What Reason Do You Need

I felt a steady beat and realized it was my heart. I wasn't filled with nothing. I had something inside of me. I had a heart.

The beat grew stronger and louder until it deafened me. I dropped the gun on the ground and it broke apart, as if it was made of plaster. It wasn't a real gun. It was a pretend gun and I had been shooting pretend bullets.

Everything rushed back to me. I wasn't empty any longer - I had my soul and my dreams and my loneliness and my secrets and my guilt and I was filled to the brim.

"Why?" I asked.

"I don't like Mondays," the man in the gray suit said. "What reason do you need?"

The world twisted and turned and I found myself back in my house. I was standing in front of the television as it blared bad news about tragedy and blood.

"I don't want to go back," I said. "I don't want it to be like it was before."

"Then change," the man in the gray suit said. "There is still time." He took a pocket watch and checked it. "There will always be time."

I turned off the television and sat down. "But what do I do now?" I asked.

But the man in the gray suit was gone. I had asked an empty room in an empty house.

I wandered around the house for a bit before turning on the radio. They were playing the Doris Day version of "Enjoy Yourself (It's Later Than You Think)." And I listened and thought about what I was going to do now.

I was tired and couldn't think of anything to do aside from returning to work, so I decided to go to sleep. Perhaps I'll dream up something to do. I only have the rest of my life to choose.

There's plenty of time.

"So what's the twist?" the reader asked.

"What do you mean?" the writer asked.

"The twist," the reader said. "It's the end, she's already killed all the Fears. There has to be a twist."

"Does there?"

"I bet it's all just a hallucination. I bet she's trying to commit suicide and she's trying to get ready, making herself hard and empty."

"No," the writer said. "It's not a hallucination."

"Then I bet the Man in Gray is setting her up. I bet he's trying to make her into something like himself. A Woman in Gray."

"No," the writer said. "Sorry, that's not it."

"Really? Crap. It can't be a dream. I mean, that's too cliche."

"Does there really need to be a twist?"

"Of course. I mean, she's killed the Fears. She's killed the goddamn Slender Man. And now what? Now what's going to happen? I mean, something must happen."

"Of course something's going to happen. But why does there have to be a twist?"

"Because it makes the ending a surprise. A good twist means we can look back and see everything that led up to it. A good twist changes the meaning of the entire thing."

"And a bad twist?"

"Well, that changes the meaning, too, but, you know, in a bad way. But seriously, what's the twist?"

"There is no twist."

"Really?"

"Truly."

"But what's going to happen then? I mean, what's going to happen to Elizabeth?"

"What do you think? She's killed the monsters. She's emptied herself out. What else can she do except go back to her life. Back to the life she had before."

"But...without emotions? Without feelings?"

"It's not really the life she had before. It's more of a half-life, doing the same actions, but without the same feeling. She isn't afraid, she isn't sad, and she isn't happy. She sleeps without dreaming. She can't even remember her past and she knows that she has no future. She does what she does because she has nothing else to do."

"And then?"

"And then what?"

"There has to be an 'and then.' And then the Man in Gray appeared. And then something happened. And then she died. I mean, this is a story, it has to have a proper ending."

"It does have a proper ending. This is it. This is the end of her story. She killed her monsters and, in the process, killed herself. She's not alive, not really. She's a shell. And because she doesn't care, she'll go on being a shell until the world fades away around her. She is the Endmaker and this is the ending she has made."

"That's not a good ending."

"I never said it was. But it's her ending."

"Well, it's fucking depressing. Can't you give her a better ending? You can even make the whole thing a dream if you want, I don't fucking care."

"You want a happy ending?"

"It doesn't need to be happy, it just needs to be something that isn't depressing as fuck."

"Fine."

And then there was the last monster. It stood before me, its limbs long, its face white and empty. I wondered how anyone could find this thing scary. I didn't feel fear standing before it. I felt nothing.

The street was empty. Over us was a canopy of trees, their leaves all shades of black. I had walked here directly from my encounter with the monster after death. I felt strong. I felt like I could walk up to this monster and shoot him in the head and that would be the end. I could kill him without a thought.

The last monster stood before me and did nothing at all.

What was it waiting for, an invitation? I wanted it to try and kill me. I wanted to show it how I had changed. I wanted to show it that I had no fear of death, no fear of whatever it was. I was fearless.

But the last monster stood before me and did fuck all.

I raised the gun. "Fuck you," I said and pulled the trigger.

Nothing happened. There was no bullet. None had been made.

