Don’t Look If You Can’t Handle It (20 Pics)
It started with a dusty box in the attic. Emma wasn’t looking for trouble that afternoon—she was just clearing space, shifting old trunks and moth-eaten blankets, when her hand brushed against the battered cardboard. The box wasn’t labeled, only sealed with yellowed tape that cracked as she tugged it open. Inside lay a neat stack of photographs—twenty in total—each slipped into a plastic sleeve. A handwritten note rested on top.
Don’t look if you can’t handle it.
Her first instinct was to laugh. What kind of warning was that? A prank left behind by her late grandfather, maybe? But curiosity, as always, had a way of getting the better of her. She sat cross-legged on the floor, sunlight pooling across the wooden boards, and slid the first photograph free.
Picture One
It was ordinary—almost too ordinary. A black-and-white image of her family’s house, only it looked newer, sharper, as if the paint hadn’t yet begun to peel. The curtains in the upstairs window were drawn tightly shut. Something about the way they clung to the glass unsettled her, though she couldn’t explain why.
Picture Two
This one showed the backyard. Children played near the oak tree—children she didn’t recognize. Their clothes looked decades old, their smiles wide but stiff, as if they were posing under duress. Behind them, in the blur of the background, a shadow loomed by the fence. Emma squinted, but the figure dissolved into grainy static.
Her pulse quickened.
Picture Three
It was her grandfather. Young, handsome, standing in the kitchen she knew so well. But the way he looked at the camera—expression caught between anger and fear—sent a chill through her.
Don’t look if you can’t handle it.
The warning gnawed at her, daring her forward. She flipped through more photos.
Picture Four
A family dinner. Plates half-empty. Her grandmother’s smile tight and forced.
Picture Five
The same kitchen, but the table was overturned, chairs scattered as if a fight had erupted.
Picture Six
The oak tree again, but at night. Someone had carved deep marks into its bark.
By the tenth photograph, Emma’s stomach churned. Each image seemed to peel back a layer of her family’s carefully curated history, revealing cracks she had never been told about. There were signs of violence, of arguments, of tears. Yet nobody had ever spoken of this. Her childhood memories were warm, secure, and ordinary. But these pictures whispered another truth.
Picture Eleven
This one made her drop the sleeve. It was her—Emma herself—barely five years old, standing in the very attic she now sat in. She didn’t remember posing for such a picture. Who had taken it? And why was she staring directly at the camera, expression blank, as if under a spell?
Her hands trembled as she reached for the twelfth.
Picture Twelve
A closed coffin in a funeral parlor. No names, no faces—just the gleam of polished wood.
Picture Thirteen
The backyard again, but this time the oak tree had been chopped down, its massive trunk lying lifeless on the grass.
Picture Fourteen
Her grandfather again—older now—burying something in the dirt beneath where the tree once stood. His eyes darted toward the camera, as though he knew he was being watched.
Emma’s throat tightened. A cold wind whistled through the attic window, though she hadn’t opened it.
Picture Fifteen
This was the most disturbing yet. A blurry figure, face obscured, standing over a child’s bed. The wallpaper matched Emma’s childhood bedroom. The child—herself—lay fast asleep, unaware.
She wanted to stop. She wanted to shove the photographs back in the box and never think of them again. But the warning echoed in her mind like a dare. Don’t look if you can’t handle it.
Picture Sixteen
An empty street at dusk. A single bicycle lay abandoned on the pavement.
Picture Seventeen
The inside of a closet. A pair of shoes jutted out from beneath hanging coats, toes pointed up.
Picture Eighteen
Emma gasped. It was a woman she had never seen before, sitting at the family table, her face pale and unfamiliar. Her mother’s place at the table was empty.
Picture Nineteen
A photograph of Emma herself again, this time older—perhaps twelve—standing in the kitchen. She remembered that day, or at least thought she did. But here, her expression was eerily blank, eyes wide like glass marbles. She didn’t recall ever looking that way.
Her breath caught as she reached for the final photo.
Picture Twenty
It was today. The attic. The same patch of sunlight across the floorboards. And there she was—sitting cross-legged, holding a photograph, her eyes frozen wide in shock. The perspective came from just beyond the doorway, as though someone was standing there right now, watching her.
Emma’s hands shook violently. She whipped her head toward the attic entrance. Nothing. Just shadows.
The box slid from her lap, photos scattering like leaves. Her heart pounded so hard it drowned out every other sound. She scrambled to gather them, but the warning note fluttered on top once more, as if placed there deliberately.
Don’t look if you can’t handle it.
She shoved everything back into the box and bolted down the attic stairs, slamming the door shut behind her. Her phone slipped from her pocket as she reached for it, hands fumbling to dial a friend. But when she unlocked the screen, her photo gallery was open—twenty new images waiting.
The same twenty photographs.
Her reflection in the darkened screen stared back at her, eyes wide and unblinking. Somewhere in the silence, she thought she heard the click of a camera shutter.
