Vox and King Beau

## Vox and King Beau by Vox

(Note: this fearfic was sourced from a thread on 4chan's /x/ board.)

**Introduction**

I think I might be going insane. Either that or something really, really strange is happening.

To start, I have no history of mental illness. I've been depressed once or twice, but for normal reasons (breakup, homesick, etc). I smoke pot occasionally and drink socially, but that's the extent of my drug use. However, I think I've begun to hallucinate or something. I'm not a believer in the paranormal, but I figured you guys could help.

I think this started about five months ago. I was still seeing my now ex-boyfriend, and we were living together. Things were alright, the relationship had cooled off a bit, but there was nothing going on that I would consider cause for alarm or anything like that until one night I woke up. I swear I heard a man say my name right next to my ear. It was so clear I actually sat up in bed and asked my ex what he wanted. He hadn't said or heard anything and looked really shaken up. He had been awake texting someone (he said it was his brother).

I didn't think much of the voice, figuring it was a dream. The texting, on the other hand, bothered me. On top of that over the next few weeks my ex began complaining. He said he felt like he was being watched in our house. He got extremely jumpy, even snapping and almost hitting me when I surprised him. Naturally I started getting suspicious.

To make a long story shorter, one day I was over a friend's house and my cell rang- my ex's number. When I answered there was no sound, like a lost connection. I thought it was weird and called him back. He said he hadn't called me, but he seemed really strained. Already paranoid, I decided to head back to our house and see just what was up. Right as I approached the door, I heard it again. A man's voice, same one, right in my ear, except this time he was shushing me. I froze and looked around. Everything was quiet. Way, way too quiet. It was as though a blanket had been thrown over everything to keep things muffled, and this is a pretty lively neighborhood. There at least should have been birds and bugs or dogs barking. It made my hair stand on end, and I hesitated entering the house.

While I was pausing, I just happened to catch a woman sneaking out the side door. I might have missed her if I hadn't stopped to look around.

That's just the beginning though.

Shortly after this, as you can imagine, I moved into my own apartment. This is where the crazy starts. Every so often, everything will go quiet just like that night. No sound, no movement, nothing. Even when I've tried to make noise by turning on the TV or clearing my throat, it all sounds muffled until the silence passes. Freaked out by this, I mentioned it to my mom in passing. That's when she reminded me of something.

When I was little, I had an imaginary friend named Beau. I used to make up all kinds of stories about Beau and the adventures he had, and I'd love to tell my mom all about them. I only very vaguely remember this stuff, but Mom told me what she knew. Apparently, Beau was the King of the Quiet Place. Upon being asked where the Quiet Place was, little me just shrugged. Apparently it wasn't a very nice place, very dark and too quiet, and Beau got lonely. So one day he went searching for someone to play with, and that's how he found me.

When mom told me about this, she didn't laugh or joke about it like she does when talking about my older brother's imaginary dinosaur. Beau wasn't all fun and games. Beau was creepy. She never saved the drawings I did of him, but there was one that really stuck in her mind. It was a picture of Beau in his kingdom. The Quiet Place was all very dark blue and black, with shadowy figures barely standing out. King Beau was pale and had a huge smile full of sharp teeth. The look of the drawing was unsettling enough that she showed it to my pediatrician and asked if she should be worried. He told her it was normal.

The reason she told me all this was that there were a few other strange details. Sometimes she'd come into my room when I was playing and there would be a heavy, oppressive silence. Some nights I'd wake her up by singing in my room "to scare the silence away". I was a quiet kid, but for a time I really receded into myself. I'd wake up crying with nightmares or complaining that Beau was whispering to me and wouldn't leave me alone.

Little by little this tapered off. Mom assumed that I had grown out of my imaginary friend and it was over. I was pretty unnerved.

Sorry, this is long. I'm just trying to collect myself as I type.

Since talking to mom, the past month and a half have been increasingly creepy. I've started sleepwalking. I'll wake up in different parts of my house in weird positions. I've also started playing music pretty constantly to keep the silences from being as noticeable. A few times I've sworn I heard a man's voice, but it's been muffled. Finally tonight it really kicked up.

I woke up about an hour ago because I heard someone say my name. I didn't jump because this is pretty normal by now. However, I did open my eyes. On the other side of my bed, staring at me, there were the eyes of a man. I could only see the top of his head, like he was crouched down. My heart basically stopped, and he stared right at me and smiled (I only saw his eyes do this). He was completely pale, like unnaturally sickly white, and his eyes were milky like they had cataracts, but I swear he was as real looking as you or I. I mean I could see the lines on his forehead, the individual white hairs on him, even some pores. I don't know how long we were staring at each other, but he slowly sank back down past the edge of the bed and out of my sight.

I shot out of there like I was on fire. I ran out my front door, grabbed my keys, and drove to my friend's house. I wanted to call the cops, but my friend convinced me we should go over and check things out first in case I was dreaming. We found absolutely nothing, but he did complain of feeling like he was being watched.

So now I'm sitting in my kitchen. Friend had work and needed to be up early, but he lives just a couple minutes away and he's on speed dial. I am not going back into my bedroom until daylight. The way I see it, I have two options. On one hand, I could definitely be going nuts. I'm hearing things, seeing things, I have trouble sleeping. Maybe this is a manifestation of some defect in my brain. If this is the case, this is only going to get worse and I probably need to see a shrink which freaks me out. I don't know how to tell my family that I'm going insane.

On the other hand, it could be that Beau has come back from the Quiet Place, and he still wants to play. I can't believe I'm even considering that, but it's 1:30 am, I've got the radio on, and I swear that the person I saw next to my bed was real. I wasn't sleep paralyzed and I wasn't still dreaming because I definitely felt myself wake up from the terror and I could definitely move out of there as soon as I wasn't having a heart attack.

So what do I do? If it helps, I can tell the stories of Beau that Mom told me about. They're not that great because I was like 4, so bear with me. This is pieced together from what I remember and what mom told me. I really really hope this doesn't draw something out by talking about it... I mean I'm really paranoid here.

## *The Quiet Place*

Before everything, there was the Quiet Place. It was very dark and very quiet, and everything there was still. The Quiet Place had a nasty king who stole breath and hated everything that wasn't in his kingdom. All beings in the Quiet Place lived in fear and sadness. They couldn't ever leave because the king would hunt them down and eat them if they tried. Even worse, the king would have them sneak into our world and steal things. They would steal voices or memories, shiny things and toys, sometimes hearts and even people. Some of them liked this, but most of them didn't.

Beau hated the king. He hated being sad. He hated everyone else being scared, because even though he was never scared of anything, it meant no one would ever play with him or do anything but what the king wanted. He decided the only way to solve this problem was to become king himself.

(This is the part where I start understanding why my mom wanted to talk to a doctor about me)

Beau decided he had to trick the king. He stole a little boy who had been bad and always ate too many snacks and never minded his manners. Beau hid under the boy's bed and waited till he was asleep before he ate the boy's voice. He then crawled inside the boy's skin and waited till the king let him in with all the other treasures the hunters had found.

Apparently Beau showed me how he cried and screamed and mimicked the boy's voice perfectly (even then when he was telling me this. This made me cry and Beau had to stop telling me so we could play another game. However, he really wanted to finish his story because he was very proud, so later I let him tell me the rest).

When the king moved to eat the little boy that was now Beau, Beau made his move. He crawled right into the jaws of the tyrant and reached down his throat. Then Beau pulled out all of the voices that had been festering away inside and he ate them all for himself. After stealing that power, it was no problem to defeat the king. He said the old king began to melt and warp. He twisted up and dried up in some places and would have screamed, except he had no more voices left. Beau banished him to the deepest, darkest corner of the Quiet Place where he could not-scream away from everyone else.

So Beau became king. But Beau was still not happy.

Even though he had all of the king's voices and everyone had to do as he said now that he was king, he was lonely. He got bored. Everything was always the same in the Quiet Place, and though he promised the shadow people and all the other creatures that they would never have to hunt for him, he was growing restless. He felt all the voices inside him and wondered what fresh ones might be like. So he started to wander to our world.

First he would only steal little bits of voices at a time, while people slept. He'd slip out from under their beds or crawl in through their windows if there was no moonlight. They'd only wake up with sore throats and bad dreams, so no one would really be hurt. Unfortunately, this only made him hungrier. The more time went on, the unhappier he was with just a little taste. He thought about stealing voices just like the bad king before him had done.

This is how he and I met. One night I woke up because someone said my name. The whole room was dark and very quiet because he brought the silence with him. Next to my bed, there was Beau. He was really scary looking, but he also looked really sad. At the time my favorite movie was Peter Pan, and I remembered how Wendy met Peter sort of like this, so I tried to make myself brave.

I asked, "Why do you look so sad?"

"Because I want to eat your voice," he said.

I told him he couldn't because I was using it. He said he knew I was. He listened to me sing to my stuffed animals and he liked it very much. I told him that if he didn't eat my voice, I would sing to him too. This had never occurred to him, and he decided to consider it. While he considered it, we played forts. He liked that so much, he decided to let me keep my voice and visit me to play.

That's how we became friends. He would bring me back stories of his adventures, and I would sing to him and play.

So I guess that's a start. I could tell you about Beau and the Dark Place. That one's a little less "heart-warming little girl story" and a lot more "I told my mom about it because I couldn't stop having nightmares."

## *King Beau and the Dark Place*

Sorry if this seems to be random; I'm typing this as I go. I didn't think I'd ever be telling anyone these stories.

You guys can see why I'd be freaked out though, right? Either my brain is bringing this thing to life, which is terrifying, or Beau is real and he's come to collect my voice, which is terrifying, or there's something after me that's pretending to be Beau, which is terrifying. I really don't know what to do.

Anyway, here's Beau and the Dark Place.

A lot of the stories about Beau are typical cute stuff you'd think a little girl who loved Disney movies and ponies would talk about. In them Beau kind of becomes like a kid himself. Not all of the stories are like that though.

One day Beau came to me during a nap and asked me if I wanted to play instead of sleep like we normally did. He could make things very quiet, so no one would know I was up. I told him I couldn't because I was really tired, and he asked why. I told him I was having trouble sleeping because I was worried there was a monster in my closet.

Now why I was worried about a monster being in my closet when I had this thing for an imaginary friend is beyond me, but there's no getting kid logic. Anyway, this made Beau furious. He snarled and stomped and used some of his angriest voices. He told me not to worry- he would solve this problem for me. He marched right into my closet, and that was that.

I didn't see Beau again for a whole week, and I started to get very worried about him. I called for him, sang his favorite songs and even stayed up during nap-time even though there was no monster in my closet, but it didn't do any good. Finally, one night I woke up to see Beau slipping through my window and sitting down on the floor next to my bed. He looked terrible. It took another few days before he had enough voices back so he could tell me the story.

As the story went, Beau marched right into the closet, straight into the darkest shadows. As you guys might know, closet shadows are some of the darkest and the biggest. It took a long time for him to get through, but he was determined. Nothing was allowed to scare me as long as I was his. Soon the shadows began to groan and move around him. At first he thought he was being ambushed, but he realized that the shadows themselves were forming a tunnel. In the tunnel walls, he saw faces. Some had jaws that would never close because they had screamed for so long.

Some were on long necks that stretched and tried to bite him. Some were melted into each other because they had been pushed together for so long. They had all spent so long trapped in the darkness that they had gone insane. That's when Beau knew this was no ordinary darkness. This Dark Place was very, very old. Of course, Beau insisted that none of this bothered him. He thought about eating some of the faces' voices just to shut them up, but they were too worn out to be powerful and probably tasted bad anyway.

He walked along the tunnel until he finally came to a bigger cave. In there, the walls were made of old bones and shadows instead of just faces. Every now and then he thought he saw one of the skulls move just a little. He said it smelled rotten. Not of rotten meat or flesh... just pure decay.

He called out to the back of the cave, which went on for so long he couldn't see the end. He shouted, "I am the king of the Quiet Place. You are trying to steal what's mine. We must fight."

And the Darkness answered.

The Beast of the Dark Place wasn't easy for him to describe. It shifted and changed when you tried to look at it, so you could only get a good fix on it out of the corners of your eyes. It crawled out on a thousand hands, dragging its bloated form across the ground like a slug. It had at least a hundred eyes that looked in all directions. Some of them were gouged out and some were spinning wildly. It had two mouths with dripping tongues and lots of claws and teeth. When it spoke, it had no voice.

It said, "I am the Beast of the Dark Place. I take whatever I want."

Beau said, "That girl belongs to me, and if you take her away, you will take her voice. That's mine."

The Beast laughed. "Didn't you tell her to hide under the covers? Doesn't she know to go right to sleep?"

Beau growled, "She doesn't have to hide or go to sleep if she doesn't want to. That is why we will fight. I fought the bad king of the Quiet Place, and I can fight you too."

The Beast laughed again, and that made Beau even angrier than he already was. He screamed and let loose one of his strongest, angriest voices. It bounced off the walls of the cave, crumbling bones and rocks before breaking half the Beast's teeth. That infuriated the Beast, so he attacked too.

They fought mostly with fists and claws. It went on for days. Beau began to worry that even his strongest voices might not be enough to keep him safe. As he began to tire, he started to make mistakes. That was how the Beast managed to throw him up against the wall of the tunnel. The faces that weren't too old bit and tore at him and the darkness started to burn into him, in the way very cold ice burns. The Beast laughed and laughed, poking at him while he struggled. That's when Beau did the one thing he thought he'd never do- he called for help.

The call was so clear and pure that it cut right through the darkness. It went all the way to the Quiet Place, where King Beau's hunters were waiting. They charged to Beau's rescue, ready to attack. They brought him the finest voices they could find fast and pulled him from the darkness eating him away, but Beau would not let them defeat the Beast. He wanted to do that himself. Instead, he had a plan.

"I know how to stop you," Beau told the Beast.

The Beast laughed with one mouth and snarled with the other.

"You can't. No one can."

The hunters brought Beau a huge blanket, one so big it was made up of at least a thousand other blankets. He wrapped himself in it and gathered all of his power and charged right into the Beast's darkest heart. Even though the Beast was old and strong, it was still a closet monster. Closet monsters can't attack with covers over anything. The Beast let out a roar without a voice and burst into a million pieces, which skittered away and dug out the walls of the cave to escape. The whole den came crashing down, and Beau and his hunters barely made it out alive. Some of his hunters might have been trapped there in the darkness forever, he didn't really know.

I told Beau he had been very brave and thanked him for saving me. He said he hadn't really saved anyone, but by the time the Beast regrouped I would be an old woman. Plus, he was mad he lost a lot of good voices, so I had to sing all his favorite songs for the next few days. Otherwise he swore he'd just steal mine and be done with it.

## *Vox' Plan*

Sorry, I'm back. The radio just went silent. It’s turned on, it’s set to the right station, there's nothing wrong with it. It’s just not making noise. Fucking awesome. I was so scared, I decided to do what you guys suggested and talk to it, but all I could manage to say was, "please stop."

So I've got the TV on now and pretty much every light in my apartment. Any suggestions on what songs to sing?

Alright, so I went into my bedroom, checked every fucking corner of the place to make sure nothing and no one was hiding in there(even my closet and under my bed), and then I turned off the TV and sat in the dark. I thought maybe warming things up might help somehow? So I started by humming, "She shall have music."

First things went silent in the same way I've described. It’s the first time this has done this on command, so I was pretty shaken.

Then it got very, very cold. I was actually shivering and slipped under the covers. I asked a bunch of questions and waited for a response. I didn't get any, and was honestly starting to feel agitated and a little stupid. I can't stress to you enough that I don't do this sort of thing. I'm not really into the ghost and magic stuff. I know what I'm going to say next will sound stupid and crazy, but I want to give every detail I possibly can just in case it might help.

I felt *something*. It was like that sense you get when you know in the dark that someone is next to you, kind of a spatial sensing, but it was more than that. It just felt distinct and familiar. I'm not saying I suddenly felt all warm and fuzzy... I'm just saying I felt some strange sensation or change in the atmosphere of my room that I can't explain.

As I was trying to figure this out, I heard something. It was low and quick, but it’s burned into my brain. It sounded like five people sighing at once, but it wasn't loud and it was perfectly in unison.

I'm not ashamed to say that I booked the hell out of my bedroom for the second time in a row. That is just too much for me. It might be easy for you guys to call me a pansy from where you're at, but you're not the girl alone in a dark apartment dealing with this crazy shit.