I kept the gun raised. There had to be a way to make a bullet. Before, I had made the bullets when confronted with the monster or before, with the help of the man in the gray suit, but now there was nothing. The man in the gray suit had left before I had walked here. I was alone with no bullet and a monster that did nothing.

The last monster tilted his head and looked at me. "Well?" I said. "What the fuck are you waiting for?"

It turned and started to walk away. I wasn't angry - I had no anger left - but I was disappointed. What was this all for if I couldn't kill him? I had to kill the last monster. I had to kill all the monsters. I had to save the world.

I ran after the last monster and pushed him. I'll admit, that was quite stupid.

He turned to look at me again. Why wouldn't he attack? Why? Was it because I didn't feel fear?

"It's because it no longer registers you as human," the man in the gray suit said. He stood far away, but I could hear his voice clearly. "It does not see as you see. It can see many aspects of many things, but at this moment, it sees you and does not register you as human. You are like a tree to it."

"How do I kill him then?" I asked.

"Do you have any emotions left?" he asked.

I did. I had my disappointment. I had my pride. I had my joy.

"Give them up," he said. "Pour them away. The bullet that kills it must be made from nothing. An empty bullet for a faceless monster."

His voice echoed in my head. What was left of me? What hadn't I given up yet? I would give everything away to kill this monster. The air around me felt heavy and I closed my eyes and I let everything go.

I opened my eyes and the world looked different. I felt nothing, no disappointment, no need to hurry, nothing at all.

I raised the gun and there was a bullet. It was like me. It was made of nothing.

I shot the last monster with the last bullet. It did not seemed shocked or surprised. No emotion registered on its lack of face. It stumbled and then reality around it seemed to crack and jump. One moment it was there and the next it wasn't and I knew it was dead.

I had killed it. I had killed the last monster.

I felt nothing. No joy, no sorrow.

No, wait. There was something. A sound, a steady beat. And then-

I died.

The bullet entered my body and punctured my heart. I instantly bled out. My body fell to the ground, my limbs splayed at unnatural angles. I was dead.

I was dead, but trapped. I was trapped in death. I was someplace else, someplace that was close by and impossibly far away. I wasn't in between life and death - as I said before, I was dead as a doornail - but I was in a place between. Just between.

It wasn't dark, it wasn't light. I couldn't see, since I had no eyes, but I felt calm. I felt serene.

And then I felt something grab me. I felt something pull and tug and twist.

And then I was in the world again, but I wasn't me. I was something else. I was a monster. I was the monster that came after death. It had killed me and taken my body. It stood over my dead body and grinned with my face. It had won.

Just like we had planned.

The man in the gray suit appeared. This was the first time he had shown up during one of my encounters with the monsters, but we had to plan it like this. This monster was too tricky, too cautious. The man in the gray suit could not confront him. He could only do one thing: he placed his hand over my face and healed my wounds.

Suddenly, I was alive and confronted with myself. I raised the gun and shot him with a bullet made from myself, a bullet carved from my own soul. I shot the monster with my soul and watched as it turned inside out, as it ate itself over and over again, until it was nothing more than a speck and then gone.

I stood up. I felt strong. Was this was it felt like, being without a soul?

The man in the gray suit stood before me. He raised one finger and I knew. I had one more monster left. One more monster to kill.


I wiped the blood from my shirt. I had died and been reborn.

I am free of loneliness and helplessness. I have no future and no past, no secrets and no sins. I am dreamless. I am soulless.

I am fearless.

I don't even remembering going to sleep. I must have, because I woke up in the middle of the night. To suddenly awaken from a dreamless sleep was disorienting and the darkness of the room made me forgot for a moment where I was. I thought for a moment I was somewhere else, but I couldn't remember where. I couldn't even remember my own name.

And then I saw it. Its eyes shown on the darkness. It crouched at the end of my bed. I couldn't see its face, but I then what it was: it was the monster in my closet, the monster under my bed, the monster every child was afraid would appear in their bedroom as they slept. Its fingers traced patterns on the bed and I grabbed the gun and-

And I couldn't move. There was a whispering sound, a susuruss, a murmur that made my body go rigid and stop. The gun was in my hand, but I couldn't move. I was paralyzed as the monster reached across the bed and stroked by cheek. Its fingers were cold and sharp and I felt blood well up where it touched me.

I could see its mouth now, with its rows and rows of teeth. It was whispering, each syllable making sure my body stayed still and silent. And then the whispers changed and my body moved by itself, my arm turned and I was pointing the gun at myself, at my head.

