the Shed

There was only one rule:

Don’t open the door...

I should have listened.

I was a girl, just shy of ten, who often stayed with my great-great aunt. She was an odd woman, with a cigarette either dangling from her pruned lips or held carelessly in her left hand. Her house always smelled faintly of cigarettes and the solid stink of Dog. My mother left me with her regularly, and yet my aunt would always escort me outside.

But outside is where the Incident happened.

My aunt had a shed; metal, and painted a dull grey, with a heavy door and a massive lock. The lock itself was a shiny steel, glossy and glistening like new. I’ve seen its key though, which held no resemblance.

No grass grew around the shed. No weeds, not even wildflowers. Insects avoided the shed. Crickets and grasshoppers chirped insanely around the area, but all fell dead quiet when in the dead spot of the shed. Spider spun no webs on the various rusted tools on the outside. Bees and flies averted from the shed. Even the felid mice left no trails near it. There was something there, repelling all life whether as plant or animal.

Don’t go near the shed. Don’t open the door. Leave it be.

The rules were simple. But I was ten. Curiosity got the best of me.

I was bold that day, I don’t know why.

My aunt was asleep on the couch, her raspy snores bouncing around the walls of the living room. Her eyes were half open, like a dolls’. Blank and dull and a milky blue.

(I smile now, vaguely remembering she used to scare the daylights out of me.)

My aunt had a set of keys just above the coffee pot. I call it a set, but in reality, it was one fat iron key, surrounded by stiff rubber tags from various bingo halls and gas stations.

It was heavier than I thought, the key. Rough in my small hands, and a dull grey not unlike the shed and its shiny, out of place lock. But i held it firmly in my hand. With overexaggerated sneakiness, i slipped out the back, closing the screen door slow and soft to not make any type of noise.

The sun had yet to try to descend, so outside was hot, bright and entirely different from inside the cold, dark house. Even with all this light, the shed remained a cold, dull grey. The lock vibrant as a drop of solar fire.

With tepid steps, I approached the shed and its shiny lock. The key, although it should have been warmed by own flesh, was still an icy cold.

It was time to satisfy my growing curiosity.

Even though I had the one key, the lock felt like it was rusted shut. even jiggling the damn piece of iron did nothing.

“Come on...open, you stupid door. Before Aunt Babs wakes up.” I remember muttering. The lock remained firm in place.

Finally, the key clicked, and the lock fell to the bare dirt with a thud. I felt a thrill go up my spine, and something akin to ice water trickle down at the same time. Taking a deep breath, i carefully pushed the door open. It was surprisingly easy.

I instantly regretted that.

It was the smell that wafted over me first.

It was sweet, and kinda sugary, but carried hints of copper and iron. There was a layer of muskiness underneath the cloying sweetness. And something putrid. It oozed out in bursts, the stink of pus, blood, salty mucus and the tang of urine. But it wasn’t the smell that shook me down to my core. It was the creature.

It stood tall. Its neck hung stiff and crooked in two angles as it stared up from its crouch. From what I can see of the flesh, it shifted colors and various shapes underneath the skin, like bugs skittering in rivets. There were bumpy cords rippling about, slithering and inching without any distance between. As for the color, it appeared black, but I could see shifting gold, dull steel, dark blues, and so many unsettling shades of purple and yellow, all swarming and bubbling on its body like the glorbs from a lava lamp.

I watched as it stood up in the shed, its head scraping along the top of the roof. The creature was too tall to fit comfortably. I counted three sets of long arms, muscular and sharp in shape, yet long, with fingers long as candles and knuckle knobby and twisted. Each limb jutted out at the elbows, ending in a fleshy lump that twisted and rolled about.

Its legs were bowed and folded similar to that of a grasshopper. Skinny legs that looked like one good kick with crack them in two no hair, but something thorny sticking from the joints. Trailing my eyes to its feet, i saw nothing but a cloven claw.

The eyes is what grabbed my paralysis. So many eyes. There were nothing on the smooth, smooth face. But there were eyes. The fleshy lumps on the shoulders blinked open to reveal eyes with slitted black pupils. On the end of the fingers revealed tiny eyeballs that blinked away glassy tears as the digits twitched and felt around. And one large eye, all too human like, was focused on my face, staring at me on the creature's lumpy and knobby chest.

It had a mouth. It had more than one. Where the eyes were supposed to be on a human, the lids peeled open to reveal tiny maws full of viperous fangs, some drool dribbling out of the corners. There were also a mouth on each palm, tiny mouths gnawing on air with blunt human teeth, tongues slipping out to lick up dust and some sort of ooze on the floor. And one more, right under the giant chest eye, full of teeth, a mixture of both fang and blunt teeth. The large mouth opened with a grin.

"?ʎɐʅꓒ ?...ʎɐʅd oʇ ʇuɐM" the horrid creature asked. I screamed.

Something grabbed me by the collar of my shirt, slamming the door closed as I was then spun around to see the livid face of my Aunt Babs.

“Auntie...what is that thing?!” I stammered. I felt cool air cover my limbs, causing me to look around. It was dark already. Stars glittering in the black sky, and a light fog already covering the field. The singing of frogs and crickets played an unsettling orchestra all around the shed. Aunt Babs stared down at me, her thin lips an even thinner line. And then I saw her eyes.

They were black, blacker than the night surrounding us, with no light.

“I told you to stay out of the shed...” she hissed, her voice faint yet echoing.

“What is that?! Auntie!!! What is that!!!?” I wailed. Aunt Babs grabbed my arm, pulling me away from the shed. I already saw the shiny lock had been reattached to the door. The iron key was being stuffed down my aunt’s shirt.

She threw me into the house.

“You opened the shed! I said stay away from the door! You should have listened!” she kept on hissing. I scrambled away from her reach, shaking.

“Auntie...I want to go home now.” I whimpered. Aunt Babs then looked directly into my own eyes, her blacker than black eyes leveling me still.

“You should have left the door alone.” and she opened her mouth wide, revealing a mixture of snake and human teeth.

All I could have gotten out was one short scream. And I was no more.