Here's my plan: First thing tomorrow morning I'm getting an appointment with a university therapist. It really was that real for me. I've never heard a sound like that in my life, but I know I HEARD it. I'm also going to call my mom and get her to tell me every story she can remember from Beau. Then I'll regroup, I guess. I'm sorry there's no neat wrap up for this tonight, but I promise if you're interested, tomorrow night I'll do a thread with more stories and whatever I found.

Believe me, there's a reason why I'm getting a therapist. I don't have any history of mental illness in my family aside from an alcoholic great uncle, but I'm not ruling out me getting hysterical or somehow going crazy. Still, I can't get that sound out of my head. It was so unreal, but I just know it didn't come from inside my brain. Maybe that's how crazy people feel though.

Anyway, I'm going to try to sleep on my couch. Like I said, tomorrow I'll provide updates at least.

## *Our Adventure Continues*

Alright. We continue on from here, I guess.

To recap, I've started hearing and now seeing things. There are weird silences in my house, and last night I think I saw a man near my bed and my radio decided to conveniently kill itself. My mom reminded me that when I was a kid, I had a creepy imaginary friend named Beau who told me weird stories and caused silences like what I've been experiencing lately. I'd suggest you read from the very beginning of this because it makes a lot more sense than this summary does.

Anyway, I got a couple hours of sleep on the couch last night, and first thing this morning I called my university and set up a session with a therapist there. The mental health services on my campus are actually pretty good, and they managed to see me this afternoon, which was a pleasant surprise.

The session was awkward, and mostly used for him to get my history and understand my complaints. All I told him was I started hearing voices and it was really worrying me. The therapist was actually very reassuring. He said that too often people automatically jump to schizophrenia when it comes to hearing voices, but it's not always the case. Imaginary friends stem from a child's blurred lines between reality and imagination, and they arise out of a need for control or comfort. If this imaginary friend has come back, it could be a sign that I'm trying to cope with some trauma, something I either somehow experienced now and don't realize (doubtful) or something from my childhood that recent events have triggered. Either that or I could have something wrong with my brain, like a tumor or lesions on the stem or something horrid like that. We started the process of getting my insurance to OK a CT-scan.

His suggestion in the meantime is to get some sleep. He says it’s totally possible that I'm sleep deprived, and that combined with the stress of breaking up and moving might be causing this. He also wants me to stop being scared. If I'm going crazy, we'll handle it somehow. If there's something traumatic in my past, one school of thought finds it important to listen to what the voices are saying in order to determine what they're trying to protect. Maybe Beau has resurfaced out of my subconscious because it thinks he's needed. Whatever the case, the voice isn't trying to hurt me. It’s not telling me to set myself on fire or kill anyone. I'm not personally suicidal or even depressed, so he said it was no problem respecting my decision not to be put on any medication just yet and to not be locked away in some padded cell.

So after this, I called my mom because I would rather face this head-on.

I called my mom to get any information or stories she could give me about Beau, any weird happenings while I was playing with him, or any hints she could give me about what might have happened to bring him around. I didn't tell her I was hearing voices and now in therapy because I didn't want to scare her, so I just told her I was writing something for a psych project and wanted her help. She was creeped out but agreed. Incidentally if anyone knows how to break that kind of news to your parents, let me know.

Here is my plan: I would like to tell you guys some of the Beau stories and some of the weird shit that follows them to see if maybe you can spot something in them I can't. I know it's a lot to ask, but you all seemed to enjoy them yesterday, and it would be a huge help to me.

I don't know what we're looking for. I truly don't. Like I said in the last thread I am really not the kind of person who believes in the paranormal or at least thinks that kind of stuff happens all the time. I'm not into magic, I've never seen a UFO, and I'm the first person to debunk things on those ghost hunting TV shows. Still, for the first time I'm willing to admit that maybe there is something going on here that I can't explain. Maybe it is a Tulpa or maybe something is screwing around with my mind. And if it's not and I'm crazy, maybe we can figure out what these gruesome stories are supposed to mean.

Before I start, let me clear up a few things I think I saw in the last thread before it disappeared. Also this background might shed some light on a few things.

- I had Beau from around the time I was 4 till I was maybe 7 or 8.

- As a kid I wasn't exposed to scary stories, violent movies or anything like that. Some of the imagery in this is twisted, and I really don't know how it spawned from little 4 year old me. I'm not a dark person and don't like gore or any of that crap.

- As far as I know and my mom can remember, nothing bad ever happened to me when I was little. Then again, it could be something we're not aware of.

- The reason why, real or not, Beau freaks me out is because he's a voice-eating monster, and when we "played together" I definitely told my mom that he would threaten to snap and eat my voice. My mom described it as me taking care of a pet tiger. I was having fun, but even that little I seemed aware of an underlying danger.

- At the same time, he never hurt me. This time around the voice hasn't hurt me either. It helped me catch my cheating boyfriend and freaked me out by just existing. That's about all.

- You don't have to believe a word I say. That's totally fine, and like I said, I'm not writing this for any fame or attention. Outside the threads, the trip-code goes. I just want to fix this and get my normal, boring like back. If it entertains you guys too, then great.

- Please don't take these stories and rewrite them as your own because, you know, they did come from me even if they are weird. However, feel free to draw this stuff. I don't even know why you'd ask permission but whatever.

Alright, now for the stories. I'm going to tell these as I remember them and as my mom filled in, so if they seem stylized it’s because I'm trying to translate everything into one thought. Also, sorry again if they're stupid. Remember, I was 4.

First story, how Beau fell in love with the moon.

## *How Beau Fell in Love With The Moon*

One day, I asked Beau if I could draw a picture of him. King Beau was, as far as I can tell, very vain and loved anything having to do with him. This included telling stories about himself, playing games where he was the hero, and of course, portraits. I told my mother this when she asked me why there were so many drawings of the same figure around my room at playtime.

While drawing the shadowy figures of the Quiet Place and listening to his description of his castle, it occurred to me to ask why he looked the way he did. At this point the details of Beau's appearance are pretty vague at best for me (assuming we're not counting whatever I saw last night), but I'll try to give you what I've got.

Beau was the tallest person I've ever seen, which is to say that he looked like a man. He wore dark clothes that at this point I can't tell whether they were armor or cloaks of some kind. His smile was much wider than a human's and full of sharp teeth he liked to bare and hiss with. The most interesting thing for me though was that his skin was very pale. So were his eyes and hair. Everything about him was devoid of color.

I asked, "King, if the Quiet Place is so dark, why are you white?"

This is the story he told me.

Once, the Darkness decided to steal the Moon. It was tired of the Moon cutting through its shadows and running to get the Sun every morning, so one day it rose up and snatched her from the sky.

This was long before Beau became King, and the Quiet Place was still very sad and very dark. The Bad King didn't care about the Darkness's problems because the moonlight never shone far enough to worry him. Neither did the sun. But if there was one thing he wanted, it was to have what everyone else wanted. If the Darkness was so concerned with having the Moon, that meant the Bad King wanted to have her twice as much. So he called out his strongest, faster hunter and demanded the hunter bring back the Moon. Obviously the hunter was Beau.

Beau set off as fast as he could fly, straight into the darkness. Even back then he was never afraid, but he definitely didn't want to get eaten for his failure.

The night was very dark because the Moon was gone. Lots of people cried, and all the King's hunters were busy stealing the voices and toys and people everyone lost because they couldn't see anything. This helped Beau steal away right into the Darkness's kingdom. No one thought anything of a hunter hunting for things and he was very smart anyway and would never get caught.

The Darkness had locked the Moon away right in the middle of its heart. It was almost impossible to navigate, and there were lots of traps and tricks Beau had to get around. Once he was captured by ugly old witches. Some were hunched and shriveled with stringy hair and rotted teeth. Some were beautiful, but they had emptiness where their eyes should have been and forked tongues like snakes. They said, "Little hunter, we know why you have come. We could tell the Darkness now and it would swallow you whole."

He replied, "I could give you something in return. Something for your silence. Then you wouldn't have to tell and I could continue on my way."

"There is only one thing we want that you have," they said. "But if you care about your hunt so much, we will take it."

Their bony claws and wicked spells tore and ripped at him. The pain was terrible, but for the hunt, Beau gave away his Quickness. He continued on, though it was much slower and more difficult.

Another time he found himself being chased by a swarm of deep black beetles with horrible pincers and claws. He knew they wouldn't stop until they ate away until he had nothing left, and without his Quickness there was no way to outrun them. Instead he stopped and turned around to face them because he was never afraid. The beetles crawled all over him. They dug at his body and wiggled beneath his flesh. They crawled over his eyes and tried to force their way into his mouth. The bugs blotted out everything with their dark cloud and the drone of their wings was so maddening he thought he might collapse. When he spoke to them, they tried to dig inside his mouth and eat him inside out.

He said, "I can give you something better than just my body."

They stopped and asked together, "What do you have that we would want?"

He said, "I am the strongest of the King's hunters. You can have my strength instead. With that you could catch a thousand bodies, not just mine."

So without another word the beetles ate him away until all of his Strength was gone. Again Beau continued, but this time it was even more difficult. He couldn't travel very fast or for a very long time, and he had to be extra careful. If he was caught, he had no way of fighting back. The Darkness would swallow him, and there would be nothing for forever.

Beau wandered across the Darkness's kingdom in search of its heart for a very, very long time. The land was cold and lonely. It was not silent like his own home. There were long cries and shadows moving everywhere. The trees had no leaves and there were no flowers. The only lights were poisonous mushrooms that smelled like rotten garbage, and the only change to the flat land were the ruins of castles the shadows had conquered and left to waste away.

The heart was not where Beau thought he would find it, but although he had given away his Quickness and Strength, he still had his senses. On the only hill of the endless plains, there was a tower. It was old and rotten, covered in the fungus and ready to fall away at any moment. Next to the tower was a walled garden, and that is where he heard her crying.

The Moon sat on a large mushroom, turned away from him. She was crying, and she burned the dark shadows around her so much that they had chained her away. She was very beautiful, and he had never seen such a light.

He said, "Moon, I've come to take you away."

She turned around to face him, and that is when he felt the change. He almost couldn't look at her, her face was so perfect. He felt himself begin to melt inside, and he had no strength to stop it.

"You will save me?" she asked. "No," he answered. He was very sad. "I wish I could. I have no more Quickness and no more Strength. Now I think you have taken away my Thoughts too. I have no use now. I'm empty."

She smiled at him, which made him very happy, and he knew then that he didn't need an idea because the Moon had one. They embraced, and when they did he felt her inhabit his heart. He took her strength and quickness and thoughts, which were even greater than the ones he had before. Being in his heart, she changed him.

With this new power, he was easily able to flee from the beasts and shadows in the Darkness. They chased him all the way to the Quiet Place, but the other hunters and the King banished them quickly. The King was pleased and had a big party in Beau's honor. However, when it came time to have the main course, which was to be the Moon, Beau had a problem. Now that she had been in his heart, he could never let her be eaten by the Bad King.

"King," he said. "If you eat the Moon, the Darkness will no longer want her." "Why not?" the King asked, very upset. "Because she will still be gone. That is what the Darkness wants. How she goes isn't important. However if you set her free, you will own her freedom. That is what the Darkness wants more than anything in the world," he explained.

The King was very angry, but he knew that Beau was right. Having the Moon was worthless and that would make her taste terrible.

So he made Beau give her back to the sky. The Moon, having been in Beau's heart, did not want to leave. She cried and cried, and this made Beau very sad. So Beau kept a piece of the Moon in his heart. It made him fast and strong and smart, and it made him shine from inside like she did. And she took a piece of his darkness with her. This way, they would always be together.

And that is why Beau was pale and so powerful. But it's also why Beau began to hate the Bad King.

Next story is "What mom thinks she saw and why I might have started crying back then," which is a crap title, but I'm not very original. That last one was sappy because I wanted to show that maybe Beau isn't all bad. This next one, honestly, scares me.

## *What Mom Thinks She Saw And Why I Might Have Started Crying Back Then*

When I called my mom to talk to her about Beau, she became very serious. Normally my mom is sunny as can be, caring, loving, would bake brownies for everyone if she didn't set the kitchen on fire every time she tried to cook, and pretty rational. She's a brilliant doctor, and the one exception to her strict logic is that she's religious. She definitely does not like to talk about dark things.

By the time I turned 7 she was used to Beau, even if she wasn't quite sure what to think of him. All the books and pediatricians she consulted assured her that imaginary friends were completely normal, even if this one was a little darker. Since I was an otherwise happy, healthy girl who gladly socialized with other (real) kids and liked pink and ponies, if Beau helped me get over some dark fears or thoughts then maybe it was okay. And anyway some stories, like the closet monster one, I never told her. I think even back then I knew it wasn't a good thing to talk about.

With my brother a lot older and therefore "too cool" to play with me, I was often left to my own devices and made up games on my own. Beau always featured heavily in these. If Beau wasn't around, I would pretend to be him and fight terrible monsters or go on adventures. If he was, mom would find me alone in my room, talking with someone who wasn't there or drawing pictures in the eerie stillness. As I got older, I started playing a new game. One day mom found me crawling around the house with a blanket draped over me. She naturally asked what I was doing. I told her I was learning to be a hunter, just like Beau. She didn't think much of it at the time, but it got pretty annoying when I also became something of a thief. My mom would find random things hidden all around my room. Sometimes stuff would show up and she'd have no idea where I'd gotten it. Of course I blamed it on Beau, and she told me I should inform "Beau" to stop stealing things and find a new game.

Honestly this probably wasn't paranormal and was just me. I was as terrible as any wild kid my age, and who knows what I was finding and collecting. After she threatened to take away desserts until it stopped though, the game changed. I started sleepwalking.

In the morning my mom would find me in weird places. It started small- I would be on the floor of my bedroom or downstairs on the sofa. Again the doctors assured her this was fine, but it started getting a little weird. She would find me in places I shouldn't have been able to get to or spots she should have heard me getting to. A few of these places include the kitchen cabinets, the guest bathroom's shower, my brother's desk, etc. My brother is an incredibly light sleeper. He should've heard me come in and lay down in there. The cabinet should've been impossible to get into and mom almost wasn't able to get me back out.

The thing is, I actually do remember this part. It's one of my more concrete memories, maybe because it’s more recent. I know that the sleepwalking was still part of the game. During these walks I was dreaming. I could see everything around me in the dark perfectly, and Beau was guiding me. He was teaching me how to spy like he did in his own weird way. At least that's what my dreams thought.

One night my mom woke up from her sleep. This is what she tells me she remembers happening. I'm not saying it did and she definitely admits she could have dreamed the whole thing or the memory could be blurred by time. But she feels confident enough in this to tell me about it, which makes me think she really did see something strange.

When she woke up, her room was completely still and silent. The silence was exactly like what I've experienced in my own house. She said it felt like everything was holding its breath and waiting for something. My mom stayed still, but she kept her eyes wide and tried to figure out what was going on. As she watched, her door opened. The door opened soundlessly, and I'm sure you know most doors make at least a little noise when they're moved. It swung open slowly, and I crawled in. She said my eyes were closed and I was apparently sleepwalking, but I was crawling on my fingers and toes with weird, balanced crocodile kind of movements. I silently passed through the room and into the little hall that connects her bathroom and the closet. My mom admits that she paused for a moment because she was honestly unsure of what to do and in disbelief of what she saw. She knew though that she had to see if I for some reason needed help no matter what creepy thing I was doing. I was her daughter, after all.

The silence in her room had somewhat passed over, but as she walked to her closet the shadows and air itself seemed thicker somehow. It was like the world was being suffocated. I was curled up next to her shoe tree, whispering something in my sleep. She called my name and asked if I was okay, and what I was doing. I told her (still sleeping) that I was hunting for something.

Needless to say she was pretty unsettled. She held the little cross she always wears and said a silent prayer, which didn't seem to help things. After that she said something like, "Vox, you need to stop this and go back to bed. It’s time for you to get some sleep now."

My response made zero sense to her at the time, but she definitely remembers it. I turned my head from the corner I was facing and looked up at her, though my eyes were still closed. I said, "But don't you want me to hide from them if they try to find me?"

Mom didn't respond. She just kept silently praying and after that the silence slowly moved on. She was still freaked out, but comfortable enough after watching me for a few long minutes to pick me up and carry me back to my bedroom.

