I’ve never told anyone what happened to me when I was fourteen, but I guess I kind of have always wanted to. My name is Max, I’m twenty-five now, so this is a bit of ancient history I suppose. My grandfather passed away when I was fourteen, and my mother was his only child. He was divorced from my grandma, and had never remarried or anything, so all the stuff you have to do when someone dies fell to my mom. He lived a few states away, so one weekend we went out to his house so mom could go through everything and see if there was anything she or I wanted to keep before the estate sale.

His house was pretty cool, really. He had acres of land, and there was a pond, and he had an in-ground pool, and the house wasn’t like a mansion or anything, but it was way more than one old guy needed.

Grandpa Ray had grown up super poor. His father was an alcoholic who couldn’t hold a job and was abusive to his kids (Grandpa had a brother and a sister, both of who passed before he did). Grandpa vowed to never be like his father, so he stayed away from alcohol, and he worked really hard, getting a doctorate and becoming a college professor, and building a really nice life.

Oh my gosh, I totally tend to ramble, let me get to Lemonbelly. So we drive to his house one Friday, and get there late, so we just crash. Saturday morning we start going through the house, both of us picking things to keep. I find the attic and head up. It was a total jackpot. First of all there’s a box full of Playboys from like, the seventies and eighties. I spend a fair amount of the early morning flipping through some of those. There’s really cool clothes, some old toys, just kind of neat stuff.

And then I come across the chest, pushed back into the corner and covered with an old blanket. It’s locked, but after searching some more I find a key hanging on a rusty nail on the other side of the attic. It opens the chest.

There’s a little bit of disappointment at first, the chest was mostly filled with old newspapers and some manilla envelopes with stuff like the house deed, and my mom’s birth certificate and all that. But at the bottom of the box, tucked into the corner, was a small velvet bag. I took it and untied a stiff bit of string from around the opening. I tilted the bag out and Lemonbelly fell into my hand.

Okay, so I know right now none of you know who Lemonbelly is, but I’m going to tell this story the right way. I didn’t know who he was at the time either. Inside the bag had been a bottle, maybe half the size of one of those old glass coke bottles. It was glass too, stopped with a cork that looked as though it might crumble into dust as soon as it was touched. Inside the bottle was a dark amber liquid, too dense to see through. I turned the bottle in my hand and felt it shift. There was something floating within the dark liquid. I turned the bottle another way, and there was a tiny thump as a yellow ball slid through the liquid and came to rest against the glass.

I mean, I thought it was a ball at first, I could really only make out half the ball, the liquid inside the bottle was so dark. There was another bit of string wrapped around the neck of the bottle, and a small tag attached to it. On one side of the tag, what I assumed at the time was Latin (and I was correct). It read Nulla Domus hic. On the other side of the tag was English. LEMONBELLY it sad in blocky red letters, written in a shaky hand. And underneath, NEVER OPEN.

Obviously, my teenage curiosity had my fingers on that cork in a heartbeat. I would have pulled it open right then and who knows how this story would have gone, but I heard my mother calling for me. I set the bottle on a nearby shelf, and hurried down to see what she needed. And then my mom kept me busy with this and that for the rest of the day, and I kind of forgot about the bottle. To be quite honest, it was the Playboys that sent me back up to the attic on Sunday just before we left. I stashed a few in my duffle bag, and then as I was turning I saw the bottle and hurried over to it and dropped it in my bag as well.

I didn’t empty my bag for another week or so. School was kind of going rough, if I can be quite honest. I was a chubby kid, and there were these three friends that gave me a lot of shit. That week I also started having really bad dreams, like weird nightmares that I couldn’t even remember the next day, but they would have me waking up in a cold sweat, or even yelling out once or twice, my blanket on the floor and my bedsheet twisted and wrapped around me.

When I did get into the bag it was to stash the magazines in my closet. I pulled the bottle out and set it on my nightstand. I would have maybe opened it again but I remember wondering what exactly that gross-looking liquid was, and what the yellow ball could be and I started to worry it would poison me or something. Maybe it would just be cooler to hang onto it and keep it on my table or shelf.

