Aggravation was my initial response. Twice they had failed me and the hope of ever completing my Eva collection was fleeting. The delivery company stopped taking my calls and emails after two weeks. They claimed with certainty, that they had delivered the package I ordered. Frustrated, I threw myself into the walls of my apartment and onto the hard wooden floors. My tantrum was meaningless for soon the mystery of the book and key would have solely filled my mind.
I decided to open it.
Why not? I thought. If this is supposedly what I had ordered then its mine and nothing is worse than an unread book collecting dust on a shelf.
So it was to be read.
I drew the keys and inserted them into the identical locks. The penetration was rough and difficult, for the lock had a layer of rust preventing a smooth entrance. The keys turned with a scrapping CLICK! and I expected the book to swing open and reveal some old Greek myth.
But it did not.
In fact, the book seemed to act as if I hadn't unlocked it at all. I tried pitifully to pry it open but my quivering arms were no match for the cold iron that wrapped the book shut.
"Come on, dammit!" I pleaded in a flustered whimper. It was that moment, looking back, that I sealed my fate. I had done the worst possible thing: consenting to the book's opening. But this is not the tale of what I shouldn't have done, only the tale of what I did.
After my pathetic whimper of consent the book flew open so quickly that I nearly dropped it. However, I was keen enough to catch the tome before it landed heavily on the floor. It had opened to a page near the end and as I beheld the strange and indescribable writings of a language I had never seen my eyes were filled with an incandescent luminosity.
Very gradually my balance began to shift as if I were standing on the bottom of the ocean and was being pushed gently by a current perpendicular to me. My body swayed to and fro and my head began to feel very light. Then I started to fall toward the book. A shimmering of phosphorescence illuminated my eyes and all I could see was the radiating beauty of what might be described as a sun made of blue.
Then I beheld a grand vacancy. I was floating in empty space the like of which no man has ever felt. But there was however, something floating. I hadn't noticed it at first, the sheer vastness overwhelmed me initially. But now I had gathered some bearing and could see a platform.
Atop it stood nine figures. They each stood in a lopsided circle around a massive mound of writhing tentacles. Each of the figures had before them an item that I soon realized was a relic of immense power. I had concluded that they had used these artifacts to summon the beast and now awaited its divine judgement.
The figures were all standing placidly around the shambling behemoth. Each contact with their totem at their feet. Then I noticed one who offered a revolver held something spherical dangling in his left hand. The thing was my decapitated head.
Coagulated blood clung to the stump that was once my neck. My skin, a deflated blueish white, shimmered with what I imagined was a dying sweat. The remainder of my neck stump was riddled with dark purple bruises that crisscrossed in aggressive X's all the way around.
My chin was encrusted with dried spit and blood. They drew flakey lines from my lips to the center of my torn neck. My mouth was a sunken hole in which no tooth resided and only the flabby pink of my ruined gums could be seen.
My cheeks were sunken and thin. My eyes had deep bags beneath them and the rims of my eyelids were a discolored, urine color, yellow. But the look in my dead, unblinking eyes was most terrible. For it held within it a wild and shattered look. I must have seen something truly mind shattering.
I then descended into the pupils of my horrified eyes and was lost in the nothingness of the void.
In the darkness of my room I saw phantom figures of my furniture, they comforted me. I regained my composure and stood. I was at that time a religious man and had decided that these were nothing more than wild visions brought on by some sort of demon. I believed then that I came back haunted. But those archaic notions are broken somewhere, floating with that platform.
-Jestro
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