Mom never told me about any of this when I was little, but I remember shortly after that she started forcing me to come to church with her early on Sundays. She got rid of most of my Beau drawings, but I didn't seem to mind which confused her. She finally asked me one afternoon if I still played hunter. I got a very serious look on my face and said I didn't play hunter anymore and didn't want to be one. I wouldn't elaborate for her then, but I think I might have a memory of why.

The next story is unpleasant, as a warning.

## *Fuzzy*

I have no idea how real this is. The memory has the same dreamy quality as the sleepwalking sessions, so it very well could just be made up by my younger mind.

When I was little, we had a fat orange cat named Fuzzy. Fuzzy and I didn't get along very well because he was not one to put up with crap from nosy little girls, but I liked him because he was our pet. One day after the creepy sleepwalking incident, I was playing with Fuzzy and must have pet him too hard or something because he bit me and ran off. It wasn't a hard bite and barely broke my skin, but it startled me and I cried.

This apparently did not make Beau very happy. That night, I remember waking up to him calling my name. A lot of my memories of Beau are of his voice more than anything else, or his face sort of floating in the darkness. On this night he was blocking out my bedroom window and leaning down to grin nice and wide at me. It's a seriously unsettling mental image, and if I really did imagine this as a kid, I can't believe I wasn't scared out of my mind all the time.

Beau told me he wanted me to watch something. He seemed very excited. His fingers brushed over my hand, and he said, "I'll wear that cat's teeth in my crown." Then he moved back to the window and beckoned me over. He didn't say this out loud, but somehow I knew in the way you just know things with imaginary friends and in dreams that he wanted me to see how a real hunter operated.

I passed Beau and looked out the window. My bedroom had a view of the backyard. It was a normal lawn with some trees and a swing set, closed in by a fence. The whole scene was silent and flooded with moonlight, giving it an eerie, otherworldly look. As I watched, I saw a small shape slink out into the yard and I realized it was Fuzzy. I was so focused on watching him stalk around that I didn't realize Beau had left my room till I saw another figure on the lawn.

It was nothing but a dark blob of a shadow. I can only describe it as a lack of light. Fuzzy noticed it immediately and turned to face it. The blob approached him and I heard that warning wail that cats give float up from the yard. Even though his name was dumb, Fuzzy was a huge tom. He wasn't one to back down from a fight and was one of those cats that ignored cars and forced them to slow down for him. The shadow didn't seem scared though. Fuzzy hissed and made a terrible yowl at it before taking off. The shadow followed right on his heels, even when he jumped over the fence and out of sight.

I tried to spot where they'd run off to, but they were definitely gone. In the distance I heard what sounded like an awful catfight. For those of you who've experienced these, you know that cats can sound like they're murdering each other and a chorus of babies. It really is terrible, like grind-your-teeth bad in some cases. This was especially ferocious, but I couldn't hear any other animal, just one cat. Probably Fuzzy.

The next morning I came downstairs and asked Mom where Fuzzy was. She said she hadn't seen him, but she was sure he would show up. Like most cats, he wandered about, but he always came home for food.

Fuzzy did manage to make it home, but he only got as far as the edge of our yard and couldn't make it back over the fence. Mom told me he was attacked and blamed it on the stray dogs in the neighborhood. Of course she wouldn't let me see his body, and we buried him in a shoebox under a tree. She was probably right and I probably dreamed up the scene just from hearing the fight outside my window. Still, I remembered what Beau had said.

That was the first time I hated Beau, I think.

Oh, and for those unfamiliar with the last thread, the reason more than anything why these stories scare me is that I've been sleepwalking again. My apartment isn't very big though, so my journeys have been limited to the living room chairs and the kitchen rug so far.

I would tell my mom about it, but it's more that I don't want her to think I'm crazy. I don't want to be crazy, and I have no idea how to tell her I'm hearing voices and seeing a therapist. Also, her answer will probably be for me to go to church and pray about it. It's sort of her default for weird stuff like this.

## *Noise In The Kitchen*

be right back.

ANON: *Question: What would you do if you found out Beau was real?*

I honestly don't know. I really don't. I think that's why I'm here instead of only going to therapy. I'm completely willing to believe that I'm going nuts or I have a tumor. I was raised by a doctor, and I have faith in modern medicine and science.

On the other hand, I know I saw something the other night. I know it. That man in my room was there. The sigh sound I heard was there. To me, it existed outside of my head, more so than any of the other things I've experienced. My mom knows she saw me crawl like a damn spider into her room. Something happened to my cat. Maybe this is how crazy people feel, and maybe we'll find out I'm going nuts. But if this thing is real, I genuinely don't know what to do.

Sorry, guys. Just got off the phone with my friend. He's the one who came over yesterday and helped me search my house after I saw the man. Apparently he just woke up from an episode of sleep paralysis. He opened his eyes and thought he heard voices in his room. Like most sleep paralysis, he couldn't move and saw a shadowy figure watching him from the foot of his bed. He doesn't know how long it lasted, but the figure passed and he woke up from that and made a run for it.

I haven't told him anything about what's happening. I just told him last night that I thought someone was in my house. He's freaked out because he's never experienced sleep paralysis before, so he'll probably come over and chill on my couch. At this point I'm so tired of these coincidences and tired of being alone in this that I'm probably just going to tell him everything.

## *Things Have Gotten Strange*

Things have gotten strange. I don't know how else to put it. I'm going to describe things as best I can, and then give you more stories. To be totally honest, I don't know now if the stories are memories I'm uncovering or something else. Every time I try to think back, there's more. And I mean maybe there are tons of them, because we're talking a good 4 years of my life here, but I just can't tell anymore.

Anyway, I think I'm getting ahead of myself. Let me explain what happened last night.

My friend Chris came over after having that episode of sleep paralysis. I told him everything. The voices, going to the therapist, the radio, seeing someone in my house, Beau, all of it. His answer, being the stoner that he is, was to smoke a bowl. He figured that would help me relax, maybe get some sleep. This is pretty embarrassing to admit, but because I was raised by a good Christian mother who drilled me on the importance of never using drugs, I've only ever smoked pot like twice. But these past few days have been so rough and my work doesn't drug test anyway, I figured why not? It's not like it could hurt anything.

So yes, I was going to finish the story but then I got high.

We lazed around, watched a movie, ate sandwiches, and both must have passed out. The next thing I remember is waking up in my living room. The TV was on but on silent static, probably because we were screwing around with the DVD player. Chris was asleep in a chair, so I decided to peel myself off the sofa and head to my bedroom. I flopped down onto my bed and passed out again. I mean, the weed was pretty strong but I think this more had to do with the fact that I was so exhausted. After this, I had some kind of dream.

In the dream I woke up because I felt someone take my hand. At first I didn't open my eyes because I thought it was Chris being stupid, but slowly I realized that the fingers were ice cold and bony and they were just... wrong. I don't know how to explain it. It was like someone picking up my hand who's never held hands before and the fingers were bending around it wrong. I opened my eyes (in the dream) and there he was.

It was the same man I had seen looking over the edge of my bed. He rose up from the edge to tower over me. He had the same albino skin, milky eyes, and white hair. He smiled at me and his lips pulled back to show rows of sharp teeth. It was like looking at a crocodile opening his mouth and just letting his jaw hang there. Now I realize why I didn't know whether he was wearing cloth or armor. His clothing was deep black, blue, and gray but made up of weird trophies and prizes all woven together in something intricate and I guess almost regal.

I was afraid. I can't lie and say I wasn't. But maybe the weed or just the dreaminess of the dream-state (hurr) were what kept me from freaking out and bolting this time. I mean there he was in all his hideous glory, just like I remembered. I didn't even take my hand from his. Looking back, maybe a part of me realized that it wouldn't have mattered anyway. He had me. I did, however, remember everything you guys have been telling me.

I asked him, "How do I know you're really Beau?"

He bent over, though the movement wasn't human in any sense. It was too graceful, and there was too much smooth curving. He brought his face close to mine, staring right into me with those milky eyes, and I swear I thought for a moment he was just going to rip me apart right there. But he moved to the side and pressed his head against my right temple, like a big dog. It wasn't a cuddly or comforting move in the traditional sense, but it was almost affection.

He said, "Little Jeep." Then he let out another one of those sighs made of twelve different voices all woven together.

You all might not be aware of this, but the SUV Jeeps are named after a character in Popeye cartoons. Eugene the Jeep was a magical creature that had a "fourth dimensional brain." He could walk through walls, teleport, all kinds of stuff and he had to tell the truth. He would also only eat orchids.

Here's a Wikipedia link to it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene\_the\_Jeep

When I was a kid and would visit my grandparents, I'd watch these old Popeye cartoons. Eugene was by far my favorite character. I thought he was adorable, and I loved all of his special skills. I'd even run around saying "Jeep!" like he did. Beau thought this was bizarre, but he tolerated it and even called me a Little Jeep. No one else knows he did this. Even I had forgotten about it until I heard that. I don't know if that passes anyone else's test, but at the time it was good enough for me.

I looked at him and said, "But you're not real. You're just my imagination."

He rose back up again and continued his crazy smile. I thought he was going to say something, but suddenly his face changed. His teeth remained bared but his lips twisted as best they could into a snarl. His eyes rolled back and his head soon followed, tilting with his chin up like he was looking at the skies. His neck lolled to the side and his eyes slightly shifted out the window at nothing I could see. What I did see was what was coming out of his mouth.

It was like some kind of deep black tar rolling out from between his teeth. I can't even describe the stench. I've never smelled anything like it. It was like decay and old blood and rotten lettuce, but that doesn't even begin to cover it. The worst part was that I realized it was crawling. The ooze was beginning to separate into thick, slimy maggots as it moved down his chin.

I said something stupid like "What?" or "Beau?" because at this point I had no idea what to do or what was going on. Aside from never smoking weed again, the only thing I knew was that I was completely in over my head here. He lazily turned to look at me, and his already wide eyes got wider, almost as if he was straining to see me.

"Vox."

When he spoke his lips and mouth didn't move, but the muscles in his throat tensed and the voice was clearly coming from him- not in my head or anything like that. He was going to say something else, but his chest spasmed and he started to vomit the thick tar maggots with deep, painful retching. Before the soup could hit the ground, the maggots became bloated and grew legs. It took me a minute to realize that I was staring at a swarm of black beetles. They buzzed so loudly I thought my ears were going to start bleeding. I could hear my teeth vibrating in my skull. I thought my brain was starting to pulse and there was a pressure in my head that pounded against my eyeballs. The beetles were crawling up Beau's form, but I was starting to see stars. I couldn't breathe and my heart felt like it was straining with all its might to pump blood into the soup of my mind. I don't remember anything else after that. I blacked out.

I woke up with the worst dry mouth I've ever experienced and a splitting headache worse than any hangover. I was in my bed, but there was no pool of tar or evidence that anything actually did happen. My friend had already left for work. When I had downed some Tylenol and recovered enough to function, I called him up and asked if he'd noticed anything unusual last night. He said no, I'd just gotten up and got into my room and he'd curled up on the couch.

After that my therapist called personally to let me know that my insurance has approved my CT scan and it's scheduled for Wednesday. I told him this is a good thing because I'm completely losing my mind. I told him about the dream. He said not to worry. These things happen, especially if you're being dumb enough to use drugs.

Let this be a lesson to you all. So that's where we stand.

There's more. That's just what happened today leading up to where we are now. Sorry, I'm just trying to give any relevant information I can on the off chance it could be of use. I'm a little scattered right now. That nightmare really shook me up. I usually have vivid dreams, but that was a cut above the rest by far.

(And also in the dream Beau didn't actually say "Vox." He said my name. Just assume from now on if Vox is used, it's just a stand in for my real name.)

## *Beau And The Dream King*

The topic lately seems to be dreams, so I'm gonna run with that. Going back, I remember that Beau didn't always visit me during waking playtime. I would often dream about him at night, joining him on his adventures or continuing our own. Maybe that's why the memories of these stories have blurred so much. Some parts are incredibly vivid, like I can see them perfectly in my mind's eye. Some of them barely make any sense and I can hardly figure out what's going on. At any rate, the next story is Beau and the Dream Catchers.

King Beau was fond of watching me fall asleep. He would rest his chin on my bed and grin with his mouth slightly open, teeth shining in the moonlight. I would talk to him for a time, but we had to whisper because if my mom heard us, she'd come in and fuss.

One night I told him that I hoped I had a good dream. He assured me I would.

"I bring you dreams," he said. "I can take any dream I like from the fields and bring it to you while you sleep."

I asked him how this was possible, and this is the story he told me.

In his wandering, King Beau didn't only come to our world to steal voices. There were a great many things to see all over and lots of things to take for his own. On one particular journey he found himself in the dream fields. These were not fields in the way we think of with grass and flowers. This was a flat plain full of a rolling mist that never dissolved. Within the mist he could see little flashes, like tiny sparks of lightning inside the clouds. As he drew closer, the strikes projected images onto the mist, but only for a few short seconds. The scenes were only short clips of people flying or animals or places. They were dreams.

Beau was not alone in the fields. As he moved through the mist, he came upon a strange bunch of beings. They sat around on rocks or laid out on the ground staring up into the cloud. They had long long pipes that they used to siphon the flashes as they appeared. They caught the dreams and ate them.

Dreams are nothing. They have no value and no real substance. They're only lost thoughts and the scum skimmed off the mind. At least that's how Beau described them. Because of this, the Dream Catchers' bodies were always searching for more even if their mind craved nothing but the sweet dreams. They had tendrils growing out of every pore in their skin, roots always searching for more to sustain them. Anything that happened into the fields was fair game for their thirsty, piercing tentacles.

Beau, as always, was not afraid of any catcher or dream. He moved into the field because there was no way around it and he definitely wasn't going back after reaching such an interesting place. Unfortunately the roots of the Catchers began to take notice of him, and soon even the Catchers themselves couldn't resist grabbing at his cloaks and trying to drag him down to the ground for themselves. The Catchers had no teeth because all they did was suck at the pipes. Their eyes were huge, and their noses looked more like beaks. Beau tried to fight them, but unlike the faces in the Closet Beast's cave, the Catchers weren't rooted down. They overwhelmed him with numbers.

Beau stole one of the pipes and tried to keep them at bay, but the tendrils were too small and dug into his flesh. Just when the beings had all but dragged him into the plain, a deep horn bellowed. The Catches froze and then moved away, as if Beau had suddenly become poisonous. When they had moved from his sight, he noticed a young warrior on a pale steed.

"You disturbed the Catchers," the warrior said.

"They disturbed me first," said Beau. "I was only trying to pass."

"You must earn passage through my kingdom," the warrior replied. "I will help you. I can see that you are a friend of the Moon."

Beau walked with the warrior through the field. As long as he remained near the other, the Catchers ignored them and went back to siphoning the dreams. The warrior had youthful features and a slightly delicate appearance. He seemed just as sedate as the other around him, though Beau was beginning to suspect the mist had something to do with that. The warrior shone slightly, as though the swirling clouds made him glow, and he was made of silver and pale blue.

"The Moon is my sister," the warrior said. "I look after the dreams. My people make them, and we send them out to the sleeping ones on the other side."

"But you let the Catchers eat them?" Beau asked.

The warrior only shrugged. "It is their nature. I can't stop them."

Beau sneered because he thought this was foolish. "I am the King of the Quiet Place. No one may take what is mine. I will eat their voices and wear their skin."

"Then you can help me," the Dream King said.

The Dream King took Beau to a great tower made of polished stone as smooth as ice. They climbed up the tower to the King's chamber, where they stood and looked over the vast fields. The mist spread as far as the eye could see. There were more than just Catchers within it. There were the threads of deep rivers and strange creatures bounding along in herds. But to the West the mist grew dark. The dream flashes were angrier and more agitated. The bodies of Catchers lay on the ground being picked apart by strange birdlike monsters. These odd vultures clawed at and cleaned the dead body away, picking for any last shreds.

"Watch," the Dream King said and pointed to the edge of the dark, ruined land.

One of the bird monsters was eyeing a Catcher and the Catcher only focused on consuming another dream. The monster took flight and circled the Catcher, surveying the situation before diving down and attacking. It gauged out the Catcher's eyes with its talons and used its strange mouth to tear out a cheek. The Catcher's tendrils immediately tried to attack, but for some reason they couldn't get purchase.

"It's the feathers," the King explained. "They are too oily. The tendrils slip off."

The cries of the Catcher drew more of the monsters. Soon the form did nothing but twitch and jump as dozens of the creatures ripped at dead flesh. Around the Catcher the land cracked and grew mottled with the same infection that plagued the other side of the mist. The other Catchers did nothing to help their fallen friend or save themselves. They were too busy with the dreams.