A month or so after I found the bottle I had a dream that I do remember. It sticks with me now, I can recall every last bit of it as though I had it just last night. I was standing in a strange room, made of giant stones stacked upon one another. Behind me an opening to what looked to be a desert, it was night and I could hear the wind blowing. Before me a raised dias with a throne of sorts. Sitting on the throne a figure wearing a long cloak, the hood up to conceal his face.

“Tell me young one, what do you desire?” the cloaked figure asked me, his voice raspy and low.

The bullying at school had only gotten worse. “Joey, James, and Chris won’t leave me alone. I want them to stop,” I said in the dream, stepping forward.

“You must free me then,” the cloaked figure said. As he spoke he stood, and the cloak fell away. The figure was much taller than the average man, at least eight feet, and was completely nude. Its skin was a sickly pale yellow, except for its jutting belly, which darkened to a lemony color. Its face was hideous, folds of fat that jiggled as it grinned, its teeth sharp and its eyes small and black.

It held a hand out to me, its fingers long and ending in curved nails that looked as though they could cut through flesh as easily as a knife through butter.

“Free me!”

“Yes!” I said in the dream. I bowed low, and then I woke.

I was standing in my room, holding something in my hand. I looked down, my eyes taking a moment to adjust to the dark. I held the bottle in my hand and felt a shock of fear roll through my system. I was looking at that yellow ball and realized it wasn’t a ball at all. It was a belly, great and distended and yellow. Beyond the belly, no doubt, the rest of Lemonbelly, the liquid too dark to reveal him.

“Lemonbelly,” I remember saying out loud. I had two fingers on the cork. I pulled.

I expected… something. But nothing happened. I let the cork fall t the ground, I held the bottle up. I could not feel the movement of an object inside, the way I once had. I shook it a bit, but it wouldn’t appear. Lemonbelly was gone.

Somehow I fell back asleep that night. I dreamed again. I was standing now in a strangers living room. The front door behind me opened slowly and I turned. Lemonbelly was there, one hand on the knob, ducking to get his ugly head in under the doorframe.

“You should see this,” he said, looking right at me. A cold chill spread in my chest as I was overcome with fear. Was this a dream? It had to be. The whole damn thing had to be a dream, I thought at the time.

Lemonbelly stepped past me in that dream and I pressed myself back against the wall in an effort to give him as much berth as I could. “Come,” he said over his shoulder, and in the dream, I was helpless to do anything other than follow.

Lemonbelly moved so strangely, his movements jerky and unwieldy. He went up the stairs and still I followed. It was like he knew exactly where he was going. He moved down the upstairs hall to a door that was closed to the crack. Unease and dread washed over me as the yellow monster pushed the door open and stepped inside. In my dream I was willing myself not to follow, but my feet paid no attention to my brain, and into the room I went.

It was Joey’s room. The leader of the three boys who bullied me. I saw him asleep in his bed. He was tall and athletic and his two stooges did whatever he told them too. He had been picking on me for years. I was torn, watching Lemonbelly move to his bedside. I didn’t know what the creature was going to do, but I knew it wasn’t going to be good. At the same time, I kind of wanted it. I wanted Joey to be punished, I wanted him to be hurt.

Lemonbelly looked back at me, his pinprick eyes glowing in the soft light of the silver moon. Then he turned to Joey and opened his mouth. His jaw fell almost to his chest, and then kept going. It dropped and dropped and dropped and soon his mouth was a massive black maw ringed in sharp teeth.

“No!” I cried out in the dream, but Lemonbelly did not stop. He reached for Joey, grabbed the boy with frightening speed, and was shoving him into his mouth before he had a chance to wake up fully. I could hear him scream as Lemonbelly’s lips came together, his mouth normal again. He was screaming from that gorged yellow stomach. Screaming for help.

I woke with a start. It was dark still, and when I looked at my phone it was four in the morning. I slept no more that night.

