His eyes bore a deep and painful, haunting look that pierced my very soul. He was obviously burdened by some great remorse that I could not yet fathom. But in time I understood. In time I knew.

I met him in the most peculiar way that is not important to this tale, rather the mere fact that we met is enough for you to know. That he died by his own hand is not in dispute. He wanted it to end. He demanded it end… and so he extracted from me a promise. Oh that I had kept my word.

The promise he required from me was a simple task. One which he claimed he would reward me handsomely for. He asked that I simply find a way to disassemble or destroy a small device he had acquired somewhere in his travels. Barring that, I was to secret the item away and never let it see the light of day. We were poor and I, a loving husband and a devoted father, was eager to do as he asked. The money he would provide far exceeded my current needs and I jumped at the chance to increase my family’s meager estate.

He made arrangements in his will that the device should fall into my possession once he had passed. It was a simple task since he had no other heirs. Thinking him a fool and a bit odd at first, I agreed without question. Surely he wasn’t right in the head. But agreeing seemed to calm some deep fear that resided within him.

You ask now why I considered him odd? Simply this. He often spoke of things imagined as if they were real, things he remembered that could not possibly be. Why at times he claimed to be a father and a husband himself, but no kin to him were ever discovered. At other times he purported to be from another time or some such. His vast wealth he claimed to have gained from investments in companies that, as far as I could discern, did not exist. What folly he spoke. At least that’s what I believed. If only I had heeded his warnings, so too might I have realized the truth.

The device in question did not come into my possession for some time. The courts squabbled about his sanity and the state of his mind when the will was authored. Eventually parts of it won out, others did not. The monies I never saw; perhaps that was what led me down that foolish path. Alas, that I had kept my promise. So simple it seems now, so impossible to go back.

It was a small item with a maddeningly vast array of dials and switches. Each seemed to change the configuration of the device in ways my eyes could not easily follow. Like some puzzle or lock, the thing seemed to hint at secrets stored away behind its simple exterior. Each turn of a dial or flip of a switch would cause the thing to rearrange itself in a new configuration. I marveled at the thing, never knowing what hellish fate it held in store for me. What hands that made such a thing could not have been human, and I shudder to think of how long it has performed its wicked and terrible actions, at what horrors it has brought to men. Had I known then that men of science had solved Einstein’s equations and discovered that each interaction could spawn multiple outcomes that perhaps created alternate realities, then perhaps I would have guessed the device’s true nature. Or perhaps not. But it matters little now.

Operating the thing was a simple as falling asleep in its presence. Nothing more is required to make the thing work. One merely needed to reconfigure the device and when slumber was upon him, the result would be realized. This discovery was unintentional, the result of my first acquisition of the artifact. Unbeknownst to me, I had set the thing in motion by playing with the dials and switches upon first receiving it from the courts. Had I only done what was asked of me.

I see now you look upon me with the same disbelief I once held when told of such tales. You question my sanity do you not? You wonder what yarns I spin. But listen further. And believe me you must.

The next mornings things were always no longer as I remembered them from the nights before. The changes were subtle, yes, always subtle at first. The device had a way of making you want to change things. At first a distant friend or relative was taken and erased from reality, nothing bold. Most changes I was ignorant to, or could explain away by faulty memory. I had imagined something different perhaps, nothing more.

But as I continued to try to discern the meanings of the dials and switches, the changes escalated. Soon the unraveling was too blatant to ignore. One morning I discovered my youngest child, who was hale and fit the night before, was, in this new world, sickly and dying. How could this be? What manner of change had occured? Every other individual remembered the child to always be sickly, but I did not. My child had been well the night before. And now, she was not.

The next morning the child was no longer sickly. She had died two years prior. But I remembered her hale and full of life only two nights ago. And she had only, in my frame of reference, been ill but a single night. Now I learned that she had died long before I remembered her being well. The insanity of the paradox was maddening. I could not accept it at first. But looking back at the changes and correlating them with my studies on the device led me to the most horrific of understandings. There could be no other culprit for these changes than the artifact itself. It had the power to change the fabric of reality.

It was with this realization that I chose to do what I should not have done. When a wise man gambles and loses, he stops playing. But I was resolved to find my way back. This reality was not my own, I wanted my child. I wanted my life. I wished I had never set eyes on the terrible artifact, had never befriended that horrible poor man. But I made a plan to be more careful. I would no longer simply change the device randomly. Perhaps I could find the right combination to get me back.

But next the youngest child had never been, though I recalled her perfectly. Then my eldest fell prey to the changes the device made while unravelling my life. And finally I had never met my wife… did she ever exist? I cannot know. I must not know. To know would be too heartbreaking. And I am not a strong man anymore.

My plan was simple, but thwarted at every turn. I resolved to make one change at a time to the device. Should it not lead me back to a happier life, I would change it back. But the thing is too complex. Changing one makes it all but impossible to return. Perhaps now I understand that the unraveling is permanent. Perhaps it is the nature of chaos to disallow a happier change.

The door does not swing both ways you see. Each change leads you further into the abyss. Do not look away from me! Do not pity me! I need none of it. I need you to listen…to understand. Perhaps my understanding will lead to some good. It is all I have left to hold onto. I thought of leaving the device somewhere remote, or sealing it away, but it must not be allowed to fall into hand unsuspecting. This evil must end.

And now you ask why I am so clear in what it does? Why I’m willing to speak of it so clearly? Because it must not stand. It must not be allowed to continue to destroy men’s lives. My final change has led me here. Do not pity me. Death is welcome now. I cannot bear the memories of so happy a time when all about me is in ruin. But I ask a promise of you. The thread of your life must not be unraveled as mine; you must promise me that when it falls into your hands, you will do as I could, or did, not. You must find a way to destroy this thing. Promise me you will find a way. Destroy it. Lest your eyes be as haunted as mine…

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Tags: Assorted Sundry, Fiction, horror, Inspiration