"My brother has made a pact with the Darkness. He wants to infect the dreams and send the Darkness into the sleeping ones. His nightmares will destroy my fields. I have no army of my own. I cannot stop him as long as he controls the worms."

Those are not worms," Beau replied.

"Not them," the King assured him. "They feed on the worms."

When he first came to the dream fields, Beau had thought it would be easy to pass. The Dream King's problem was none of his concern, though the Darkness had never been a friend of the Quiet Place. However, a part of the Moon was still in his heart, and this small part of him would never allow Beau to simply leave this place for the Darkness to swallow. So he agreed to help the King.

Beau was very smart, and he knew much about worms. "There is only one worm even if there are many," he assures the King. "We will kill the worm."

Though Beau was not afraid of anything, he was also no fool. To travel through the mist was to make himself food for the thousands of bird monsters that searched in flocks for more food. Not to mention the Catchers would certainly try to eat him. Being as smart as he was, he decided two things.

First that the Dream King would go with him because this was all his fault. Second, that they would travel to the Worm through the worm tunnels. It only made sense. The Dream King was not very happy with either of these ideas and made a fuss over getting his fine clothes dirty. Beau didn't care one bit.

The Dream King took him to a great opening in the ground where the cracks of the plagued land joined together. All around the hole were the skeletons of Catchers and their long forgotten pipes, but the bird monsters had long since abandoned the area in favor of more fertile hunting ground. With the King's bow and Beau's knives and voices and Quickness and Strength and many other warrior skills, they armed themselves and set out.

The network of tunnels was winding and often they had to crawl through tight spots or dug out cave-ins. The King used light borrowed from his sister the Moon to guide their way. It bounced along the tunnel walls and burned at the tails of any smaller worms that might have troubled them. Finally they came to a wide cavernous chamber. It was lit with black flames and covered in the same polished stone as the king's tower. Inside was a young warrior that looked very much like the Dream King, but his features were golden and midnight. Coiled up and boated with a twisted, sightless face was the Worm. It oozed and pulsed, and while they watched the warrior took a knife and carved out two slices from its flesh. The slices fell to the floor and pulsed. Before their eyes, two more small worms had been created.

"You see King," said Beau. "There is only one Worm."

That said, he attacked.

Of course the Nightmare King was not going to let Beau simply kill his prized worm. He let out a fierce cry, and the two smaller worms came straight for him. In their wake they left a trail of poisonous ooze that bubbled and ate away at the polished stone. Their maws opened wide and stretched out hungrily for the two Kings. The Dream King was quick to pierce one with an arrow, pinning it down and burning its flesh with thick sizzling smoke. Beau dodged the other and let loose one of his piercing voices which froze the little worm in its tracks and made it curl up into a withering ball.

The Dream King readied another arrow and charged at the Great Worm. The monster rose up and tried to coil around the King, hissing as the arrows dug into it but never faltering from its battle. While the King was focused on saving his kingdom, Beau paid more attention to the things that mattered, and what mattered more than anything to the Nightmare King was to protect a stone hanging around his neck. Beau knew this because he was a mighty hunter and hunters can see how one protects a prize. That, Beau decided, was his target. While the Dream King kept the Worm busy, Beau went after the Nightmare King.

"I do not care why you help the Darkness," Beau said as his knives flashed and sparked against the dark one's sword. "I do not care that you too are a brother of the Moon. That stone is mine. I will have it."

The Nightmare King was a great warrior, very fast even though his size was small. But desperation made him stumble and alter his normal patterns to protect the stone, and this was something Beau knew well. He threw two voices into the dark one's ears, confusing his senses and disrupting his balance. With this window of opportunity, Beau snatched the stone away.

The Great Worm froze, which was good because the Dream King had nearly run out of arrows. The silver weapons covered the worm's skin with a burning that must have been maddening, but worms are not very intelligent creatures and rarely care much at all for pain. It froze and stared at Beau who realized what he had won.

"I can make the Worm eat your brother," Beau told the Dream King.

The Nightmare King, realizing he had lost, could not escape and so did not try.

"No," sighed the Dream King. "It is his nature."

Normally Beau would have done it anyway, but again the bit of the Moon that still inhabited his heart made him send the Great Worm away, back to its homeland never to return to the dream fields. Beau kept the Worm's heart for himself and the Nightmare King also returned to his own tower, beaten at least for a time.

However, Beau was not finished. It angered him that the Dream King and the Catchers did nothing to defend themselves. He hated that the Catchers took without repaying their debts. So he stood atop the Dream King's tower and roared in a voice so mighty even the mist trembled and the dreams silenced for a time.

"LISTEN TO ME," he roared.

For once, the Catchers listened.

"YOU CANNOT ONLY TAKE THESE DREAMS. YOU MUST HAVE A PURPOSE. LOOK."

He pointed to one of the bird monsters, circling the mist looking for any last worms and eyeing the Catchers.

"FIGHT," Beau ordered.

And one of the Catchers thrust his pipe up. It speared into the heart of the bird monster and what oozed down was just as sweet as a dream. From then on, the Dream King had an army and Beau was allowed to take whatever dreams he wished in return for his help.

And that is why I had good dreams.

## *Q and A*

Sorry it’s taking me forever to write stuff out lately. I'm so fried from everything, but I feel like I have to keep this up. The least I can do is answer questions for now...

Anon: *I has a questions. Besides the whole Beau situation, how would you describe your life as a whole right now? Are you happy? Stressed out? Is there anything bothering you? How's school/work? Your friends/family?*

My life has actually been really normal. I have a good job, a decent apartment, and I am over my ex. My family and friends are all nice and stable. That's why this comes out of nowhere. I'm about as average and normal as a person can be.

Anon: *Vox, what are Beau's dimensions? Your description from your dream invokes images of Michael Jackson with the skeletal hands, pale skin and kitschy outfit. Is he tall? Can you describe his voice? What's his face like? High cheekbones? Hairstyle? Does he have alligator-like cone teeth or shark teeth or dinosaur dagger teeth?*

He's really hard to describe accurately because everything about him is not quite human and I'm a terrible artist. His skin looks just like an albino. His teeth look like crocodile teeth. They're all pointed but different sizes and fit together. He's very tall- I would say he almost reached my ceiling. He has longish neck. His smile is way too wide. He has high cheekbones and big eyes. He had white hair and it was brushed back.

Anon: *Does Beau look like that guy from The Nightmare Before Christmas? Jack, I think?*

No, and not like David Bowie or Johnny Depp either, as you've been discussing among yourselves, though that's not for lack of wishing. He's got flesh on him. He just doesn't look especially human. Sorry I'm so bad at describing him. I've never seen anything like him. Personally, I can't get over his hands but maybe that's because I "felt" one a few times.

Anon: *I'm curious- what does Beau's voice sound like? Is it a combination of all the voices he has collected or is it distinct in its own right?*

There were two. His normal voice, which is like the one I've been hearing, sounds like a man's but sort of distorted. Like it has to go through some kind of interference I guess? The sighs sound like if you took twenty different voices and made them make the same notes in unison but at different volumes and with different tones. Like a speaking chorus but all crammed into one throat.

Anon: *has he ever been a companion to anyone else the way he was/is with you?*

Not that I remember off the top of my head. He loved the Moon, though they couldn't be together. He tolerated a lot of creatures. Through the stories he seems to be most concerned with reciprocity and taking whatever he covets. I'm not sure if he was my companion or if I was just another prize. I know that most of our games involved me paying him for not eating me in songs or adventures, and he would tell me stories.

Anon: *Do you remember if the sight of the moon in the sky ever had any effect on Beau?*

Yes. He looked at the moon, loved the moonlight, etc.

Anon: *I want to believe that you were more than just a prize to him, even though he considered you "his." It seems he built a close connection to you, or as close as someone of his nature can get at least. I guess you could say he was trying to protect you from Fuzzy, and not just because you were his. The fact that he seemed to spend time telling you about himself and his stories could say a lot, but I guess it could be interpreted differently. There could be a number of reasons for his return. I don't think you're crazy because there's a lot of stuff in this world we don't know about and can't explain, but from how things are going I'd say the last thing Beau wants to do is hurt you.*

Anon: *Sounds to me like she was just another prize to him. Though the other stories lead me to believe he may not have been mature enough then to see her as a companion. Sounds a lot like a child going through its "mine" phase.*

Maybe it's somewhere in the middle. He does come off as a kid being possessive, but he also did spend years humoring me. He could have just taken whatever he wanted from me and left.

Anon: *Rational (boring) explanation: It`s all in your head.*

Paranormal: Beau is a ghost or some other paranormal creature. The stories he told you so far are fictional. I mean, the darkness stole the moon but he saved it and put it back in the sky? You told us he was vain. This ghost/demon probably likes creating stories where he's the hero to satisfy his ego. When you saw him vomiting the tar-maggots, you saw his true form. If I were you, I'd be careful from now on.

Rational: CT scan is on Wednesday. Don't worry; I haven't ruled that out at all.

Paranormal: It's entirely possible he was making things up. However, he looked like he was in serious pain when he started vomiting. I don't know if that was his true form when he went years without ever doing anything like that before. The beetles reminded me of the ones from the Moon story. Maybe my dream was just recycling that.

I mean, I liked having him around because he was my imaginary friend, but as far as being his possession, that's not really my thing. I don't know why my idiot kid self decided an abusive relationship with a demon king was quality imaginary friend material, but it's not indicative of my adult relationships.

## *Vox and the Seekers*

I'm back. As promised, I've been writing down the stories so that things will move a little faster.

I've spent most of today sleeping, to be honest. After the thread, I passed out. The night was so quiet, and it's freezing and rainy here in my little corner of the world. Perfect sleeping weather normally. I slipped in and out of dreams. Some of them were memories. Some of them were nonsense. Many of them were about Beau. In one, I was falling.

I can't say exactly that this has consumed my days now, but it all weighs heavily on my mind. My head is killing me. This headache comes and goes, but when it's around, it's terrible. There's a ringing in my ears, and I've actually come to enjoy the bizarre blanket of silence that occasionally descends. It only happened once today, but it was wonderful.

Sorry. I'm not trying to complain. I just want everyone to know the facts. And to thank everyone for staying with me through this. If it weren't for these writing sessions, I think I would have just given up and committed myself or something. I just can't help but feel like there's something to these stories, and if I let them dope me up now, it'll never get found.

I know I said I'd do Beau and the Child Snatchers, but I think it needs to be prefaced. This is Vox and the Seekers.

I have to be honest; before all this started I never really looked back on my time with Beau. It was just another part of my childhood, which is something I think even less about day to day. I think someone asked last night if I could give a little more insight into my life. There was nothing strange about my upbringing. My father left before I was born (didn't know my mom was pregnant at the time) but the divorce was civil and I saw my dad every other weekend and on vacations in the summer. He's a good man and my mom's a good woman. They just weren't right for each other, but they never stopped loving me and my brother. Otherwise we were a middle class family in Middle America.

Now that I've taken time to write things down and really examine those years, I can see myself grow and change. The games Beau and I played had an effect on me, whether or not they were real. Maybe I was turning into a real, thinking human being rather than the feral little monsters most kids are. Maybe Beau really was teaching me something. Regardless, I don't think I've talked about the other games we would play and the ways being with Beau changed the world around me.

Beau. Loved. Hide and Seek. He loved to prove he could hunt me down, and he adored showing how he could find me no matter where I hid. Mom always wondered why it surprised me every time Beau found me. He was a product of my mind, after all. Still, I loved playing with Beau, and seeing him happy made me happy. He was my friend. My dangerous, voice stealing, vain, obnoxious, murderous friend.

One day I asked Beau why he liked playing Hide and Seek so much.

He said, "Don't you? Your kind is always playing this game."

I asked him what he meant. My people didn't hide from each other all the time. Just when we were in danger or when we were playing with each other. Or when we didn't want to be found. He smiled and leaned in close to whisper in my ear. Looking back, I remember that I found it strange his lips and mouth never moved when he spoke. He let his teeth part and allowed the voice spill from him, simply working his neck to edge it along.

"You see, little Jeep, this is why you always lose our games. You do not understand how to play. Your kind is very good at hiding, but being a seeker is so much more fun. There are many things that want to find you. We should play a round of Hide and Seek now. You hide first."

Though young and impressionable, I was skeptical.

"I think you just want an excuse to play," I said.

"Keep your senses clear," he instructed. "See who finds you first."

I wasn't sure quite how to take that, but he turned to face the corner and began to count. The shadows pooled around him and he bowed his pale head, wrapping his inhuman fingers around it just to prove he wasn't peeking. Realizing that this was the end of the conversation and any more arguments was just going to result in me losing the game that much faster, so I ran. On this particular day we were playing inside the house as it was raining outside. This greatly limited my hiding place selections. My grandmother, who was supposed to be looking after me, was napping in the living room, and I knew that obvious choices like closets or cabinets would be the first place Beau would search. So instead, I decided to hide in plain sight. I chose the guest bathroom.

Part of the trick to evading Beau was to confuse him. I knew that he would follow trails until they ended, no matter where or why. I took full advantage of this compulsion. I closed a cabinet door as I went in case he might hear the sound. I left a lump of laundry on my floor just big enough to hide in and cracked my brother's close door open just enough to see through. This misdirection would waste his time and hopefully frustrate him, and that might give me a chance to change hiding places if I needed to.

The guest bathroom was almost never used and always stocked with our nice holiday towels and tiny soaps that smelled like vanilla. I crept inside and closed the door behind me before slipping into the tub and draping the shower curtain to hide me. The only light came from a little outlet lamp shaped like a seashell. I'm not even sure why we kept it in there. Pressed to the cold tube and curled up as much as I could be, I closed my eyes, tried to make my breathing as slow and silent as possible, and strained to hear Beau searching.

Now obviously the King Hunter Warrior of the Quiet Place and So On wasn't going to slip up and allow a five year old to catch on to him, but I got the impression that he has as much fun going through the motions as he did winning these games. Directly above my head, I swore I heard a series of drawers open and close quickly. Beau was letting me know that the game had begun. I tried to hear more over the sound of my own heart beating, and it wasn't long before I heard a taptaptaping at the bathroom door. The knob rattled slightly. Floorboards creaked as someone shifted weight on them. In my mind's eye I could see all of this happening.

Now this confused me. Beau never needed to open doors. The only time he ever bothered while we were playing was strictly for theatrics. Something slipped inside the bathroom, and it occurred to me that whatever this was, it wasn't Beau. The more I strained my ears, the more I picked up on something: Ragged, alien breathing.

As much as it terrified me, I forced myself to open my eyes. Staring up at the ceiling above the shower, I didn't dare move to get a better view of the rest of the bathroom. However, the light from the seashell shifted and cast a shadow even with its dim light.

"Vox, honey? Did I see you come in here?"

The voice belonged to my grandmother. Fearing punishment, I almost answered, but Beau's words caught the call in my throat.

"Sweetie?"

The being shifted over the tile with the same shuffling gait my grandmother had. The shadow might have been the same size. Still I found myself troubled by the possibility that some terrible thing might be playing with my heartstrings in an effort to draw me out. Either that, or this might have been a new trick Beau was showing off. I wouldn't give him the satisfaction of fooling me.

"Oh, I see. Are you playing a game with your little friend? Bob? Come out, come out wherever you are! Bob is here and he wants to see you!"

Well that solidly ruled out Beau. His vanity would never have allowed him to mess up his own name. In his mind everyone in the world should have known it. Instead in the kitchen my heightened hearing caught a cabinet closing. If Beau was still hunting for me, that meant it was just me and the being with my grandma's voice. Suddenly I felt like Little Red Ridinghood. I had always hated that story.

The being paused, probably hearing the cabinet as well. It shuffled closer to the tub, and I heard something in my ear. It was like a very very low pitch, not strong enough to be a rumbling but not quiet enough to be my mind playing tricks. For some reason the sound made my stomach coil into knots and my heart flutter as though it were trying to fly free of my chest. I know it's corny to say but I could see that old Bugs Bunny cartoon in my head, the one with the obnoxious Red Ridinghood and the cross-dressing wolf.

"Vox, this isn't funny. I'll count to three and if you aren't out here by then, we'll have to talk to your mother when she gets home."

I did not want this thing anywhere near my mother.

"One..."

I held my breath and watched as the light of the shell disappeared near the shower.

"Two..."

