beliefs, all in an instant.

The mind is malleable like that. Like putty. It has to be. If you're not flexible when the unimaginable happens, you snap. You crack. You pop.

What did I see in the living room of my aunt's apartment? Are you sure you want to know? If I tell you, you'll make one of two choices: deny the veracity of my tale, call me crazy; or allow your reality to change.

I will not accept the former. If you insist on reading on, you must accept that there are more things in heaven and earth, dear reader, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

In short, read at your own risk.

But I will not be blamed for what happens if you do. You're the one who wouldn't heed the warning. Curiosity and cats, you know.

#

Shortly before my entire concept of the real imploded, I was watching cartoons in my pajamas and sharing ice-cream from a soggy carton with my aunt Tara.

We watched anthropomorphic animals beat each other with frying pans and set each other on fire.

We laughed riotously.

Tara was my mom's youngest sister. Young enough to be my sister, I think. She didn't seem that much older than me. Barely an adult. But she did have her own place across town. A one-bed, one-bath dump with wall stains and brown, flat carpet. It smelled like trash, and I'd keep a tally of how many cockroaches I'd spot each time I visited her place.

But she was the fun aunt. Junk food, tickle fights, pillow forts, booger jokes. Tara really knew how to entertain/babysit.

Mid-commercial, there was a knock at her door. I say knock, but it was more like a thunderclap.

Like the big bad wolf might blow the building down.

"Tara!" a deep voice called from outside. Then the voice spoke words that were in no human tongue. Of that I am certain. The language spoken then could have only come from a creature of split mandibles and several tentacle tongues.

Tara shoved me into the closet.

"Don't look, no matter what you hear, understand? Just plug your ears and close your eyes 'til the light's're gone. Don't look!"

More than anything else, it was the fear in her eyes made me afraid.

I did as she asked, at first.

With my pointer fingers in my ears, I felt, rather than heard, the footsteps of something enter the apartment. Each step of the thing send a vibration through the floorboards beneath the carpet.

The muffled tone of Tara's voice, frantic and pleading.

A deep voice responded in an alien tongue. Like batteries in a blender.

Then the lights started. I saw them through closed eyes, the flashing, the strobes, the flickering.

So, I looked.

#

Reader, this is your last warning.

Look away.

#

Tara stripped of clothes. Bloody bandages torn away. Half-healed cuts. So many cuts, bleeding. Shapes in the skin. Red shapes. Bleeding shapes. Bleeding eyes. Blood vomit.

What is that thing? Too big to be human. Eyes like fire. Lights in its body—no, extensions of its body. Deep sea fish-lights burning red and orange and white. Lifting Tara off the ground. Nothing. Nothing was holding her up. Lifting her off the ground with its eyes. It's hating eyes. It's burning hell eyes. Chains. Chains from nowhere. Chains from under the carpet. Meat hooks. Pentagram burning through the carpet.

The walls are bleeding. The walls are bleeding. The walls are black with blood. I could smell bile. Smell bile. Smell bile and burning hair.

It saw me.

The closet slammed open. Black tentacles on me. The temperature of lava. Cold, slimy lava. Burning. Chains. Meat hooks scratching shapes.

The thing had too many eyes. Too many hands. Too many everything. And animal parts. Chiton. Tentacles. Eyestalks. Burning lights.

The flailing fire tongue language shredded my ears. Speaking to me. Pushing thoughts into me. Flossing my gray matter with razor wire.

"I see you, child. Make a pact. Make a pact. Make a pact or suffer eternally."

"I promise," I blurted, blood dribbling down my chin, blood burbling out my ears. "I promise, I promise, I promise."

#

I'm sorry, reader. You really should have stopped reading. This was my promise and I must keep it: to bring it victims.

It will visit you tonight.

I'm sorry.

##