The monster was going to win. This was not how I thought this was going to happen. This was not supposed to happen. The monster couldn't win. I had to finish this. I had to kill all the monsters.

My finger pulled the trigger and the gun clicked. No bullets. Of course. Click. Click. My finger kept pulling the trigger as the whispers rose and fell and my body obeyed without question.

I was completely and utterly helpless. I was a plaything to this creature. I was nothing. I felt the monster's fingers at my neck and I knew it was over.

And then my helplessness poured out from me. It drained from my body and in the dark of the room, I saw a glint of metal. There was a bullet, one single bullet that gleamed in the dark.

The whispers stopped from a second and before they could start again, I grabbed the bullet and put it in the gun, then turned to the monster. Its fingers were still on my throat and I could feel pain as they tightened and as I pulled the trigger, I could see its face, I could see as the bullet struck its face and it shuddered in pain.

And then darkness descended again and I was left in bed with a dead monster. I carefully removed its claws from my throat and left the room.

Outside, in the moonlight, I raised my hand into the sky. I was no longer helpless. I had no memory of being helpless, no dreams of my life when I was so afraid. This is what I wanted.

Then why do I feel nothing?

I stood in the fiction section and I waited. I waited for the staff to leave and the lights to dim. The staff didn't notice me there - that's happening to me more and more, I think. People just don't seem to notice me. Perhaps I'm turning invisible. Probably a good thing. I couldn't stay here if I wasn't.

The lights went out and now it was dark and I was surrounded by books, by stories, by page after page of words. I was waiting for a monster with another book.

The man in the gray suit told me that he wanders libraries. I've been in this library since it opened at 8 am and now it is passed 6 pm and I will not move until I see him. I know he will come here. "They will be drawn to where you are," the man in the gray suit told me. "Even if they do not know you are there, they will be drawn to their own demise."

So I waited. And then I heard a skittering, like spider legs, and, even through the dark, I could see him. He was a monster, but he looked like an old man in a crumpled suit and dark glasses.

He was sitting at a table with a large heavy book open before him. I walked forward and the sound of skittering increased. I felt something brush past me, something with long hairy legs. I took the gun out from its holster and the sound of skittering went away.

I sat down across from the old man monster. He did not look at me. He looked only at his book. Then he spoke, his voice sounding like the turning of pages: "What if I were to write your name? Would you kill me even if you were missing your memories, even if you had no past? If you could not even remember your own name or what I was, would you still kill me?"

"Yes," I said and shot him.

The bullet was made of paper and written on it was my life story, from birth to now. Everything I ever remembered was on there, every single piece of my past, my history.

The old man monster bled ink onto his book. He took one last look at it before slamming it shut and said, "I thought so." The book sunk into the table and the old man monster smiled with ink-stained teeth and said, "It is easier to die then to live. You should know that. Death comes quickly, neatly, but life is messy and hard. The man in gray is showing you how to make death, how to make an ending. But it is the life before the end where the mystery lies. Death is not a mystery, it is the end of one. Goodbye."

I left his body in the library and went outside into the cold night. I do not know what he meant, but I suppose one day I shall find out.

I walked towards the door, but by the time I had gotten there, it was gone. It had moved to another wall. I walked to the other wall and the door moved again. I did not see it move, but it was gone by the time I had gotten there, so it must have.

Every time I found the door again, it moved. The door did not like me.

Of course it didn't. There was another monster, a monster in the shape of a city, beyond that door. And I was going to kill it.

The man in the gray suit told me it would be difficult to find. "It feeds on lost souls and is used to being lost itself," he said. "But you will find it. Find a door and you will find it."

I found a door. It was different from other doors I had seen - it had a glow to it, a special attraction. It feeds on lost souls, he had said, so perhaps I am a lost soul. But once I tried to get to the door, it wouldn't let me.

I raised the gun, but then stopped. If I just shot the door, would it do any good? No, I needed to shoot the monster beyond the door. I needed to be there. The gun would lead me there, I knew it. So I held the gun forward like a flashlight and walked carefully towards the door. It stayed still until I put my hand upon the doorknob and when I turned it, the door turned itself, like a carousel, and I found myself inside the monster. Inside the city.

There was only one road, but it went everywhere, even places it shouldn't, couldn't have gone. It twisted like a Mobius strip, but the buildings were worse. There moved as soon as I looked away, twisted themselves into increasingly complicated shapes, shapes that made my head hurt. The walls of the city started to close in on me, the ground shifting beneath my feet. Rows of doors presented themselves to me, but I wasn't leaving yet. The job wasn't done.