The suspense and the droning were starting to drive me crazy. I'm not ashamed to say that a few tears rolled down my cheeks. I was just a little girl. I was used to the monster letting me sing to him, not impersonating my grandma and threatening my mother. I wanted scream or jump up and run, but there was no escaping.

"Three."

The shower curtain above me began to press inward. A face took shape among the floral pattern. It had no really unique features. It could have been my grandmother but then it could also have been my dad for all I knew. The droning never increased in volume, not even with the thing right above me. It continued to stare straight ahead, and while the face didn't move, the voice echoed inside the tub.

"Now where is that naughty girl?"

I couldn't take it any longer. A choking sniffle escaped my lips. The thing froze, and I was completely sure I was done for. I had no idea what was going to happen to me, but I knew it wasn't going to be nice. I had heard enough Beau stories at that point to be certain these beings didn't usually play games and sing. However, the droning stopped. The face yanked itself out of the curtain, and the being paused for only a second before what sounded like shuffling footsteps played on fast forward went skittering out the way they had come. What replaced the drone was a thick, comforting silence.

I waited for what seemed like another lifetime before peeking my head over the edge of the tub. There was a figure there, but I thought I knew its tall, cloaked form.

"Beau?" I sniffled. I remember my lips trembling. I pulled back the curtain to reveal his pale face, gracefully bent down and staring into mine. He shone slightly in the darkness, and he tilted his head at the sight of me.

"I see I did not win," he said.

Beau was a bastard. Even back then, I knew he'd waited around and let the grandma thing scare me. I didn't say anything in response, only twisted my face up. He saw that I was on to his tricks and grinned wider.

"Don't you see the rules of the game yet?" he asked. "There are always seekers hunting you down, Vox. They can only catch you if you allow yourself to be caught."

I nearly jumped out of my skin when my grandmother's voice echoed from the kitchen. She was calling me for snack time.

"Is it really her?" I asked.

Beau gave an unnatural shrug composed of too many joints.

I puffed up my cheeks and gathered my courage, charging past Beau and out of the bathroom. In the kitchen was my real grandmother with snacks. I hugged her waist as tight as I could, and when she asked me why I was crying, I told her I had stubbed my toe.

I admit, I was surprised and not very happy when after snacks and a getting bored of grandma's daytime TV, Beau called to me from my room, wanting to finish our game.

"The rain has stopped," Beau insisted. "You can seek. If we leave the game unfinished, we break the rules."

I argued that house was a better alternative, and Beau threatened to leave me with the grandmother thing again. He knew where to find it, he told me. It could just come in here and finish whatever business it had. I countered with no more songs for a week. He won by offering to steal my voice and have all the songs he ever needed for forever. I lost. To the corner I went. I angrily counted to ten. When time was up, I turned around and somehow knew Beau was not in the house. We had spent too much time inside, and even for Beau the outdoors were too tempting. I called to my grandmother that I was going out to the backyard and trotted out into the garden.

The house that we lived in was the same one my parents had stayed in together. My father's old tool shed still sat in the corner of the yard, mostly abandoned. I was forbidden to play inside of it. He had never come back for most of his tools, and there were all kinds of pesticides leaking away in there. Usually it was closed and locked, but the door stood open just a crack. I wondered why Beau would be trying to get me into trouble, but I ventured inside anyway.

"Beau?" I whispered as I poked my head in. "We're not supposed to be in here. We'll get in trouble."

I scanned the room, trying to look past the old lawnmower, work bench, Christmas lights, and all the other trappings of a normal suburban family. In the far back of the little shed, behind a plastic Santa and an old trashcan, I saw a shadowy lump that didn't belong. I felt a surge of triumph and stepped inside, opening the door a little more to cast some light into the gloom. This light is what caused a glint from an old saw hanging on the wall, and that saw is what caused me to back out of the shed and close the door behind me.

In the warped metal of the saw, I noticed a reflection. The face, even distorted as it was, did not belong to Beau. I saw wide dark eyes and a gaping mouth, not filled with sharp teeth but rather a hungry void. It moved slightly as the thing shifted, though I don't think it ever caught my eye. Either way, I wasn't going to go checking it out. What I saw might have been the reflection of more decorations, just like the grandmother thing might have been my overactive imagination, but like Beau said, they could only catch me if I let them.

"Beau!" I called into the yard. "I'm not playing anymore!"

I heard his voice float from behind a tree.

"I have killed for less," he pouted, "but you would never have found me anyway."

I don't mean to give the impression that I'm taking my ball and going home because that's not what's happening here. I'm just regrouping. I guess I feel sort of like a guest on here because I'm the one asking for help and no one has to listen to my rambling childhood stories or, you know, descent into schizophrenia. The least I can do is try my best.

... And I don't really remember where I was going with this, which is just scary, so I guess that's that. I just need to lay down a little while... I'll be back on later.

## *It Must Be Now*

I'm late. I know. Hopefully everyone's around.

First of all, I apologize for last night. I realize it's taking me longer and longer to write things out, and I've been trying to compile the stories to keep things moving a little more smoothly. So please just bear with me. As always, I only ask for help. I don't mean to sound melodramatic, but I think things are getting worse much faster than we anticipated.

I woke up this morning and forgot where I was for a moment. I was freezing cold and thought I heard someone speaking in the next room and panicked. I realized that it was my alarm radio in my bedroom and I had sleepwalked into the kitchen and was curled up under the table. That's a bad way to start any day, especially because I haven't swept my kitchen floor in way too long. Things only got worse after.

I'm getting used to the headache. It starts out terrible in the morning, but it actually eases off as the day wears on. My only problem now is that I'm starting to feel nauseated, like I have a stomach virus or something. I can't focus for very long on writing down anything. It's like the words won't come to me. When they do, the memories are broken or don't mean anything. This is something I wrote down this afternoon, for example:

I think I've said before, like most average little girls I loved Disney movies. Peter Pan was what made me not run screaming from Beau in the first place. However, everyone knows those certain scenes that scarred their innocent childish minds. Ursula getting impaled on a boat, Scar getting ripped apart by the hyenas, Donald Duck going nuts and almost eating Mickey, the hallucinogenic elephant parade in Dumbo, etc. Back then even little kid movies were full of scary stuff.

For me though, there is one movie that takes the cake. There's this one scene I can't watch to this day without getting creeped out. That scene is Pleasure Island from Pinocchio. I'm sure you all know what I'm talking about. The little boys get turned into donkeys and shipped off crying and braying to the salt mines? The first time I saw that movie I started sobbing and made my mom turn it off.

Again, I had a voice stealing, skin wearing monster as an imaginary friend, but donkeys were just too much for me. Don't ask me. We're running on kid logic. Vox kid logic.

That playtime I was quick to tearfully tell Beau all about what I had seen and ask him if it were real. Beau first thought it was foolish to get so worked up over something like that. If anyone tried to turn me into a donkey, he said, I could just fight them off. That's what he would do. This still didn't help, and I told him that he absolutely had to help me if any evil person tried to turn me into a pack animal. The donkeys in the movie lost their voices and could only bray. This made Beau pay attention.

"Then you cannot let this happen," he told me. "You cannot let someone take what is mine. I will not let you."

... But that's it. There's nothing else to that memory that I can think of, and try as I might, I couldn't make it relate to a story. I just couldn't get the words to come out of my brain. I got frustrated. I don't know what happened. It was like all the stress from the past few days came crashing down on me, and all the sudden I just couldn't control my body. I went into this blind fit of rage. I mean screaming, bashing the couch, kicking stuff, throwing things. I'm such a calm person and I've never had an outburst like that, but I just couldn't take it anymore. All my muscles felt like they were straining as I cried.

I don't know how long it lasted, but my thrashing around stopped and there was nothing but silence. It was that blanket of stillness I've come to recognize. My head felt clear, just for a moment. My heart stopped racing. I could breathe normally. Then I heard something behind me.

"Vox."

I knew he was there. In the evening light, I could see his shadow out of the corner of my eye. It stretched along the wall but receded if I looked directly at it. So I sit still. He must have been in the corner to the right of me. I could see the points of his teeth. Last time I described him as a crocodile, but I've figured out that isn't the word I was looking for. A few years ago, I went to the local zoo, and they had a rainforest exhibit. They had something called a gharial. That's what his teeth looked like. I remember everything you all said. I had to try to talk to him, even if I was scared for my life. How much worse could this get, right?

So I ignored that part of me insisting that this was crazy and I was just talking to a figment of my sick, sick imagination. How often do you get to talk to your subconscious, you know?

I asked him, "What do you want? Why are you here?"

I heard him growl, slow and deep. The sound made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. I've spent a lot of time outdoors, hiking and trail riding and such. I've heard dog growls, coyotes, all kinds of feral animals. I actually even think I heard a mountain lion growl once (I was on a four-wheeler and got the hell out of there, so who knows what it really was), but none of those creatures sounded like this.

"There is no more time," he said. "It must be now."

"What do you mean?" I asked. My heart was pounding, and my fingers dug into the couch.

"Nothing may take what is rightfully mine. Your voice has always belonged to me."

I wanted to ask more, but I couldn't get the words out and by that time the silence was receding. It wasn't long before I was left alone again.

Now here's the scary part. After this happened, I picked up the phone to call my mom. I just needed to hear her voice and know that everything was going to be okay. Even if I am going crazy. I went out to my car and dialed and it rang and she answered and then when I tried to talk, something went wrong.

She said, "Hello?"

I could only whisper, "Hello?"

She said, "Hey Vox. What's up?"

I said, "What's up?"

She laughed and asked me what was going on, and I just couldn't respond. I had to hang up because I didn't know what to do. That only lasted for another minute before I was back to normal, but it still terrifies me. It's like I'm really losing my voice. Not just the sounds. It’s like I'm losing the ability to speak altogether.

I'm tearing up just writing about this. I'm such a pansy. I'm just so scared that something is really wrong with my head, and if there isn't something wrong with my head, then what is taking my voice? I know Beau is the key. I know I have to tell these stories. Beau is trying to tell me something, whether it’s that he's come for me and I better get my shit in order and start praying or that something else is happening.

Either way, I don't know how much more time I have. I'm scared to talk to my therapist before Wednesday because I don't want to get doped up and I know that's what'll happen. If I go to the ER and tell them I'm hearing voices and seeing things and think something is stealing my voice, they'll lock me away. I will go to the CT Scan, but that means I have till Wednesday to arm myself with any information I can think of.

So tell me, people. How do I confront Beau? How can I dig into my own mind?

So you guys know, I'm totally willing to face Beau or whatever this is. Nothing is taking my voice while I can do something about it. I'm not very knowledgeable about this stuff, so these are the methods I've come up with:

- More pot, since that went so well last time (hurrhurr)

- Hypnosis

- Ouija board

- That thing where you put Ping-Pong balls on your eyes and play white noise.

This is clearly why I need your help.

I can sing, I got that much. The only problem is, I can't get him to show up on command. I'm worried singing won't be enough to draw him out. Also, still don't have anything to record with, and that's what I really want to do. But okay. I try to clear my mind and relax and then sing. What do I do when he shows up?

But here is what I'm going to try to do. Tonight, I'm going to try to calm down and meditate. Might involve some pot, as this helped me relax last time and will help with the nausea.

Once Beau appears, I'll try singing to him and getting some answers. I'll be back with results and stories tomorrow.

## *Vox Updates Again*

I know. I'm late.

As always, I appreciate everything you've done to help me. If it matters, I'm feeling much calmer. I'll explain, but it might be slightly scattered. Hopefully you can make sense of everything.

One night I woke up from a nightmare. The dream was one I had every so often as a kid. I don't remember all the details, mostly just that it involved me being locked alone in a room that was pulsing and closing in. I'd have trouble breathing and panic until I woke up. It doesn't sound very scary, but I'm claustrophobic. I can't even go down closed-in waterslides.

On this night, like any other, I would have called for my mom or run into her room. I stopped short after seeing the familiar looming shadow in my corner. Beau asked me what was wrong, and I told him. Remembering the story of the Dream King, I asked him why he hadn't brought me a good dream tonight instead of leaving me with that nightmare. He grinned and moved to the edge of my bed.

"Have I not told you of the first nightmare?" he asked.

Way back a long time ago, the Darkness was still very young. It hounded our kind endlessly, sending shadows to nip at our heels and allowing monsters to lurk within its pools. This was a quiet time when we traveled along between worlds without understanding and the Darkness knew only to keep us at bay. It feared that we would spread beyond the bounds of our world like a cancer. So it did whatever it could to frighten, harm, and even kill us.

Yet there was one daughter of man who would not fear the Darkness. She sought it out and walked among worlds without worry. The shadows were her companions. No monster could catch her in its snares. Nothing the Darkness did could stop her, and her courage inspired those around her to brave the darkness as well. Seeing this daughter of man, the Darkness lamented his failing to the Night.

"Does she not see that these worlds are not for her?" it asked.

"She cannot understand our true nature. You must reach their heart," Night said.

"But how?" the Darkness asked.

The Night showed the Darkness how man slept, leaving their minds to wander with no defenses. The Darkness slipped inside the woman's mind and filled her head with all the terrible possibilities that lurked within it. It showed her worlds that man cannot view with human eyes. It tormented her with threats of endless pain and suffering to those she loved. It drove her mad with fear so that she never again ventured beyond the safety of her own world.

The Darkness left a part of itself within the minds of man to stay with them from birth till death and warn them of the risks of foolishness or bravery. This bit of Darkness and Night and man's heart became the Nightmare. The daughter of man never wandered into the Darkness again.

"That's a terrible story," I told him. "Why would the Darkness do that? That's stupid." Beau laughed. "That is true. But in its own way, the Darkness cared for the daughter of man."

Unable to understand what that could mean at the time, I told him it was stupid again and went to go sleep with my mom.

Personally, I've never been afraid of the dark. Last night after closing the thread, I turned off the lights in my apartment and watched some TV while smoking. I swear I'm not a stoner, but the pot really eased my nausea and even a bit of the headache. I watched a movie until I was about to fall asleep, feeling pretty foolish for actually waiting around for something that (in my rational mind) doesn't exist. I know that I spend most of these threads looking for paranormal answers and ignoring the medical solutions, but that doesn't mean I'm fully ready to embrace the idea of some trans-dimensional ghoul stalking me from out of my childhood.

With my movie over and daylight heading my way, I turned off the TV and headed to bed. My apartment is set up strangely. There's a small hallway leading from the living room with the doors of my bedroom and bathroom along one side and a closet at the end. I paused a few steps in when I realized that shadows had pooled at the end of the hallway. I didn't need to listen for the silence to know what was coming next. The whole world stood on its tiptoes around me as the shadows shifted and danced in the light of my bathroom nightlight. And this time I was ready. Before settling in, I had armed myself with a shaker of salt and a nail from the toolkit my dad gave me for Christmas. I have no idea if it's actually iron, but it was the best I could do on short notice.

My sight shifted as though my eyes were adjusting to the shadows. The form reveal itself like it had been there all along.

"Vox," he hissed.

If I seemed ballsy it's more the chill out of the weed and the fact that I am so desperately tired of all this. He moved farther out into the hall. I don't know how other people handle these kinds of things. It's like walking out one morning and seeing the Easter Bunny standing in your kitchen. I slipped my hand in the pocket of my hoodie to grip the salt shaker and started to hum. The only thing that came to my mind was "Don't Be Afraid, You're Already Dead" which is luckily easy to sing. In response he tilted his head and opened his mouth into something that I realized was a true smile. His glazed eyes narrowed as his cheeks curled around the unnatural expression.

"You are trying to save yourself or fight me?" he asked. His hand waved to my midsection where the nail and salt were pressing against my palm.

"I'm not really a fighter," I admitted.

His smile warped into a sinister snarl. His lips pulled back even further from his rows of teeth and his jaws opened so wide I thought they might unhinge. His form coiled threateningly, as if deciding whether to strike. The hiss that spilled forth from his throat seemed to be made up of three different cornered animals, and flecks of the black tar spattered across the wall and carpet. Some of it landed on my hoodie, squirming into a maggot and bloating into a beetle out of the corner of my eye. I told myself it wasn't real and ignored it. The thing skittered up my shoulder for a second and buzzed back to Beau immediately anyway. They all did.

"You are no hunter. You have no power. You are blind and dumb as the rest. You will ruin everything," he growled.

"Then why the fuck are you here?" I asked. "Why bother with me? There have to be a million other voices better than mine! Why can't you just leave me the fuck alone?"