The next morning, Joey wasn’t at school. That afternoon, our grade was called into the gym. We sat on the bleachers and our principal told us that Joey was missing. He asked anyone for any information they might have. I kept my hand down.

When I got home, I checked the bottle. Lemonbelly was still missing. I went to the bathroom intending to pour the liquid down the drain, but something stopped me. I don’t know why, but I just couldn’t go through with my plan. I corked the bottle back up.

Thank night, I had another dream. I watched Lemonbelly enter James’ house and eat him as well. I was powerless to stop him. I didn’t even try, I was worried he would eat me if I did. The next day I feigned being sick so I could stay home from school. Around noon one of my friends text me to tell me they had another assembly, and this time it was about James going missing. Apparently, the police were there this time, asking questions of his friends. Everyone seemed to think maybe the two boys had run away. I was the only one who knew the truth.

I also knew that stopping Lemonbelly was going to fall to me. I couldn’t go to anyone, not my mother, not the police. What would I tell them? I had to figure something out. I stared at that bottle for a long time. Then, finally, a possible answer came to me. I looked at the tag and translated the Latin. It came out roughly to ‘There is no home here’. I had an idea. A wild one, but one I had to try.

That night, I snuck out of my home. I climbed out of my window, thankful that my room was on the ground floor. I considered getting my bike from the garage but I didn’t want to risk lifting the door and waking my mother. So I had to go on foot, and I was worried I would be too late. I ran for Chris’ house, knowing that I would find Lemonbelly there.

He lived nearby, thank god, but my heart dropped when I got to his house and saw that the front door was standing open. I slipped inside and shut the door behind me. I considered yelling out and waking up Chris’ parents, but I didn’t know what I would say. If he was gone already, how would it look for me to be there, in their home?

A creak from the floor overhead. I had never been here, but it was easy enough to find the stairs. I moved up them quickly, just in time to see Lemonbelly disappear through a doorway. I followed him. He sensed me, turning as he crouched over Chris’ bed.

“Leave me,” he snarled, but I shook my head. I tried to reply, but my mouth had gone dry and the words I attempted died in my throat. I jammed my hand into my jacket pocket and pulled out the bottle. If Lemonbelly was scared, he didn’t show it, but he did take a step toward me, reaching one long hand in my direction.

I uncorked the bottle and held it in front of me. Now Lemonbelly paused, glancing down at the bottle and then back to my face. Suddenly he lunged forward, and I leaped back, barely keeping the bottle upright, and barely keeping out of range of his swiping claw. I slammed back into the wall in the hallway and turned and ran. Lemonbelly followed, I could hear him lumbering down the stairs hot on my heels. I flew out of the front door and into the street, turning to see Lemonbelly still chasing me.

“I will not be imprisoned again,” Lemonbelly snarled.

“You will!” I told him, holding the bottle forward. I said the Latin words. Nulla domus hic. Lemonbelly roared and the bottle grew hot in my hand, so hot that I almost dropped it. There was a flash of bright light and then a popping sound, and Lemonbelly was gone. The weight of the bottle in my hand was different, and I slammed the cork home.

I held the bottle up and used the light from a streetlamp to confirm that the yellow stomach was there, pressed against the glass when I held the bottle a certain way. Through the liquid came one long hand, pressing against the glass as well. I shivered.

And that was that. I learned that night just what my grandfather had come to possess. Ultimate power. I would be lying if I said I never let Lemonbelly out again. There was that time in college when my girlfriend left me for another guy. He had to go, and so did she when she didn’t come back to me. That guy who got that promotion over me a few years ago, he didn’t deserve to live, did he? It’s easy, letting Lemonbelly free, and then going and collecting him. He almost doesn’t even fight me anymore. He never turns on me, never comes for me until I come from him. Maybe he’s not allowed, I sense some sort of weird rules are at play here. Now that I think of it, he’s never tried to hurt me, he always seems to be going for the bottle. All I know is it’s nice to be the one picking on people.