Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-6822927-20190406132621

"What do you mean, you can't think of anything?"

Richard gulped nervously, sweat pouring down his brow as he, with shaking hands, set down the pen and paper."What do you think I mean?" he answered, his shaggy beard giving him an air of madness as he smiled. "I just cannot think of anything."

"But you're Richard Pickett!" I cried, sitting up from my seat, "You're one of the foremost horror writers of this generation! Two-time winner of the Bram Stoker award! New York Times bestseller! How can you not think of anything?"

"Ah," Richard said, "that is why I have summoned you, Peter. I have one last story to share with you, and while it is my story, it is not one I can wholly claim credit for. You see, the story I am about to tell you is not a work of fiction, but a fact of life, one which has eroded upon my own so horribly as to leave me on the verge of madness. I believe, soon one day, I shall go mad."

"Richard, what in God's name are you talking about? Listen to yourself, this is nonsense!"

"Nonsense? Nonsense? Is not Dyatlov Pass nonsense? What of the Flannen Lighthouse or Yuba City Boys? There are many unsolved mysteries of the world which can be considered a kind of nonsense, with no reason to them or rational explanation. I know that I myself may one day become the subject of such speculation, referred to as a horror writer gone mad but no one could ever understand why for one simple reason - they would never believe me if I told them. You see, I have been the victim of the Eater of Ideas."

"The what?" I said, struck by his words. I could feel the talent in them, the talent which had made Richard Pickett a writer with no compare.

"It is a thing far worse than anything I have ever written, or any other work of horror fiction. Now listen, Peter Upton, and I shall tell you of what it has done to me..."

"I first encountered the Eater of Ideas some two months ago, while I was vacationing in Brazil. It was as I immersed myself in the culture and folklore of Brazil that a queer thing came over me. I saw, at the edge of my vision, a man, shambling into the lobby of the hotel I was staying in. At the time I had been reading a book on Brazilian folklore, trying to find inspiration for a novel which will sadly never be published. Instead, it shall remain forever in manuscript form. You may find it on my hard drive as The Horrors of Old Amazon, but that isn't important. I can barely remember what I had been reading about because this man arrested my complete attention for one simple reason: he was mad."

"The man was bald and covered in garbage from head to toe, his naked body shattering the illusion of civilization which had marked the high quality of my stay. Cries of panic and surprise came from the other guests, mothers shielding the eyes of their children as the man, an Irishman if I had to guess, wildly looked around the lobby, gnashing his teeth together as his eyes darted from one place to another. Then they found me."

"Peter, I tell you, I have never seen a more pure madness in all my life, though I shall soon succumb to it. Already, I can feel my mind losing bits of itself, day by day another millimeter vanishing forever until that man shall be not a dreadful memory but a perfect omen of my fate."

"The man charged at me, barrelling past the hotel staff who tried to restrain him with sheer brute strength. Moldy food clung to his stomach while shit-stained toilet paper served to protect the soles of his feet. A paper bag, covered in some dry substance and old cereal, was stuck upon his forehead, and when he grabbed me by the shirt and yanked me to my feet, I could see maggots crawling across him, festering in the garbage. Then he opened his mouth and I saw that he had not a tongue, but a bloody, chewed lump of flesh in place of it, covered in some yellow ooze that flowed out of the wounds upon his cheeks like pus."

"When he screamed, dear God, it was terrible. My ears still ring with the pained sounds that man made as he began violently shaking me, bloody and the yellow ooze spraying forth from his lips and dripping down his chest. Then, dear God Peter, he kissed him. Forced open my jaw and pressed his mouth to mine, shoving in the mangled flesh which had been his tongue. I could taste iron and a sickly sweet taste I believe was the yellow ooze as it flooded into my mouth, and stared wide-eyed as the man's eyelids suddenly snapped shut and he fell backward, convulsing on the floor."