He let out a weird cross between a hiss and a guttural growl, but I was too far in to let go now. My mind was swimming from the pot, exhaustion, and the endless pain in my skull. At that moment, an imaginary demon was the least of my worries. I actually took a step forward.

"It's because I'm sick, isn't it? You couldn't get me when I was a little kid, right? That wasn't enough. You had to wait till I was sick. I could be dying, you know. And you're just here to collect what I fucking owe you, right? I might be powerless, but you're pathetic."

When I was finished with this rant, I expected him to kill me. I truly think I'm walking a fine line between reality and insanity these days, and when faced with rows and rows of teeth, your logic will only take you so far beyond fight or flight. One summer I went on a vacation with some friends from school to Rome. I got separated from them and stuck with a herd of American GIs on their last night before getting shipped off to the desert. It was late, we were all drunk, I was just a teen, and I was positive I was going to be raped and killed. That's the only thing I can equate that level of feral panic to.

Instead, a strange noise made its way out of his lips, like air being forced through a half an orchestra. He was laughing. This caught me off guard enough to snap me out of my terror. Anger welled up in me again, and I glared into his face. Or tried to, anyway. Honestly, I probably just looked like I was going to throw up all over him. Either way, he wasn't toying with me like I thought. He was sad.

I didn't remember this all at once. Only the flash hit me, an instant recall like so much of this other nonsense I've spent the better part of my adult life forgetting. Luckily, you all get to hear about it after the fact, so I'm free to spew what I know in detail.

I've been doing research into child psychology and imaginary friends since this started. The internet tells me that children under age 5 have difficulty telling what's real and what isn't. I've also heard from my own studying in the past that primitive beings probably couldn't tell dreams from reality and that might be how we got art and stories. I've always wondered if these little adventures I had and the things I noticed with Beau were caused by this blur between reality and imagination. I know that after Beau left, I stopped seeing them, but maybe this is where I first started being delusional.

I don't know. That might be a little harsh. Most kids, even at 7, play make believe.

## *You Are No Hunter*

Like most kids with imaginary friends, Beau got blamed for little disturbances around the house. Someone got into the cookies? Beau. Someone left the door open? Beau. Sometimes there were things that couldn't be explained by a six year old's busy mischief like missing items or weird noises at night. The joke was that they all got blamed on Beau. Only I knew that he was behind most of those things. Beau wasn't interested in being noticed by anyone else, but he didn't mind doing as he pleased around the house. Even if I was often blamed.

I loved my uncle. He was the "cool" relative and always took me out for ice cream and talked to me like I was a person and not a pet. These things are really important to children. I even told him about Beau, which he took as seriously as he could and even asked Beau's opinion on little matters without implying Beau was in the room and invisible (which he wasn't and I hated). Uncle Joe might actually have been the one other human Beau didn't think was worthless.

As my mom's younger brother, Uncle Joe has been through a series of girlfriends. In fact, ladies, he's still single to this day so, you know. Anyway, most of them I ignored and they ignored me. Sometimes they were especially cool, but I didn't get too attached. One, however, stands out among the rest. Her name was Amber. She had long brown hair and perfect teeth. That summer Mom needed to go on some business trip or other, and Joe offered to take me and my brother to our grandparent's beach house. Of course, Amber joined us. She loved it and acted like she was playing house, calling me adorable and wanting to play games with me.

I really didn't like her. It was an instinctive reaction. Something about her was off, and I felt incredibly shy, which was really out of character for me. What strikes me is that she must have heard me playing and at dinner asked who Beau was. I lied and told her he was my teddy bear and Joe never corrected me. I always thought that was nice of him.

Beau was not impressed by Amber. I told him how uncomfortable she made me, and he began listing off all the things she could be. Lots of beings, he told me, disguised themselves as humans. Some of them didn't even have to pretend. Human eyes, he said, would fill in the gaps and lie, turning these creatures into whatever it was we wanted to see. He said that if I was uncomfortable, there was likely a reason. My voice was far too important to be leaving to blind human eyes and chance. We needed to take matters into our own hands.

I'm sure you can all guess that this was a bad idea. I won't bore you with the details because they're honestly a little stupid and embarrassing for me. I did all sorts of things like spent a day not looking directly at her or squinting to see if her form would change shape. I played a game where I "pretended" she was a monster and went around screaming "Amber is a monster! Run!" I have to give the woman credit here. She put up with a lot more than anyone else would, and by the third day at the house, her patience was beginning to wear thin. Fearing punishment worse than even the King of the Quiet Place could dish out and, worse still, seeing the look of embarrassment and frustration on my uncle's face, I gave up these games. I figured if monster Amber was going to try to hurt me, I would just have to wait around and think of something on the spot.

I'm not sure, however, that Beau gave up quite so easily.

I remember hearing her yelling from the bedroom she and Joe were in. Something about how her necklace was gone and she was sure that I took it. I hated her, Amber said. I had it out for her. I was a creepy little kid with a fucked up imaginary friend. It was just like me to do something like that. Joe told her that was ridiculous, but he took me out to the beach a little while later and quietly asked me if I had seen Amber's necklace. It was really important to her, and she couldn't find it. I truthfully told him I hadn't. He then asked if Beau had done anything with it. That was the first time it really hit home that Joe didn't believe in Beau more than anyone else. He had just been humoring me.

I won't bore you all with the sappy details because I realize I'm rambling, but later that evening after a very tense, silent supper, my brother took me out to the beach so that Amber and Joe could talk. He said I was ruining everything with my stupid fake friend. He said that Joe deserved to be happy and not have everything go wrong like with mom and dad. I actually agreed with him. He was my older brother, and I looked up to him and loved him more than anything in the world. Much more than the King of the Quiet Place.

So Beau and I had a big fight. I accused him of taking the necklace and ruining everything. He told me that real hunters took whatever they wanted. The memory of what had happened to Fuzzy was still fresh in my mind, and I told him nothing here belonged to him and that he should leave. I didn't want to see him again. I didn't see him for the rest of the beach trip. When we got back, I spent most nights crying and lonely, though I tried to hide it. It seems stupid to have "broken up" with my imaginary friend over a necklace, but of course it was more than that. Afterward I had told myself that it was time to grow up. Big kids didn't have invisible friends. It was all fake anyway, so there was no need to be upset. I forgot most of the stories and moved on to more important things.

This, I guess, leads us back to me, the hallway, and the invisible demon before me.

The mix of emotions hit me more than the specific memories. I felt ashamed, embarrassed and sad for him and little me. Whatever Beau is, whatever he isn't, I realized then and still believe now that I have to accept. It's just a part of me no matter what that actually means.

I asked him, "Are you trying to protect me from something?"

"Not you," he spat. "Your voice belongs to me. I will not have you ruin it. There is no more time."

"Look," I said, realizing that I was screwed if I didn't do some tap-dancing. "Why didn't you just take it in the first place? When you first met me?"

He closed his eyes and straightened out. My poor invisible friend looked tired. Creepy, unnatural, terrifying, but tired.

"You faced me with no fear. You asked me why I was sad. I saw a part of me."

"So you let me keep my voice because it was really still with you?"

He didn't say anything, but I took this as a yes. The silence was pressing in on me and my nausea was creeping back with a vengeance. Trying to reason through this was making my headache throb, but I knew that this was important. I closed my eyes and tried to will myself to think. I must have looked tired too.

"Okay so... Why didn't you take it when you left?"

He hissed in frustration and snapped his teeth. I gripped the shaker and closed my eyes tighter. If this didn't work, I figured I could try to will my imagination away.

"Maybe you didn't leave?" I continued. "Maybe you were just waiting for something to go wrong. And now something's going wrong."

"Enough!" His roar made me fear that my neighbors were going to come around complaining but I still didn't open my eyes. The world was spinning a little.

"Just wait okay? So something is going wrong! You said I was like you. That means you have to trust me. I can face this thing."

"You are no hunter!" he hissed. "I tried to teach you and you failed."

"I know," I said. I was trying to keep my voice calm and even. "But I don't think this is a monster, Beau. I don't think this is something you can save me from. That's why you're worried. Just because you can't handle it doesn't mean I can't. So don't give up on me, okay? Please, just trust me. Like the moon, right? You had to let her go?"

I waited for a response, but there was none. Slowly I opened my eyes to find that the shadows had eased off. Sunlight was spilling in through my living room and bedroom windows. I don't actually know how long I was standing there. I don't know if this means Beau agrees with me or understood or if my mind just gave up projecting him for awhile or what. But I feel calmer. I feel better knowing I faced it.

Anyway, I know this sounds completely stupid. I'm probably a total sap or feeling guilty. I just can't help but feel like, in its own way, the darkness cares about me. Regardless, there's just one more day between me and Wednesday.

## *The Good, the Bad, and the Strange*

Sorry about last night. I took a nap and ended up sleeping through till this morning. I apologize, but it did feel good to get a full night's sleep.

Starting first thing this morning I was tested, poked, prodded, introduced to more -ologists than I can name. I'm lucky- my mom's a doctor, so she was able to call in a lot of favors and get my test results sent to friends of hers. Normally I feel bad getting the special treatment, but after the CT, we all figured these were special circumstances. The blood work will still take a few days, but the physical and imaging results were pretty obvious. I guess that's the other benefit of growing up with a doctor. I trust medical professionals, probably more than most people.

Unfortunately, I have bad, good, and strange news. The bad news is, whoever had money on a tumor wins. There's a mass in my left temporal lobe. To be honest, the news didn't exactly come as a shock to me. I know some folks asked me the other night why I was making it sound like I knew there was something wrong with me. Like I said, I've been glued to WebMD, and if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, you know? They won't know for sure exactly what kind it is, but they're pretty sure the headaches and nausea were caused by swelling and pressure. The auditory hallucinations and voice problems are common with tumors in this area. They said it's also likely I've suffered some small seizures which might even explain some of the silences if they aren't just more hallucinating.

The good news is that they're going to get me in the operating room as fast as possible. We're hoping they can get it all out, though depending on what more tests and the surgery results are, I might have to go through chemo. They'll also probably have to put in a shunt in to relieve some pressure, but they've got me on steroids now to help with that. However, my prognosis isn't bad. We caught it fast. If I had ignored the headaches and the voice too long, things would have been much, much worse. And they can probably keep me from suffering any more damage, which is great.

Which brings us to the strange, I guess. Without giving too much away, I asked if this would explain visual hallucinations or sleepwalking. There's not enough pressure being put on my occipital lobe to cause that. Also while temporal lobe tumors can cause memory problems, it wouldn't explain why I was thinking of Beau. Maybe my mind dug him up because it knew I would pay attention, but I have a weird feeling that's giving my subconscious too much credit. I firmly believe that most things have a reasonable, scientific explanation, but some stuff just doesn't fit into a neat diagnosis. Who knows. Maybe I've just spent too much time on here and maybe its better not to trust the instincts of a chick with documented brain damage. But something was looking out for me. In another month, I could have been unable to speak. With a worse seizure, I could have died.

At any rate, this will probably be my last thread. I wasn't planning on ending on this note, but I refuse to overstay my welcome by treating this board like my livejournal. Brain surgery, while scary, is not paranormal. However, I do have one last favor to ask of you all. I know I've asked for a lot over the past few days and I appreciate all the help and support I've gotten. But this is something I feel has to be done.

I'm not trying to be melodramatic here, so please don't take this that way. However, something might happen to me in surgery or in recovery. Beau (whatever he is) could be right. I might lose my ability to speak or understand languages or worse. If that happens, someone needs to hear these stories. I've been so adamant in protecting them because whether I want to admit it or not, they're a big part of my life. The last thing I want is for them to die with me.

Anyway, if you'll just read these and enjoy them, that's all I ask. I just want someone else to know about King Beau and his Quiet Place. A long time ago, he was my friend. He still is, I guess. Maybe it's stupid, honestly it probably IS stupid, but it seems like the least I can do.

So I guess this all ends where it began. Tonight, I woke up from a nap. I was lying on my stomach, and across the bed I saw a man staring at me. Everything about him was real. I could see his pale skin and milky eyes. I saw his wrinkles and his white hair. We stared at each other for what felt like a long time, and he didn't smile or sink away and I didn't run. I slowly, timidly slid my hand across the sheets, reaching out along the bed. I'm not that brave. I didn't flat-out touch him. But as I rested my hand there before him, he lifted his own over the edge and slid it over to meet mine.

I told him I was going to be okay. I said I wasn't afraid and that he knew I had to be telling the truth because Jeeps couldn't lie. They also can't talk either, but I was half lucid, so you're going to have to forgive me. I told him that nothing was going to get me or my voice because I remembered the lesson. They can only catch you if you let yourself be caught, right? Anyway, I don't know how long we stayed like that because I fell back asleep.

When I was little, I had an imaginary friend named Beau. He said he was the King of the Quiet place. He told me stories about his adventures. Some of them were cute and some of them were a little disturbing. I'm going to tell them to you as I remember them told to me or see them in my mind's eye. I don't know how true they are and I've tried to clean them up so that they make sense.

## *Beau and the Child Snatchers*

In his travels Beau often wandered the dark and lonely places that lurk along the borders of the kingdoms. Not all of the beings in his world served the many kings and queens like Beau's hunters, and Beau seemed interested in those that slipped under the radar. On one such journey he found himself drawn to a tiny home very close to the kingdom of man. Normally he would have passed over a place so boring, but the King of the Quiet Place had very sensitive hearing, and what he heard gave him pause. There was crying below.

The house was much like a human house, though slightly larger. It looked comfortable and inviting, and in the middle of the featureless, constant twilight it was an island of light. He approached the door with confidence (for as you all know by now he was never afraid) and found himself met by a woman. She looked a mix between human and something he couldn't quite name, but her slight was pleasing and her smile kind.

"Welcome, traveler," she greeted. "Have you come to rest awhile?"

"I am the King of the Quiet Place," he told her.

"A King!" she crooned in a sweet voice. "Please come in. It would be an honor to have you as a guest, great King."

Beau was nothing if not vain and he appreciated having his ego stroked. He entered the home and admired his surroundings. Much like the outside, the inside of the house was styled like a human home. There were rugs and chairs and tables and lamps.

"Will you stay for a meal?" the woman asked him as she motioned him farther in.

"I may," Beau replied. "Do you have many guests? This is quite a home for one person."

"I am not alone," she assured him. "My children live with me."

The lovely woman excused herself to prepare their meal and asked him to make himself at home. Beau waited until he was sure he was not being watched before slipping up the stairs to investigate the rest of the house. The next level had a long hallway of doors. Another may have been curious of all the locks they had or what they were hiding, but Beau had no need for such exploring. The faint crying was clear to his keen ears. Ignoring the locks and the door altogether, he silently slipped inside.

Inside was a mockery of a human child's room complete with nightlights shaped like stars and toys scattered about. Story books and rocking horses and stuffed animals sat still and sad. There were cages shaped like cribs lining the cheerfully colored walls. The crying came from the cage closest to him, and he moved slowly to it. There was a lump sobbing beneath stained and molding sheets. Beau leaned over and moved his face close to the bars.

"Why are you crying?" he asked.

The lump shifted beneath the covers and revealed two human eyes and a tuft of hair.

"I miss my mom," the little boy sobbed.

"Isn't your mother downstairs?" Beau asked.

"She's not my mom," the boy replied. "But she wants to be. She wants to make me into one of her children. Look!"

The boy pointed to the cage next to them. Beau shifted over to look. This cage also had a lump, but it wasn't sobbing like the boy. Beau slithered his hand through the bars and pulled the covers from the form. At first a similar tuft of hair appeared followed by similar teary eyes. But after that the child's jaw was eaten away, leaving its tongue to squirm and dangle freely. Teeth erupted from the opening where its mouth once was. Pulling the sheet back inch by inch, the form of a starved and malformed child emerged. There was bare skin, ribs, and elbows mixed with bony growths and pus filled sacs. The child twitched and flopped its twisted limbs but otherwise did nothing but follow Beau with distant eyes.

Beau was aware that more eyes were watching him in the darkness. Not all of the cages were filled, but he did not have to see the others to know that they were in similar states.

"She does this to all the ones she finds?" Beau asked.

"No," said small, slurred voice in the darkness. "The others she eats."

"How did she find you?" he asked. "Were you foolish enough to wander here?"

"No!" sobbed the human child. "Her children steal kids! One tapped on my window at night. I called for my parents but they didn't believe me so they didn't come help. It stole me from my bed and carried me here. I just want to go home!"

