Horror stories are all about monsters. Things out to get you. Eat a few people, make a bloody mess, and have you scared for your life.

But…no one ever wants to consider where monsters come from. Or why we are so eager to read about them…

I have a story to tell, though, believe me when I tell you it is unpleasant to say the least.

Three years, six months and fifteen days. Exactly how long it has been since I made the unholy mistake of questioning where these stories come from. It was my eighteenth birthday you see, and, like all people at that age, I believed I was smart enough to know what I was doing.

I was wrong…so wrong.

I found through the darker channels of the internet, various ways one was suppose to be able to commune with spirits. Some of these are easy to find and preached as new age spirituality. I went just a little bit deeper.

There exists a few ways in which one may be exposed to some of the primal origins of the universe. I will not tell you how to find them, much less how to do them. Trust me when I tell you, it is best that way.

I had set the event up. It was not so much a ritual as it was a lot of painting very odd and very uncomfortable symbols. With a few candles placed around me for light, I put in my headphones and listend to a song I had been instructed to. The song itself was not so bad. A lot of percussion and wind instruments. Nothing terribly unusual about it. I sat still for as long as I could, eye closed, meditating, hoping to encounter…somethin¬g. I don’t know. An out of body experience? A voice? A face in the candle light?

None of it happened.

I sat for as long as I could before my back started to ache. I stood, annoyed at having wasted so much time. Opening my eyes, I saw the candles were just barely alive anymore, struggling to fight back against the darkness. As I turned to flick on the lights, they whispered their last breath and died.

It did not immediately occur to me how long I had been sitting there that the candles could burn out, because as they did, something else entirely different happened.

In the darkness I saw what looked like specs of dust. Small gray and white particles of fluff hanging in the air. Pausing, I reached out to touch them, only to see they were much like stars, hanging too far from reach to touch.

I looked down, the totality of the darkness erasing my body from vision, but I was distinctly aware that my feet were no longer touching anything solid. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. My lungs filled with what felt like a hot and cold smoke, but I did not cough. The sensation was electrifying.

I exhaled quickly, and the feeling vanished. Opening my eyes, I was witness to something I cannot begin to describe with accuracy.

The dust…began to collect and swirl. Slowly, as if moving on a time lapse, this dust coellesed into a swirling mass of…galaxies. Miniature galaxies begun to take shape in the abyss.

I began to comprehend what was going on as the music faded and became a deep throbbing vibration. Almost like someone tugging at a massive chord that was strung through my spine.

I blinked, and in an instant felt a pull from my chest. Before I could open my eyes I felt myself moved, and a deep sense of unease over take me.

Not terror, no. I was not scared just yet. I was thrilled, honestly. I was…uneasy. Like when you feel something is out of place but cannot tell what.

Then I was met with it.

A thing that is so utterly insane in its creation, it defies any logical description. A solid gaseous mass of gnawing teeth and eyes.

Countless eyes holding endless eternities of birth and death. Destruction unbridled and horrors unknown to man unfolded in these planet sized optic things. All of them, focused on me, so tiny in comparison. Abject horror…there are no words for what I saw.

The milky eyes, unseeing and yet witnessing all held within them terrors of every nightmare. I lifted my hands to protect myself, in some feeble attempt to shield them. My hands began to fray at the fingers, a searing heat ripping through the flesh until nothing but tendrils of fibrous membrane remained.

I was forced to watch through some unseen light as my hands and arms began to unwind, like a spool of thread pulled apart. The agony was maddening. There was nothing else in those blessedly quick moments. Just the pain and the horror as I saw my form become nothing, drifting off into the darkness.

Closing my eyes did not save me. It was as if my eyelids had become immaterial and were no longer serving a purpose.

It took seconds for it to reach my head, by which point my screams had died out.

The next instant, I was looking at my own face. But it wasn’t me. I was me. This “fake me” with its back towards the endless monstrosity met my eyes with a hushed glance. It’s eyes were backwards…the pupils were white, and the whites were black, with no color to be seen. The skin looked cracked like dry earth, and under it seemed to pulse a faint purple glow. The thing looked like a charred up mockery. Then, with deliberate slowness, reached out and touched my chest.

Then it was gone.

The endless beast with maws that could swallow galaxies whole chomped with grotesque impatience. My attention could not be taken away from it. The dust from earlier began to swirl here now too, slowly drifting into his eyes, taking me with it.

I could not pull away. I was pulled into the infinite reality that this thing was. There was no concept of time. It was just one strange pain after another. Being pulled apart by nothingness, burnt alive by icy fire, slowly crumbling to dust and confronting that “other me” time and time again.

Then it finally happened. It was the rebirth of myself. I was gone by this point, driven into the darkest corner of my mind to escape the physical torment. But, instantly, without a fight, I was pulled out, by some ungodly power.

Forced to watch as the horrid teeth spewed forth what could only be called monsters. They were ancient…giant, and wi¬thout description.

That vibration returned, like a giant chord had been struck, and suddenly I was shaking too fast to see what was going on.

Everything blurred and faded to darkness.

I blinked and inhaled sharply as my senses returned to my. The music had stopped. I was sitting now, surrounded by a few candles, almost new in height.

My chest felt like it was hit with a hammer, my body burned like it was pumping acid in my veins and my head…no pain killers in the world would solve the pain that seemed to push forth from my brain out.

The darkness was still then. As if it was a loving blanket. I’ve never been afraid of it since then.

Since I saw it though, I swear I did. The origin of all nightmares, blind and mad, deep in the center of the universe.

He waits, you know. For anyone brave enough to spend a flickering second with him. Anyone fool hardy enough to go searching out his Chaos.

Even you can witness the birth of True, primordial evil.

Azathoth is still there, bringing forth untold blights into the universe. All it takes to invite them in is thinking about them.