"Without waiting a moment, I vomited in disgust at what I had just been subjected to, bile staining my pants and shoes. Already the staff was rushing and swarming around me, doubtless aware of what an important guest I was and how badly this would reflect on the hotel. A world-famous horror writer, assaulted by a crazed homeless person while staying at their establishment? The scandal alone would be in all the tabloids. The manager personally oversaw the staff as they cleaned me of the bile I had ejected from my stomach, and then -"

Suddenly, Richard's mouth snapped shut and looked out the window into the night, a dark, stormy vision greeting him. I followed his gaze, and when the lightning flashed, it illuminated the lonely front yard. For a brief moment, I swear I saw a shadow moving in beyond the gate.

"Oh dear," Richard said slowly, licking his lips, "I believe the Eater is coming. You saw it, didn't you?"

"If you mean the moving shadow, yes, but that looked like a person to me. I think you may have a trespasser, not this Eater of Ideas."

Richard laughed loudly, covering his mouth with a gnarled hand as he began coughing. "Oh, I know full well that wasn't the Eater. The Eater is a long way off, but getting closer with every second. That shadow, my good Peter Millard, was one of the Eater's little scoundrels, as I call them. I first encountered on that very same hotel where the madman kissed me, on the very same night. It was when I was returned to my hotel room, still baffled by what had just occurred and the sheer strangeness of it all, that the little scoundrels came to me. The manager of the hotel was practically crying as he begged for me to keep this quiet, even offered to bribe me. I assured him I wouldn't breathe of a word of what had just happened, though I still suspected the public would be informed, probably via social media."

"I was getting changed out of my barf ruined shoes and pants when I saw a shadow moving outside the window. This made me jump, for you see, my room was on the tenth floor of the hotel, and this shadow was level with it. It wasn't directly next to the window, Peter, but I could see it gliding outside in the distance, slowly getting closer with every passing moment. The thing was indistinguishable for a time, suspended in the night air like a kite, soaring above the city of Rio with the skill of an eagle. As the shadow came closer, however, I suddenly realized I didn't want to know what shape it had, because I was starting to make it out. Peter, there were angles and lines like that of a trapezoid, but it was what those lines and angles were doing which made me rush into the bathroom and lock the door. That scoundrel outside, the one we both saw? Oh, I suspect it's gone now, so you needn't worry about it. But I must insist you be wary of any shadows which have lines and angles doing things lines and angles shouldn't be doing."

"What do you mean, shouldn't be doing?" I asked him, confused yet riveted by his story. "What were the lines and angles doing?"

"Incredible things, Peter, things so strange and bizarre no human mind should ever have set eyes upon them. God, Peter, I've always been a fan of Lovecraft, but he had nothing on what this scoundrel was. Lines and angles don't do the things it could do, nor should they ever be made to do them, but they did, Peter, they did when they belonged to the Eater's scoundrel."

"I stayed in that bathroom all night, Peter, wide awake, taking drinks of water from the tap to wash the after taste of the madman's kiss. I only sneezed one time, and into a paper towel, but when I looked at what came out of my nose, I saw blood and the yellow, pus-like ooze that had been in the madman's cheeks."

"My first thought was that the madman had infected me with some disease and I wanted to call the doctor, but as I grasped the bathroom door, I remembered the little scoundrel. At the time, I had no idea what it was, but I knew it wasn't of this earth. I wondered if it was still out there, sure I had not imagined it for a simple reason: no one can ever imagine a scoundrel like that. Not even me."

"But you said it had lines and angles. Surely, if you can describe it, you can imagine it?"

Richard's eyes became wide with fright when I said that, and jumped forward, leaning in his chair so violently I thought he would spring out of it and strangle me. "It was what the lines and angles were doing, Peter, that is impossible to imagine. I can only use the vaguest terms to describe them, for when something beyond imagination becomes reality, all words fail to convey what it is. I am thankful that when I did get the courage to leave that bathroom that the scoundrel was no longer outside the window, for I do believe if I had seen what the angles and lines were attached to, I would have gone mad and been easy prey for the Eater of Ideas."