To explain Beau's reaction to this is difficult. He later insisted that he felt no sympathy for the pitiful creatures locked in the cages and forced into becoming the monster woman's spawn. No, what caused Beau to leave the room and march back down the stairs was more about instinct.

Beau had stumbled upon another apex predator trying to steal some of his prey. He recognized that she was skilled and clearly had been working at this for some time. Of course there were also plenty others that stole the children of man off into the night. Those others, however, had never crossed paths with King Beau.

Beau was not shy about protecting his territory.

"I assume you have met my children," the woman said as he approached her in the kitchen. The roasted child sitting in a pan on her stove did not escape his notice.

"Those children do not belong to you. You have taken voices that could have been mine. I will not allow this."

The woman turned to face him with lovely, pleading eyes. She truly was a beautiful creature, and this might have impressed someone who cared about such things.

"Don't you understand?" she asked. "It is so lonely here. I only wanted to have children and be loved. Please, will you not have mercy on a pitiful soul such as I, great King? What of my beloved children? Must they grow without a mother?"

"That is not my concern," Beau responded calmly.

She sighed. "You are a heartless creature. A mother must protect her young."

With that her lovely lips split open down the middle and a piercing tongue shot out towards his face. Beau dodged the blow and caught the tongue, yanking hard in an effort to rip it out. A limb she had not displayed before whipped out to bat him away. They fought viciously against each other, and the cries of both the human child and the spawn of the monster floated down to them through the halls.

"Do you hear them?" the woman-monster hissed from a corner near the ceiling. "My children call to me. I may fill you with my eggs and make them lots of brothers and sisters."

"When I am finished with you, I will kill all of them as well," Beau promised. In her rage, the woman-monster few at him, but Beau had a plan. Like so many child-eaters, the woman-monster had a very large oven, and like so many child-eaters, the oven would be her tomb.

Beau dodged her attack and before she could correct her course, he shoved her into the oven's flames. The monster screamed and yowled, but the door was plenty strong and held fast. Beau grinned at her through the window.

"Do not be sad. I will bring your children to you. Then you will never be lonely again."

One by one, Beau took the spawn of the monster from their cages and threw them into the oven with their mother. The woman-monster at first tried to fight free when he opened the door, but after a time her limbs became to burned and melted to do much good. The oven became quite full, but the fires burned hot and the creatures were strong. By the time Beau was finished, he made sure that the monsters would burn together for a very, very long time.

All that was left was the child. The boy had not yet been infected by the woman. He had only been locked in the cage for a few days. Beau unlocked the cage and released him.

"Are you going to rescue me now?" the boy asked, hopeful yet still frightened of the King.

"I can take you back to your home, but I require payment," Beau answered.

The little boy was desperate and agreed. When his parents found him back in his bedroom safe and sound, they wept with joy over the return of their son. Yet when they asked him what had happened, no sound came from the child. The boy had returned to the world he belonged to, and Beau had a brand new voice for his collection.

## *Why the Stars Shine*

I'll make this quick. Sorry.

I think it's important for me to note that not all of the beings that populated Beau's stories were hideous, terrifying monsters. Some were funny, some were charming, and it makes me sad that I won't have time to tell them all. It's even worse that most I know I've forgotten about.

At one point when I was a kid I caught some nasty bug that was going around. I was miserable and confined to my bed. Because I had slept all day, I was stuck awake all night. Beau sat by my side and whispered softly to me, listening to my whining and coughing with uncharacteristic patience.

"Do you know why the stars shine?" he asked me.

I told him I didn't.

King Beau was not always happy in the Quiet Place. His hunters brought him many treasures, but they never stayed long. He had hoped that once the Bad King left the Quiet Place would not be so sad, but now it felt ten times sadder than before. In his heart, the piece of the Moon that he carried with him often ached for another land He couldn't even see her through the darkness of his Kingdom. Often this drove Beau to wander about, even more than his thirst for voices.

Finally the ache became too much. Beau ventured out, farther than any of his hunters had ever dared. He followed the Moon piece all the way to the shores of the Far Beyond. This was a place of vast emptiness. It was more still and silent than the Quiet Place, darker than the Darkness, and no one had ever seen what was beyond it. No King or Queen ruled over it. It belonged to no one and none truly called it home. He dove into the depths of the Beyond, hoping to drown the ache that he felt.

Beau floated through the Far Beyond. He passed giant beings that sang low, sad songs to the nothingness. It was as if they too were crying for lost ones never to be found again. They had long tails and waving arms to send them through the empty world around them. He passed flowers that blossomed in the darkness and captured all the light around them. They had no roots or stems, but they did sometimes grasp desperately to one another so that they would not be so alone. There was no way to know how long Beau floated but soon there was nothing around him at all.

When he saw the first point of light, Beau thought his eyes were finally beginning to trick him. Then there was another and another. The glittering pinpoints called to the ache in his heart. Beau moved towards them, and the beings grew brighter and more brilliant the closer he got until each one burned so that he could not look directly at them.

"Why are you here?" they asked. "You do not belong to this place."

"I have lost the Moon," Beau answered. "The piece I have left aches for her. If I can never see her again, I want to see nothing at all."

"You have found the wrong place then, King," they said. "We see all. Look now. There is your Moon."

Beau looked below them and saw the Moon far away. She was frantically searching for him, shining her light into every shadow. The piece of him she kept with her was dark and called out after him into the night.

"She shines for you," the Stars said. "Will you leave her all alone?"

Beau knew, just as the Stars did, that no matter how sad or lonely he was, he could never leave the Moon this way. He thanked the Stars and fell back to the earth, surrounded by fire and light. The Moon saw this and shone twice as bright upon him to let him know she was there.

"So why do the Stars shine?" I asked him.

"To let you know that they love you too, Little Jeep," Beau said. And the last thing I remember is falling asleep and dreaming about more adventures.

Goodnight guys. I appreciate everything you've done for me, and I hope you all have pleasant dreams.

## Vox's Follow-Up

Hi /x/. I'm not fully finished with what I was going to post in my update, but I promised to post at the end of the week and I do have part. If you all are interested, I am happy to continue. I'll recap everything that people missed from that one thread, so everyone will be caught up. Okay, if this seems rough, please remember that I'm still recovering from brain loss haha.

I have to be honest with you all. I've been avoiding positing this thread. It's not that I'm concerned with how I'll be received or anything like that. /x/ has been nothing but wonderful to me, and I know there are at least a few of you who have been waiting on an update form me. The problem is that every time I go to write things up, they end up sounding more and more surreal. There's either nothing going on or something very important. I sort of think that people who believe in the paranormal live with that weird reality split. Either the world is much more mystical than it lets on, or we're going insane.

And to be totally honest, I am worried that I might be going insane.

I don’t know how many people remember my thread a few months ago, but it involved my childhood imaginary friend, King Beau of the Quiet Place, and some weird visions I was having. I think there’s a big file of the whole thing somewhere online. For those who are unfamiliar with the topic, I'll try to sum things up for you. When I was small, I had a friend. I won't say invisible because he never bothered to be seen when anyone else was around, and I can't readily say imaginary these days. King Beau was a monster, a humanoid being with an albino complexion and a crocodile smile that stretched back nearly to his ears. He would visit me and tell me stories, which I relayed to /x/. In them he described other beings like his lost love the Moon or her brother the Dream King. He told me about beautiful places like the Far Beyond or terrifying death traps like the lair of the Beast. Beau prided himself on claiming the voices of his victims and viciously destroying enemies that threatened what was his. Oddly enough, that seemed to include me.

As an adult a few months ago, I began to see Beau again. These visitations were disturbing, but the warning he brought was worse. Not to spoil anything, but it turned out that I had a brain tumor in my left temporal lobe. The morning after my final post, I was checked into the hospital. The craniotomy went well, the tumor was pretty superficial as these things go, and they managed to slice the tissue right out. The tumor was benign, though I did have to go through some localized radiation because of blood vessels in the area, and later I had a nasty infection. I can't describe what it was like hearing I might really be dying or finding out my brain might not work the same way. It's scary than any monster Beau could face off against, I think.

The tumor and removal left me with some brain damage. I have mild expressive aphasia. I can still understand words fine and write them okay (I've been pouring over these posts if they seem well-constructed), but speaking is difficult. I know, it’s a creepy coincidence given the Beau incident, but my voice is definitely still with me. Thanks to speech therapy and time to heal, I’ve gotten much better. I’m still self-conscious about it though, and I’ve taken to learning ASL and carrying a notepad. I guess I’m just worried about strangers thinking I’m retarded. As if the giant scar on the side of my head doesn’t attract enough attention.

After the surgery I just wanted this chapter of my life to be finished as quickly as possible. I wanted Beau, the creepy childhood stories, and all the fear and uncertainty they now symbolized to be scooped out with the lump in my head. And I wish I could say it was over. I wish I could tell you that once the tumor was gone my life went back to normal. But it’s not and it hasn’t. I’m bringing this to you because you helped me once before. Bitch about this board all you want, but you might well have saved my life or at least my sanity. I don't know if what's going on now is a product of having a part of my brain scooped out or if something paranormal really is happening to me, but whatever it is, I've exhausted my other options.

I need your help again, /x/. And I'm going to go ahead and warn you, what you're going to hear will sound bizarre. I've tried so hard to rationalize away what I can, but I feel you're collective intelligence will be best used if I give you the full story. I'm not leaving anything out, no matter how strange. For those who feel skeptical, which I totally and completely respect, hopefully this will at least be an interesting read. I've tried my hardest to clean everything up pretty. So here goes.

After I was released from the hospital and my outpatient therapy slowed down, I decided I needed to get out of town. I'd already had to leave my job, and I just needed to get myself in touch with reality again, maybe try to reassemble my life. A close friend of mine offered to let me housesit with him for a few months in a gorgeous little suburb 10 minutes from the beach. After making plans with my doctors and scouting the area, I packed my things and threw the rest into storage.

Maybe I should have thought more carefully about things. I mean, your imaginary friend shows up to threaten your voice and vomit beetles at you, maybe that's something you bring up to a potential roommate. I've never dealt with anything like this before though, and honestly after the surgery, it all seemed completely surreal. Looking back, I think a part of me had even decided that this paranormal business wouldn't find me if I moved away from the scene of the crime.

For about three days after moving in, I had a perfectly normal, happy life. It almost felt like my world was back to normal. Unfortunately, that all went to hell when the dreams started.

About three nights after I moved in, my friend (I'll just call him Alan from now on for brevity's sake) was walking back to his bedroom from the bathroom. I've been in the habit of keeping my door open when I sleep since the surgery, mostly because I'm used to people needing to come in and check on me. While passing my room, Alan noticed a strange gasping, croaking sound. He said it sounded unnatural to the point of being inhuman. Concerned for my wellbeing, he took a peek inside. I was asleep so I can't verify any of this, but this is what he described to me.

I was laying on my bed with my chest raised well off the sheets. Every fiber he could see looked strained, down to the tendons in my neck. My mouth was open wide and gasping for air, and my eyes were only half shut, rolled back into my skull. The croaking sound was coming from my throat as it spasmed and choked. The worst part, though, was that my hand was desperately flitting of its own accord, signing out the same four symbols in rapid succession. While it took him a bit later to successfully recreate what he saw, we finally determined that I was signing “H. E. L. P.”

As I said, I was not awake at this point, but I trust Alan. For one thing, he has no reason to lie to me. I hadn't told him anything about Beau at this point, and we've been friends since middle school. That coupled with the look on his face while he was shaking me awake are enough to make me believe him.

The first dream was simple. I became aware (as you do in dreams) that I was in a very dark place. I could barely see my own hand in front of my face. I had curled myself up in a fetal position, and something about the area implied a vastness. Generally when my dreams get too weird, I throw the kill switch and try to wake myself up. This was already qualifying as too unsettling for my blood when something came flowing out of the darkness. It filled the air around me like a great thick ink, and the more I tried to focus on it, the more I thought I saw distorted faces warped in endless screams. The thing enveloped me, pressing around me and choking out everything else. I felt like my everything was being snuffed out like a candle. I realize this all sounds very simplistic, but there's no way I would ever be able to describe what the pressure and ending felt like. The worst part was that there was no white light or drifting up or anything like people describe. I was just ending, surrounded by gaping mouths, empty eyes, and hundreds of hands. It occurred to me that I could be dying, and I starting screaming for help. I couldn't feel my lungs working or hear the cries, but somehow I knew I was screaming.

Meanwhile in the waking world, Alan was torn between rushing off to call 911 and staying with me in case I was about to swallow my own tongue. He grabbed my shoulders and started calling for me to wake up. Apparently my muscles were rock solid tensed, and the choking sounds were slow and desperate. I collapsed limp in his hands and woke up a few seconds later, wide-eyed and suitably terrified. I'm not sure what was a bigger shock: the nightmare or seeing Alan looking like he was about to piss himself. There's nothing quite like waking up to that.

After everything that's happened, I'm no longer the wait and see type. I called up my doctor and described the incident to him. He listened to my description and after some questions. While he admitted it might have been a seizure or something similar, I had been able to sign during and other than being shaken up and sore, I wasn't exhibiting any serious side effects. He assured me that it was likely a very vivid nightmare, but if it happened again, I should make an appointment with my new local specialist.

Of course, it happened again. For the next week my dreams were plagued with either a visions of floating through an infinite nothing being stalked or the ink beast pouncing and trying its hardest to devour me. I found that on nights that I dreamed of wandering, I would wake up in strange places like the corner of my closet, in the living room, etc. I broke down and visited the new neurologist. I told myself (and Alan) at the time it was because I couldn't take anymore exhaustion, but I admit that part of me feared every night I waited the monster came closer and closer to wining me over. It was the equivalent of psychological water-boarding.

Alan was nice enough to drive me to the appointment. The doc found nothing wrong with me while doing a physical check, and in fact admired how well my scar and swelling were looking. Instead, he recommended I make an appointment with a therapist he knew. He assured me the post-traumatic stress with serious surgeries like this wasn't uncommon, and it might make me feel better to talk to a therapist about it. Personally, I have nothing against therapy. As weird as my tale is, I was raised by a doctor, and I have absolute faith in medical science., which does include psychology. I agreed to give therapy a shot and thanked him for his help.

After the appointment, Alan and I stayed out, got dinner, and tried to relax. I have to give my friend credit. He had no idea what he was heading into, but you couldn't find a more supportive person. On the way home we took a small road to avoid traffic and enjoy the late spring evening. We rolled the windows down, and for a time there was just us chatting, ocean breeze, and suburban darkness (they like to cut down on light pollution here for the wildlife, I think). Without warning, Alan slammed on the breaks, eyes wide, and mouth hanging open.

The thing was only in our headlights for a split second, so I'm going on the image in my head. I know I'm not saying that right, but hopefully you understand what I mean. If you've ever crested a hill in a car and seen the way the shadows take on an almost 3D as your headlights become level. That's what this looked like. The deference was, it was like a cut out of a creature. I believe it had four long legs, though the silhouette looked like something made out of fog, so it's hard to tell exactly. I did see a rounded head area with an open jaw and possibly a short, thin tail. I can't compare it to any animal. It was too vague and strange. As we came to a stop, the image dissipated, as if the momentum from our car had violently blown it away.

Alan grabbed my wrist so hard it hurt. We sat in silence for a second, both scanning the headlights for any other signs of demon shadow puppets. Alan asked me if I'd seen something in the road, though he didn't mention any specifics. Because of the shock, I could only stutter and repeat “See” and nod. Welcome to the frustrations of not being able to speak. I grabbed a napkin and the pen I always carry with me to write out MONSTER! He took the napkin and stared at it for a second before turning back to me and asking what the fuck was going on.

My recall is not so bad that I couldn't see a pattern starting. In the normal world, we had bad nightmares, sleepwalking, and a weird shadow. In Voxland, I've unfortunately taken up residence, it was too much to ignore. I had sleepwalked before. I have had terrible nightmares and heard stories about endless darkness with hands. Now Alan had definitely seen something, and even my rational mind was sending off alarm bells. I knew this was crazy. I knew I could be resigning myself to the fate of that one “Witch” who sits in the Harry Potter section of the bookstore and smells like cats. But if something was starting up again, I couldn't let it go after Alan too. So I booked him a ticket to Voxland, and when we got home, I showed him all of the things I had saved from those threads.

