OMMETAPHOBIA

Epilogue

I know what I'm about to post here is about to be crazy, but if I keep my emotions out of line, I don't know what IT might do to me. Gotta put my thoughts onto something.

First, I'm gonna introduce myself. My name is Rylan Banks. I'm a junior in high school, play for the baseball team, and have an irrational fear of eyes. Ommetaphobia they call it. Not because I dislike attention on myself, or because I had some embarrassing moment in my life, but because of what IT is. What it turns people into.

The first time I encountered this stuff, I was six...no, seven. Whatever my age was, it was obviously too disturbing for a kid like me to see. My mom was...extremely sick. She was for those last few weeks. She wouldn't speak, or move...she'd just...stay crouched in the corner and whimper something I couldn't understand.

I didn't know what was wrong with her. My mom was always emotionally strong, so seeing her broken down like that was...offputting.

As the days kept trudging by, it just got worse. She started coughing, choking, and spitting up some sort of sludge. Dark, almost black. The eyes started appearing everywhere. It was her arms at first, then her legs, all the way up her body. This stuff was all over her, before literally gluing her mouth shut. Watching her get worse and worse... leaves a scar on you that doesn't really fade.

There was one night. I had just finished what we had left for dinner...and slowly slipped into my bed. Just as I was about to doze off. I heard it. That creature's...snarl mixed with her screams. The pitter-patter of someone's feet skittering across the laminated wood floor, coming straight for my room. I didn't hesitate, I just darted straight under my bed, hoping whatever made that sound...didn't come for me.

I heard the door creak open. The sound of heavy, rabid pants and stumbling all over my room, knocking over things on my dresser, and my bedside table.

I heard her calling my name. Or what I thought was her. I almost crawled out, but something told me that...whatever that thing was, wasn't my mom. Not anymore.

The thing finally throws my bed aside. And I'd finally look at the thing my mom became.

Once again, purple irises, from head to toe, all focused on me. My mom's body was contorted, her back twisted around in a terrifying position where she looked more animal than an actual person. I could barely take a good look before it lunged at me...but I wouldn't be here typing over a decade later, typing this stupid thing for you, now would I?

Something stopped it before it attacked me. Something that made it snap back into reality. For a minute, I saw my mom again, probably in massive amounts of pain, but undeniably her. She tried to speak, but that stuff covering her lips kept any words from coming out.

I tried crawling back, trust me, I did. But the younger me knew that it was my mom. Sure, she looked like...that, but at least an iota of her was still there. And then, just like that...she changed back. Like she wasn't just about to tear me apart. She got up, and her eyes, there was something in her eyes that told me that she wasn't all there. A hint of something also told me that this wasn't her first time with whatever this is...

Everything is fuzzy around that point. Just a lot of apologizing and...explaining. 

She still slips in and out every once in a while. Coughs up the tar, a few eyes show up, but she always manages to fight it off, like it's just a bad cold. 

I guess all of this to say...I don't know what's going to happen to me...or my family down the line...if I get there. And if I can help it, I want to find anything about this curse that I can. Anything that might help get this thing the hell off of me...

Or give it what it wants from us.