A writer's skull contains the world's darkest secrets. Stay out of there.

Each night, I lock myself in my workshop and stare at the skull.<br><br>It’s an old skull, and the teeth are yellowed and stained. The jawbone is missing, and I imagine a cruel judge once sat in judgment, baring his teeth at the innocent. I don’t know how I got it here, but I do know I must never open it.<br><br>I first heard about it in the village below, and it’s the reason I came here in the first place. I’d been a struggling writer, unable to think of a story anybody would want to read. But when I heard about the skull, I knew I had to have it. The locals were tight-lipped, but it’s amazing what people will do when you wave a little cash in front of them.<br><br>Eventually, someone came forward. He said he’d been in the writer's house when he died and had stolen the skull. He said he’d been using it to make people do what he wanted, but it was too much for him. He sold it to me for a few hundred dollars, and I lugged it up to the small cabin I’d purchased on the mountain overlooking the village.<br><br>I didn’t know what to expect when I arrived here. I didn’t even know if I believed the stories. But when I held the skull in my hand, I was flooded with visions and ideas. I sat at the desk and wrote, spilling hundreds of pages onto paper. It was beautiful, and I knew I’d found what I’d come looking for.<br><br>When I was done, I read it back. The stories were so dark, so twisted, that I felt sick inside. There was one story about a beheading, another about a child who killed his mother, and one that was nothing but a description of a burning, festering tumor. I shredded the pages, but I couldn’t stop thinking about them. I knew that if I wrote them down again, I could sell them to a publisher, but I knew I couldn’t do that.<br><br>The visions haven’t stopped since. Every time I hold the skull, I see a new story, a new twist, a new idea. Some are twisted and depraved, and others are beautiful and touching, but all of them are compelling. I have to write them down, and once I do, they’re gone. I don’t remember them, and I never will.<br><br>But I’ve been tempted. Sometimes, in the dead of night, I think about writing them down. I see myself doing it, handing them to a publisher, receiving the accolades of my peers. I see myself rich and famous, with the skull sitting proudly on my desk.<br><br>But I know that I’d do anything for that to happen. I’d do anything to make people read those pages. I’d burn cities to the ground, kill thousands of people, just to hand my book to them. I know this, because I know what’s in the skull.<br><br>I know that if I give the world the darkness contained here, they’ll do anything to consume it. They’ll burn the world to the ground, just for one more page.<br><br>And I know the darkness will spread even further. I know that once I’ve written the pages down, I’ll find new darkness waiting. I’ll find more depraved, more twisted stories, and I’ll want to write them down. I’ll want to make people listen to them, to burn inside them, and I’ll do whatever it takes to make that happen.<br><br>I know that the skull isn’t a source of ideas. It’s a kernel of darkness, a shard of the abyss. It’s a window into the darkest parts of the human heart, a source of nightmares. It’s a way to manipulate people, to make them do what I want them to do.<br><br>I know this, because I know what’s in the skull. I know it’s the source of the darkness I’ve seen in people. It’s the source of the wars, the murders, the rapes. It’s the source of the twisting of the human heart, the source of the evil of the world.<br><br>And I know that I can never give it to them. I can never open the skull, never give the world what’s inside. I have to keep it locked inside, locked away from the people who would consume it.<br><br>I have to protect the world from it. I have to protect the world from itself.<br><br>And so I sit here, every night, staring at the skull. I stare at it, waiting for the temptation to come. And when it does, I fight it. I fight the urge to open it, to release the darkness on the world.<br><br>I have to fight it, every night, for the rest of my life.