"I immediately called a cab to take me to the nearest hospital, sure to take the paper towel ruined by the yellow ooze and blood with me as a sample. When I arrived and put in the waiting room, I suddenly noticed something very peculiar: the yellow ooze seemed to be moving."

"You recall the slime mold, correct? The North American dog dinner, as some refer to it? A primitive collection of creatures all working together as one? When the ooze moved reminded me of that instantly, and I guessed that was what it was. A slime mold. I nearly vomited again at the thought, and remembered how the ooze had poured from the madman's cheek wounds when I realized why this ooze cannot possibly be a slime mold."

"You see, when it came out of the man's open cheeks, it hadn't been using an already opened flesh wound. The ooze had been cutting its way through the flesh. Everything had happened so fast I didn't notice it at first, but as the image replayed in my mind, I saw the man's inner cheek slowly being ripped open as the yellow ooze pushed itself into his mouth and over his sliced open, bleeding tongue, where already a black dot of some kind sat upon the underside, like a mouth sore. I wonder how I missed it the first time, but it was so small and minuscule, I suppose it must have been hidden by the blood. But when I think back to that dot, Peter, that festering black mouth sore, one thing always plays over and over in my head, a single nanosecond of time."

"There were lines and angles in it, moving."

"You mean, like a scoundrel?"

"Oh yes, Peter, oh yes. I believe it was the same scoundrel I saw outside my window. They had dragged the man outside the hotel when he stopped convulsing, waiting for an ambulance and the police to arrive. The scoundrel must have gotten free then."

"I suddenly became aware that I was probably in far graver danger than I originally thought, for if what I came to know as a scoundrel had been in that man's mouth before flying toward a tenth-floor window, what could it have done to me?"

"But when I was brought into the doctor and told him all this, somehow convincing him to give me the benefit of the doubt and do a thorough check-up, I was fine. There was no black dot in my mouth and the only yellow ooze I had was in the paper towel. It had only moved slightly, like a slug spasming a muscle, but the doctor nevertheless asked to examine it, for obvious reasons. The test results revealed it to be... well, certainly like pus, but not quite there. It had many of the same properties, but there was something in it which the doctor couldn't identify. To him, this something posed a health risk he couldn't allow, so I was kept overnight. Nothing happened, though every small noise had my nerves on edge."

"When I showed no signs of being in ill health, the hospital released me. I boarded a train back to my hotel in high spirits, but the events of yesterday troubled me still. I wondered what had become of that man. As such, I decided to look through social media for any information. You can imagine my surprise when I found none whatsoever."

"Strange as it is to say, no matter how long I searched through the news sites, even local, nothing came up. There was no mention whatsoever of my having been attacked at a five-star hotel by a naked man covered in garbage, despite how utterly juicy the story is. You can see that, can you not? It's just an absurd story it would be all over the internet, probably becoming memetic. But there was nothing whatsoever, not even on the most ludicrous of tabloids. Yes, that includes the Daily Beast and Neon Carnival. When I returned to the hotel, I immediately asked to see the manager so I could learn what had become of that madman."

"He was still a nervous wreck after events of last night, so my request was granted without further ado. As the manager reported, the madman had been taken away by the police to the nearest hospital. When asked if I was going to press charges, I wasn't going to at first, but then, a thought occurred to me. I asked to see the footage recorded by security cameras in the lobby. I'm not sure why but I couldn't help shaking the feeling this would broaden reveal something very, very important to whatever was happening to me."

Richard paused now and stood up from his chair, walking over to the fireplace where the crackling fire was dying. He put another log in it, watching as the fire slowly regained life. "What I saw on haunts me to this day. No one can explain it, from the manager of the hotel who showed me to the police when they investigated. Because nothing happened when we played the recording around the exact time I had been attacked."

"I remained sitting in my chair, reading by myself, with no interruptions. We watched dumbstruck when the madman didn't arrive at the time he had last night. We examined every frame, but they had captured nothing. Only me reading until I suddenly vomited all over myself and was escorted to my room."