His reaction was about like you'd expect. Alan is a nice guy, but it's a little much to show someone stories from a messageboard (no offense /x/) and ask them to take it seriously. I assured him that I wasn't asking him to take my childhood weirdness as evidence of some crazy paranormal conspiracy, but I wanted him to understand what might be starting up. Suitably freaked out, he called his boyfriend and demanded he come sleep over and protect us. When I mentioned one small gay man wasn't quite my idea of protection, he suggested I call up Beau.

After staying up past the two lovebirds and leaving them to sleep on the couch, I retired to my room. I couldn't help but feel like there was something terribly wrong with my life. I was seriously trying to figure out how you could call upon an imaginary friend. I almost posted on /x/ right then, but I honestly my pride wouldn't let me. I mean how would that look? “Hey guys, I need your help calling on my own damn imaginary creation because I saw a spooky shadow!!” ...No offense to people who need that help though. Just, you know. In a way, I feel like Beau is my monster. I should have been able to handle this.

I know. It's sort of like saying, “Chris Hanson is my TV personality. I get to sit in a preschool playground and bait him!”

Sadly lacking in paranormal knowledge and finding nothing online that would help, I settled in to sleep. As I drifted off, I tried to repeat two things over in my mind.

1. Beau said they can only catch you if you allow yourself to be caught.

2. If Beau was out there somewhere, I needed his help.

That night, I found myself in the endless void again. I knew the thing was around. I could feel the darkness watching me. The sensation was like baby spiders crawling under my skin. Once I was aware enough to have my wits about me, I began to repeat my mantras once more. I'm afraid it had the opposite effect. My thoughts drew the ink beast like blood in the water. In an instant the thing was around me, and I panicked. I screamed and struggled in that strange dream way beyond the physical. My fear seemed to feed the monster, and there was an animal twinge of desperation. Somehow I knew that this was it. I was going under for the third time. This thing really was going to win.

As awareness faded from me, I realized that the pressure and darkness was pulsing. I vaguely remember noting that this was my heartbeat. The beast was devouring my heartbeat. I was on the brink of succumbing to the empty when I felt myself yanked up. That sounds stupid, but as my mind righted itself and returned to me, my “vision” began to arrange itself. I feel like my mind was trying to make sense of what it was seeing. There was a definite notion of being completely overloaded. This is what I saw, but I feel like I should tell you that this might to be what it really was, assuming I wasn't only dreaming.

I was literally standing on the surface of a dark calm sea. The sky above was a pale twilight without light sources, and it made the water look deep purple. The being before shone so brightly that I had to turn away and slowly get used to the light, though again this may have been my mind rearranging what it was taking in. When I could look, I saw that it was a man. He was completely cast in shadows of silver, gray, platinum, and extremely pale blue. He wore intricate armor, but everything about him looked... Alright, I can't think of the word, and I've been at this for twenty minutes. It was like he was delicate and beautiful, but nothing about him was effeminate or fragile. It was truly the most beautiful thing I've ever seen, and I've done a lot of traveling.

He was a few feet from me and looking down at the water, watching it closely. He had a long, thin thing that I first thought was a sword like a fencing foil, but there was no handle. After I got a look at the tip, I think it was like a giant needle. As I looked on, he held up a hand for me to freeze and followed something with the tip of his weapon. In a move so swift I didn't catch it, the needle plunged into the water. There was a wail that was deep. Somehow I felt it in my own throat. Slowly the needle began to darken in color, and after a time, he lifted it with a satisfied smile. I assumed he'd sucked up the ink beast.

He turned to me, but the smile and direct gaze was too much. My vision couldn't handle it, and I phased out. When I woke up, I was sitting on the edge of my bed. It was just before dawn, and I realized that I was crying.

>>4270522

I mean, I knew what I was getting into posting this on 4chan. My own lack of desire to have sex with Beau stems from a lot of things. I've known him since I was small, so that's gross to me. I know if he's real he's done terrible things, and I'm not so into that. I know that a lot of people are really fond of Beau, and that's totally fine by me. The slash I saw was pretty funny.

The only thing I ask is that you remember this is my childhood and my health, so try to be tasteful for my sake. But again, it's not like I have to read it or anything.

>>4270585

Anything I can help clear up? Beau is pronounced like "bow". It's been so long that whatever reason I had for calling him that or spelling it this way is totally lost on me. Last time around I tried asking my mom about it, but she had no idea either

Re: Latin - I love Latin, but that's a totally unrelated personal reason. The name was just something I picked at random though haha.

>>4270674

No he's right. I did ask my mom because I definitely did draw him (I loved crayons as a kid). Unfortunately after the whole tumor thing, all that got swept aside. I really don't think she would have kept them anyway. We moved a lot, and there were too creepy to keep around.

>>4270742

I'm working on it. I'm just answering questions as I do.

>>4270758

Yes, it is. My writing is much better, and I am getting there, but sometimes when I'm tired or not focusing, I sound a little like one of those stroke victims. It's very frustrating, but it's probably not as bad as I think. I'm just self-conscious about it.

>>4270759

Please don't feel obligated to do anything! I think you're incredibly talented, and I appreciate everything you do, but you definitely don't have to overwork yourself on my account.

Continuing in just a few minutes, by that way.

This is much harder than I thought it would be. I feel like I need to stop here for a moment and be honest once again. The reason why I've been delaying posting this is because things from here on out get shaky. Much of what I'm going to relate to you comes in dreams. Not all of it, but a lot. I almost feel embarrassed bringing it to you, though I know people like Beau and enjoyed the stories. I have no evidence. I can't tell you one way or the other what I know for sure. The only thing I can say is, this is what I've seen and here is why I need your help. So just getting that out of the way now.

The reason I need your input, /x/, is because I'm worried that Beau might be in trouble. I'm not asking for anything kooky like psychic warriors or craziness like that. I just don't understand what I'm seeing, but I feel like it's important. If Beau is real, I owe him this. He came back to save my life.

The next morning it didn't take much to compose myself. I felt incredibly well-rested. Very peaceful. Even Alan mentioned that I looked much better. I couldn't explain the dream, but I didn't really want to. Whatever the reason or cause, it was a solid win for my personal well-being. The day was completely calm, and I went to bed that night sure that I was going to get a decent night's sleep. I was sort of right.

In my dream, I walked along a beach with silver sand. I recognized the twilight sky and dark purple ocean, but I didn't feel like I was being watched or in danger. I felt would say I felt nothing, but it wasn't the empty nothingness. My emotions were just flat-lined.

I'm not sure how long I walked in this trance, but I saw him again just down the way from me. He didn't move or look at me as I approached, and the overloading light was very much toned down. It was like he'd gone from being high definition to something much more bearable for my sake. I stopped a few steps from him and waited.

“Vox,” he said, though I didn't exactly hear it as much as know it.

In the past I've used my trip name in place of my real name, but this time he actually said the word Vox. It sent shivers down my spine, and then I realized I had a spine. Something about him saying the name solidified what I was. I wasn't the real me exactly. I was Vox, some strange hybrid of a story and memories and a million random thoughts. He waited patiently, and I realized he wanted me to do the same thing. I had a moment of uncertainly, but I forced myself to push it aside. I was under this dream's rules now. I had to play.

“Dream King,” is what I said.

Saying it brought him further into focus. He looked like I had seen him in my mind as a kid, yet somehow more than that. There were subtle differences I can't even fully put my finger on. He motioned me over, and I moved to the side and followed his gaze. The water on this beach didn't have a tide. It just appeared at the edge of the sand, endless and deep. He placed the tip of the needle into the water before us and placed his lips to the other end. It reminded me of a glass blower I'd seen in once. The water rippled and swirled, and soon I saw images inside the pool.

I'll tell you what I saw, /x/.

The Quiet Place was made of dark gray, like a world of shadows and storm clouds. Though it was silent as a grave, there were so many things in it, all carefully collected and coveted by the wild Hunters. The Hunters were fast like snakes and deadly like poison, though they far preferred to steal what they wanted without a fight. They swept in and out of shadows and darted about corners and into cracks right at the edge of vision. It should come as no surprise that he fastest and strongest and smartest of all was their King.

One look at King Beau beside his Hunters, and you could see the difference between them. Long ago on a quest, King Beau had given up much of what made him a Hunter, casting it aside in the darkness in order steal the Moon from its clutches. Now Beau was pale as the milky full moon with a smile as wide as the waxing crescent and with more teeth than the distant craters. He was tall and lean, yet much of the time now he paced in his throne room impatiently.

One of his most prized possessions had gone missing. A girl's voice had been shattered, and that voice had belonged to him. The missing bits hadn't gone to the Quiet Place like so many lost things did. His Hunters had been unable to find them no matter how much he screamed and threatened and wailed and yowled at them. They tried to bring him the voices of other girls or remind him the he had a great manly voices otherwise, but none of that mattered. When Beau believed he was owed a prize, nothing could quell his rage.

He decided that if his Hunters were so worthless, only he could undertake this quest. He set out first and foremost to speak with a being who owed him help and who knew the girl in his own way. The fields of the Dream King was very much the same as it had ever been, though there were fewer birdlike bones and happier Dream Catchers. For those unfamiliar, the Dream Catchers are creatures that lay on the ground and suck up the dreams as they drift along like a fog. Dreams, of course, while sweet and addictive, are really only pretty nothingness. They have no substance, but since Beau's last visit, the Catchers had taken to spearing and eating the much more powerful nightmares as they flew about.

Beau ignored their reaching tendrils, and any that tried to catch him were sliced off clean with his dagger and claws. He was in no mood to play games with these beings. Beau was on a mission, and anything in his way was forfeit to his violent lust.

Within his lonely tower, the Dream King crafted dreams and sent them out. His youthful look hadn't changed, nor had the general boredom he felt or his tolerance for Beau's antics. As Beau explained his problem to the King, he was met with a sign and regal wave of the hand.

“You knew you could not protect this, and you lost it. Find something new to play with,” the King suggested.

Beau was upon him before the King had time to react. His mouth opened wild, revealing rows of dangerous teeth, and beyond them was a distant, dangerous hollow. The voices of his victims echoed out from within the King of the Quiet Pace, and Beau's dagger pinned the Dream King's weapon hand.

“I will take your voice from you,” he snarled. “I will take from you your breath, and you will never make another dream. I will take everything I want until I have what is mine.”

Caught with these threats, the Dream King knew better than to challenge such a creature. He remained composed, though he had to convince himself to speak.

“If there are Pieces left, they would be in the Forest of Whispers,” he said, “but you might waste away catching Whispers. Many do.”

“I am not many,” Beau replied. “I am the King of the Quiet Place. I am the strongest and fastest of the Hunters. I will find what is mine.”

Before letting the King go, he took the Dream King's crown right off his head and hid it beneath his cloaks.

“Look after my prize,” he warned, “or you will never get this back. I will be the Dream King and the King of the Quiet Place then!”

With that he fled from the tower, much faster than the Dream King could ever hope. Seeing that there was no catching him, the King did the only thing he could do. He stole the dreams from the girl Beau loved and offered her up to the nightmare creatures his brother so expertly created.

While I was amazed at seeing these stories play out before me, more real than any movie I had ever seen, I had to top and take stock of that reveal. Before I could say anything out loud, my outrage was broadcast through the area. Even the water near us rippled uneasily. I don't think this speaks to any sort of power I have. I think this was just the way things were there. I faced the Dream King with this. Really, how dare he send me out to the nightmares just to spite Beau!

The man-like being faced me. I saw no regret or shame in his face. These creatures, whatever they are, aren't warm, loving things. He might have looked human, but I understood then this was nothing more than a mask. This eased my anger, not because it was an excuse, but more because I realized how useless it was. How could I ever explain why such an act was wrong? My logic would make no more sense to him than his would to me. He did, however, realize that I was upset and did something strange in response. He reached out and placed my hand on his, completely flat. We stood there and stared at them for a moment, and when I figured out that he wasn't going to do anything else and I certainly didn't know what to make of it, I took my hand back.

This didn't seem to bother him, and he went back to his pipe. Maybe you guys can make sense of that.

Beau had heard of the Forest of Whispers, though he had never bothered to seek it out. He was wise and knew that whispers were of little use to him. They were nothing but bits and pieces of the real thing, often scattered to the point of senselessness or warped beyond all repair. If the girl's voice was lost there, he had to find it fast before it was too late. Unfortunately, the forest was far beyond his dark domain, and he knew that he would need help once more. He sent his best Hunters our to find a guide, something that knew the illogical twists and turns that made up their ever shifting world.

The Hunters returned with a creature that looked a bit like a human girl itself. Yet the thing was hunched over with a stomach so bloated the being was in constant danger of falling over. When set before the King of the Quiet Place, it teetered and tottered over to him, giggling and rolling its bulging eyes about. The thing crawled right upon him and placed its greasy, filthy fingers to his lips, as if it were trying to pry his mouth open.

“I like your smile,” she gurgled.

He knocked her off in one mighty hit, so hard she skid as she flew to the ground like a rag doll.

“Take me to the Forest of Whispers,” he ordered. “I command you as the King of the Quiet Place.”

The she monster was up in a flash and shot off on all fours to crawl right back up him. She stared Beau right in the face and opened her mouth in the widest, wildest cackle imaginable. From the look of disgust on Beau's face, one could imagine how horrible the smell must have been. The she beast reached both her hands into her mouth and began to pull on her tongue. It wriggled and unraveled as she pulled yard after yard from her bloated belly. Finally all that was left was a writhing mass of pinkish worms, too smooth to be guts and too foul to be anything other than putrid. The she body was left sunken and lifeless on the ground.

“Go,” Beau ordered.

The worms went into a momentary frenzy before shooting off in the same general, if chaotic direction. Leaving his Hunters to do what they would with the rotting body, he followed as quickly as he could. Which was very fast, being the fastest of all.

Meanwhile the Dream King sat in his tower, watching and waiting for the nightmares to descend upon the girl. Though he could see her, not exactly, he could feel her mind searching for dreams, and he took some pleasure in denying them from her. As is fitting of the lord of Dreams, he found himself wandering from this game and once more focusing on his endless craft. It was only when a great disturbance struck him that he returned his thoughts to the cruel task.

From within his tower, he could feel that something had gone very wrong. A nightmare had not found the girl as it should have. Displeased with having to leave his tower but realizing that he would never get his crown should anything happen to the girl because of him, he left the Dream Fields to find the dreamer. When he found the dark creature tormenting her, attempting to end the light of her being, he quickly slayed it. Otherwise the monster would never have let her be, having already tasted her essence. As the Dream King, he knew that this was all very wrong, and when he cast out his dreams to bring him information, what he saw on Beau's journey made him ever more worried.

At this point, I felt a restlessness. It was becoming harder to focus, and my body wanted to move about. I tapped the Dream King's arm, and he looked up at me with understanding. I wish I could explain to you what his eyes looked like, but there's no way. Not even without any brain damage. The last thing I remember focusing on were his lips as he spoke.

“Vox,” he said. “Take care.”

I woke up so late that my alarm had actually given up the fight. I didn't know how to feel about the things I'd seen. I know I've hammered this home plenty, but I'm really, really not the type to jump to bizarre conclusions. Even so, I felt like this was important, if only out of respect for my childhood. I grabbed the first semi-blank piece of paper I could find and started to write it all down.

I'm going to have to stop here for the night. Obviously I wouldn't come to you guys if there weren't a lot to update, and there's more to the story for sure. I'm just beat and I realize there's no way I'd ever finish, even if I sat here till dawn. Not everything involves my weird dreams either. Unfortunately there won't be a thread tomorrow, as I'll be traveling for Mother's Day, but I hope to be back with more Sunday night.

Again, thank you guys for listening. I know this is all completely fantastical, but /x/ has always been so patient and awesome to me. I'm not fully leaving thread just yet, but you know just giving a heads up.

>>4271934

Haha yes. Sorry, I know where I left of doesn't really explain a lot.

The big thing is figuring out what's going on. I'm mostly an observer in all this. I can tell you what I'm seeing and give it names, but I don't have a clue what these creatures actually are. The shadow thing in the headlights and the ink monster for example.

I don't know why these things are interested in me. I do know that something is out to get Beau, though I really don't know what. I don't know what the Darkness is or what I should do when faced with beings like the Dream King. My communication with them has been limited to me telling Beau to fuck off and such before my surgery.

So advice and thoughts I guess? I know it's vague right now, but I promise to explain everything in the next thread. It's just too much to try to summarize and I don't want to risk leaving out important details.

Goodnight, /x/. It's good to see you guys again too.