I raised the gun high into the air and fired it. I asked the man in the gray suit how can I killed a monster the size of a city, but he told me that it wasn't the size of a city - it was the size of a world, always shifting, always changing. And he had already show me how to kill a world.

The bullet came down, but now it was bigger. Now it was a meteor, a meteor made from everything I had ever lost, coins and socks and chances and loves. I opened a door and stepped back through it as the bullet came down and the buildings crumbled and a dust cloud burst upward. The monster that was a city tried to shift and become something else, something that could survive, but this was an extinction event. Nothing survives.

I closed the door behind me and watched as it turned to dust.

I woke up with big brass band playing outside my window. I got up to look, but nothing was there. The music stopped and then began again, this time as mariachi music.

I picked up the gun by the dresser, but it felt strange. It didn't feel heavy, not like it usually does. I looked at it and it melted away into nothingness. I looked around and the room seemed to shift in size and shape. The mariachi music became louder and louder, until I could hardly think.

The gun had to be around here somewhere. I had to find it. Lights grew bright outside the window and seemed to flicker. The gun wouldn't be gone, it would be here in this room. It had to be.

Finally, I closed my eyes and outstretched my hand. I felt the rough wood of the dresser and then the cool metal of the gun and I gripped it tight.

I opened my eyes. There were ghosts screaming at me, their mouths large and malformed. There was fungus on the wall and it seemed to grow at an alarming rate. The mariachi music turned into the music from hell.

I knew what I had to do. In my hand, I made a bullet. I made it from my own voice and all the voices I had ever heard, all the sounds I had ever heard. There was the song from my eighth grade prom. There was my mother's voice calming me with a lullaby.

The bullet vibrated with sound. I placed it in the gun and turned to the wall covered in fungus. I pulled the trigger and the air itself screamed in pain. Then the screaming vanished, as did everything else. No more bright lights, no more hellish music.

Just the blissful silence.

The store sold timepieces. All kinds of timepieces - pocket watches and alarm clocks and even grandfather clocks. There was a giant grandfather clock at the back of the store, all dark wood and golden metal.

The gun led me here. I followed the tug of my new bullet. The man in the gray suit told me how to make it.

I opened the grandfather clock and look at the insides, the guts of time, the springs and levers and intricate pieces. I placed my finger inside and stopped one piece from moving. The other pieces spun around, one of them nearly taking off my finger. I pulled my hand away and the pieces of the grandfather clock spun faster and faster. I raised the gun, but there was a bright light and I closed my eyes and then-

The sun felt different. I was outside, but it felt wrong. I opened my eyes and saw that I was in some sort of junkyard. Rusted pieces of metal and wire surrounded me. I looked around and saw a gleaming tower made of what seemed like everything - every bit of scrap, even pieces of flesh and bone and sinew. I would have thrown up, but I had already shot away my revulsion.

I raised the gun. Would the bullet be able to kill something that big? One small bullet versus a tower that stretched to an unknown sky. Only one way to find out.

I had made the bullet out of my future. The man in gray told me as I did it that it was made from all the days I would have lived had I not found the gun. It was my future as a bullet. Bang bang.

The bullet sounded strange. It looked like nothing I had ever seen, gleaming brighter than the sun. I was as my future grew larger and larger, the days of my could-have-been life seeming bigger and bigger until it hit the tower and exploded.

The explosion rocked the world around me. The metal melted and the string burst into flames. Everything was burning and I had just killed my future.

Too late for regrets. Too late for anything except to move forward. The gun led me here and it led me out. I stepped backwards and found myself next to the grandfather clock, only now it looked blackened and burned, its insides melted.

Time to move on.

He wore a mask that was curved like a beak. I couldn't see his eyes through the huge black circles in the mask - perhaps he had none. Perhaps beneath the mask there wasn't anything at all, just an empty cloak.

The man in the gray suit told me how to get here. "Find a hospital," he said. "Find a place with disease. There will be people there who follow him, who serve him. You will know them. You will follow them. They will lead you to the place where he hides. The heart of him."

I did as he instructed. I found someone - a doctor - as soon as I saw him, I knew. I don't know how, but I knew. There was something about him, something in his eyes. I caught a glimpse of a tattoo on his lower wrist, a squiggly line crossed with a straight line. A stick and a serpent. I know what that meant. I've done my homework.