"From there, I contacted the police to inquire about the madman, a horrible dread filling my stomach. The officer who made the arrest greeted at the station and remembered everything perfectly, how they'd loaded the madman into an ambulance before taking him to the hospital, but his face drained of all color when he searched for the report in vain. Nearly the entire police department became involved in trying to find the report on my attack, but for all intents and purposes, it didn't exist. And do you know what happened when I asked at the hospital the man had been taken?"

"What happened?"

Then Richard laughing, but there was no mirth in his tone. "Oh, forgive me Peter, but I've pulled a fast one on you. I didn't ask at the hospital because it doesn't exist. The last anything was ever seen of him, the madman was loaded into an ambulance that drove off into the night. Neither him, the ambulance, nor the crew was ever found. But then there is the crew of that ambulance. Because the police couldn't remember who they were or if the ambulance had a crew in the first place. They know someone had been in the driver seat, but the more the officers thought about, the paler they became. They wouldn't tell me about the driver and both officers would die soon afterward in a gunfight - I suspect this to be the Eater's doing, somehow."

"I learned why the next day. As I was strolling through the streets of Rio, I crossed down toward the slums, seemingly at random. But the deeper I went into the slums, the more confused my thoughts became. I was trying to figure out what in the world was going on but there seemed to be a kind of wall in my mind. I visualized the thing as being topped by barb wire and made of concrete, completely bare of any graffiti or posters, cracks running along the base."

"I realized I was getting hungry and could smell food down an alleyway. So, checking my wallet first to make sure I had enough cash, I turned down that alleyway, expecting to see a sizzling barbeque. Instead, I saw the very same wall that was blocking my thoughts, sitting right at in the middle of the alleyway."

"I had to touch it, and I did. It was rough underneath my fingertips as they trailed from one end to the other. And what of those ends? Oh, Peter, at the ends of the alleyways, there were holes which lead nowhere, big enough that I could squeeze my hand into them. And did. I was a tight fix sliding my hand into the hole - gained a few scraps on my knuckles - but I got it in there up to my elbow."

"I felt something touch my mind the moment my hand disappeared into the hole. Something new was in there, and I had put it there, but it wasn't a thought. Without thinking, I moved my hand up, and the thing touching my mind moved up. When I moved my hand down, I felt it move down my mind, brushing through my thoughts like a hand dipped into a pool. I tried pushed my arm deeper in the hole. My thoughts felt something deeper inside them. My fingers wriggled, and then I felt an intense pain in my mind, like claws digging through my brain. I pulled my arm out of the hole, ending the pain, but when I turned to leave the alleyway, I saw something far worse than this wall."

"An ambulance was blocking the only way out. I froze, stunned. I hadn't heard it come up, but that didn't matter. I knew that this thing which looked like an ambulance to me really wasn't really an ambulance and that it had already taken away the madman from last night. Now, it was here for me."

"Remember how the police wouldn't describe the driver, the only crew this ambulance had? I won't either. He wore the uniform of an ambulance driver, but Peter, he wasn't human. He was a scoundrel, and not one made of lines and angles doing impossible things. He was... barely a shadow of something else. Something far worse."

"Without thinking, I sprang over the wall behind me. Well, I say sprang over, but in truth, I had to climb over it, cutting myself on the barbed wire. That is obvious, yes? But it felt like I sprang over because climbing over the thing implies that in some way I struggled to get over it. I didn't. I got over it so easily, that the cut I got from the barbed wire was practically nonexistent, so small and shallow it might as well not be there."

"On the other side of that wall, I found myself in the middle of a crowd of stunned Brazilians, speaking in surprise and shock. A few spoke English, thankfully, so I learned why they were surprised soon enough."

"To them, I had materialized from nowhere, like Rudolph Fentz, if you will. I couldn't bear it anymore, however. It was all too much. I made sure that I got the first flight back to Lansing, my research be damned. I left a good review on the hotel of course, but this was more common courtesy. Truth be told, after the strange disappearance of the madman, I believe the manager was glad to be rid of me."

