Short Fiction (1/100): Introduction

I guess the best way to explain what's been going on is to start at the beginning. First of all, who I am. My name is Bill, and I'm the one who brought the nightmares here. I didn't mean to, but I don't think that matters at this point. You see, I'm a writer, and well, we think weird, some of us at least. At right angles to other people, sometimes. It's helpful sometimes and hurtful sometimes. I never mean any harm, but sometimes things go… badly. This time, well… I'm never going to be sure if they came to me on their own or if I made them in my head, either wouldn't surprise me. But every day, as I slept, and as I wrote, there were more and more of them, there, inside my head. Screaming to get out, to be free from the confines of my head. I simply assumed that meant they needed to be written down. So I wrote them down, my dark menagerie, thinking that would satisfy their need. How silly of me.

They became real, crawling out of my head by inches, starting as dreams…. And later, hallucinations, half seen in the dark… then, after weeks of slowly building as I stopped sleeping and eating, they were real… flesh and blood real. Teeth and bone real. Right here, right now real. They prowled around me at first but… one day, they fled out the doors, those nightmare beasts that I still thought were just hallucinations. They ran out into the other apartments, out onto the streets. Everyone could see them. And they leaped at people, and ate them alive. I heard the screams echoing up from below. And though you tried to fight them, nothing seems to hurt them. Nobody's quite sure what to do. But you all know that. That's why you're here. And I know what you've come here to do, I see those looks on your faces. I see the weapons in your bags or behind your backs. I just want you to know the one thing I know, the only thing I can tell you. Killing me won't make the nightmares go away. But I suppose you're going to try that anyway. Make it quick.