"For a while, I experienced no new irregularities in my life. Normality seemed to have returned. I decided to forget about the thing posing as an ambulance and the scoundrels and focus on writing The Horror of Old Amazon. And that was when my illusion of normality was shattered completely."

"I had barely written three letters when my mind suddenly turned a blank. I tried to find something, anything, but the more I searched through my thoughts, the less I could think of anything original. Oh, I could think of things I had already come up with, but those came from days long gone. Originality, on the other hand, illuded me constantly, always just out of reach, hidden away - so I assumed. I began to concentrate, trying to build an idea from scratch, and began to make something new and fantastic. It was ending of The Horrors of Old Amazon, I was just about to find it when I felt something plunge into my mind."

"I can only describe it as some kind of vast, unquenchable void which engulfed everything in my mind, like a fog so thick not even light can escape it. I was helpless to prevent the idea I had so recently designed be stolen away from me by this void as it drained it away. Then it was gone and I felt something had been left behind in my thoughts. Unlike less time, the barbed wire did not leave shallow, insignificant cuts on my hands but had taken a massive bite out of my thoughts.""The wall had returned."

I had to say something now, this was all so fantastic I simply refused to believe it. "Come now, Richard, this is ridiculous, how can you possibly expect me to believe I word you say? Surely, you could publish this as a story for all the world to read."

Richard turned away from the fireplace, his eyes wild as the reflection of the blazing hearth shone in them. It gave him an otherworldly kind of air, and I recoiled away from him. Richard smiled, then he coughed, bringing up his elbow as he painfully hacked into it. When he drew it away, what I saw shall forever haunt me.

A thin line of yellow ooze hung from the corner of his mouth. More was caught in his shaggy beard, like specks of bile, and his inner elbow was covered in the stuff.

"You see now, Peter?" Richard said slowly as he sat down on the floor, his back to the fire, "I am not lying, nor do I want this tale to published. I fear what shall happen if the Eater of Ideas is given an audience of any kind. But Peter, I am not yet finished telling you of why I am going mad."

"With the wall's return, I sprang up from my chair, the events in Brazil swarming back to the forefront of my memory. I paced before this very fireplace, trying to piece together what was going on. But the wall obstructed all thought. I tried to break it down, somehow, but that wall is made of strong stuff. I imagined myself hammering it down, but the sheer effort of imagining that caused me to collapse into a chair with exhaustion. Peter, I may be the only man on this planet who collapsed from the strain of using his own imagination, but that was only the tip of the iceberg. Beneath the surface, far worse things were happening."

"The next day, I woke up, emotionally drained. I had been dreaming wonderful things, things I wanted to know the ending of. But when I tried to recall them, the unquenchable void returned and sucked them away, leaving me with nothing save the wall. I groaned and rolled out of bed to find that something was wrong with the angles of my room. I felt an indescribable horror upon realizing every single angle had a shadow in it, that was stretching across every line rapidly. With no other recourse, I ran out of the room and slammed the door shut behind me, locking it shut."

"I tried to spend the rest of my day relatively normal, but every angle, every straight line that I saw had a shadow on or in it, watching me. I felt trapped by reality itself, for this entire house is made up of lines and angles, is it not?"

When Richard gestured around the room, I couldn't help looking and saw exactly what he was referring to. The angles of the room we were in seemed darker than the shadows around it, and I suddenly became aware of a feeling of being watched.

"You needn't worry, Peter, I've got this scoundrel contained. Followed me from Brazil, he did, but he hasn't caused any trouble. The scoundrels don't hurt their master's food. If they do, their master feeds on them. The Eater isn't picky. I've seen it happen myself. Would you like to know how?"

I nodded mutely, the roll of thunder outside following another blast of lightning. There, through the window. That shadow beyond the gate. Was it moving? No, it was only my imagination.

"It was when I finally left this house and took a walk in the park. My head was a mess of thoughts. I couldn't think straight. More than anything, I felt drained. Remember the dreams I mentioned and my ending for The Horrors of Old Amazon? For a while, I would have thought them lost, but then something else occurred to me. I could remember the vague outlines of them, and so tried to fill them in." "As I did so, I happened to glance up at the road next to the park and saw the ambulance from Brazil, its driver watching me intently. I immediately glanced around the park, expecting to see the wall appear, but it was nowhere. When I turned back to the ambulance, however, I saw it was changing. The driver had gotten out and was coming towards me." "I ran, as I've never run before or since. When I glanced over my shoulder, the driver was also running, yet the way his legs moved... dear God, he didn't have legs, he had something else, and now I started to notice other things, like his face. He didn't have a mouth, but in its place was something so horrible I nearly fainted with terror. It was widening open hungrily, and I felt my very soul at that moment, every fiber struggling to hold together."

"The vague outlines I was trying to fill in seemed to slowly fade away, but unlike when that unquenchable void came and took them, I felt... God on earth, Peter, I felt them being eaten. That void didn't eat them, it merely collected them, stole them away like food from a grocery store! I didn't even realize how close the driver had gotten until I turned around. The scoundrel was eating them, the thing it had instead of a mouth now stretching open before my very face, ready to plunge down upon my head. Inside, Peter, I saw my dreams and ideas being crushed and devoured, disappearing down the gullet into nothing."

"And then the Eater of Ideas came. The driver stopped, frozen in place before it was suddenly pulled away by a tremendous, invisible force. The ambulance's back door was open, and the driver struggled to grab onto something as it was sucked inside. Have you ever heard of the noodle effect? How an object is pulled into a thin line by powerful gravitational forces? I've seen it happen, and it happened to that scoundrel. It screamed, oh, how it screamed as it was stretched as thin as noodles. But it was putting up a fight."

"The Eater didn't like that. The ambulance wasn't an ambulance anymore, but some crustacean being, like a crab but covered in screaming human faces, all smushed together, stretched thin like gum or rubber. Those faces were screaming or howling, all save one, that was looking directly at me."

"It was the face of the madman from Brazil, the one who had kissed me. He was smiling broadly, mouth so wide his cheeks were tearing apart."

"Then there came a low groan and the scoundrel became silence. Then it was suddenly pulled into the maw of the Eater of Ideas, which began crunching the remains of its most recent kill."

"I couldn't move, only watch as the Eater suddenly sprayed through the yellow ooze from its mouth all over the field before it. Then, slowly, it began to move. The face of the madman stopped smiling, his mouth opening wide as he screamed, louder than all the other faces."

"And so I ran back here. My first thought was to try and think of some way to kill the damned thing, but whatever came to mind was sucked away by the void or blocked by the wall. As for the scoundrel in the room with us, I have learned one thing. It cannot seem to move at all as long as I don't fear it. But, Peter, there is one last thing I must confess.""What?" I asked suddenly, springing to my feet. "What is it?"

"I haven't yet told you how this story ends, and I won't. I'm going to show you." And with that, Richard stood up again and began tossing logs onto the fire. Once it was roaring hot, he turned to me and smiled so wide I would have thought his skin would rip open.

"Now," he laughed before breaking out into coughs, spitting the yellow ooze onto the floor, "I, Richard Pickett, shall die! The Eater of Ideas won't feast on me! I don't know if it will come for you, Peter, but if it has, I would start running! Farewell!"

Then he jumped into the fire, laughing wildly with the purest madness I have ever seen. The lightning flashed outside, and when I looked, I saw that there were several shadows, shadows full of angles and lines which did impossible actions, but most terrible of all was the large, crab-like creature behind them slowly walking through the fence like a ghost through a wall, covered in the vague outlines of faces.

I have been running ever since that night, living in fear. Everywhere I look, I see angles and lines and I try to flood them with curves. Curves seem to keep the scoundrels away.

But all this pales in comparison to when I think back to the crab-like creature covered by outlines of faces. For on that night, I saw a new outline slowly take shape upon it, one with a shaggy, wild beard. 