I followed him, followed as he drove to various hospitals, collected various samples, visited various patients. I followed as he stopped at a parking garage and started walking up the stairs. I followed him as the stairs turned from metal to stone, as the cars vanished, as the garage became a castle. I followed him to where the monster was.

The monster knew I was there immediately. The doctor turned, saw me, and his eyes widened in fear. The monster placed one hand upon the doctor's shoulder and the doctor convulsed and fell to the ground, vomiting up a stream of blood and viscera.

The monster in the beak mask looked at me. Perhaps he expected that I started to throw up as well. I could feel disease and pestilence swimming in the air around me, but I was protected. The gun protected me.

I made a bullet last night out of every illness I had ever had. Chicken pox, measles, mumps, the flu, the common cold. It was a sick bullet and it looked like a syringe. I shot the monster in the beak mask and he stared at the bullet with what I believe was disbelief. There was a strange moment when he seemed to become taller, then his cloak split down the middle and rats poured out of it. The rats all seemed sick, however, and they died almost immediately. All that was left was a torn cloak, an empty mask, and a pile of dead rats.

I didn't know how to get back to the parking garage, but I wasn't worried. The gun would show me the way. It would always show me the way to the next monster.

The two-story brownstone was charming and rustic and all those other words you use to describe houses. I walked up the red brick steps to the front door and rang the bell.

The man in the gray suit visited me last night. He told me the remaining monsters would be more difficult to find. "They have gone away," he said, "to the places they feel are safe. But no place is safe from the end."

A woman answered the door. She was middle-aged and had short brown hair. She gave me a warm smile - so unlike the others I had seen - and asked, "Can I help you?"

"I'm here to see your daughter," I said.

I made the bullet last night from grief and empty spaces. I used the feeling I had during my father's funeral, when all that was left of him was ashes. Then I carved a name into the bullet using letters I didn't recognize, letters that hurt my eyes to look at. They seemed to shift before my eyes. The man in the gray suit told me the name was needed to kill the next monster.

The woman looked at me and said, "I'm sorry, it's not a good time."

"Do you know what she is?" I asked. The woman looked quizzically at me and I saw a flash of fear. She turned to close the door, but I pushed it open and shoved her back, then ran up the stairs.

The girl was in the bedroom. It was like I had double vision - with one eye, I saw a normal girl, cute as a button, with her hair braided in a French braid, and with the other eye, I saw a girl who shouldn't exist, whose pupilless eyes took up half of her face, whose teeth were many and sharp.

I pointed the gun at her and said, "I have a bullet with your name on it." Then I pulled the trigger.

The monster didn't say anything as she died, but the woman was weeping as I left the house. I left her to her tears. I didn't have any left of my own.

Field of Bullets

It was Friday evening. The sun was going down, making the sky a dark shade of orange. The freeway was packed bumper to bumper. It was rush hour and everyone was going home for the weekend.

I felt eyes on the back of my neck and I knew it was him. I adjusted my rear view mirror and there he was, the man in the gray suit, sitting in the back of my car. "Why are you here?" I asked.

"You must be ready," he said.

"Ready for what?"

"It's happening," he said. "Now."

I looked outside, but couldn't see anything beyond the sea of cars. I looked back at the mirror but the man in the gray suit was gone. I turned back to the window and noticed that some people had completed stop their cars. They were opening up their doors and getting out. They were looking at me.

"Shit," I said. I looked around and saw that all of the people in the cars were getting out. Each one of them looked at me. Some one of them had expressions of anger, rage, some had those stitched on smiles I had seen before, and some seemed almost giddy. I noticed some of them licked their lips and blood dripped from their noses.

I got out of the car. The man to my right looked at me. I could see fire in his eyes. "You need to die," he said. "You need to burn."

I grabbed the gun and ran. Even if I put in regular bullets, there were too many of them. I would never survive this onslaught, this wave of people. So I ran.

It didn't help. There were more people ahead of me and they grabbed me and pulled at my clothes and my skin. I saw the fire in their eyes and then I saw a woman above them, a woman set against the setting sun. She wore a veil and her eyes burned into mine.

As the people grabbed me, I raised the gun and poured all of my anger into it. Then I fired a bullet made of wrath, a molten bullet, a red hot bullet. It hit the woman and the people grabbing onto me collapsed.

There were still people after me. I wasn't out of the woods yet. I could see the people who had smiles stitched on their faces, their limbs dragged haphazardly, their joints moving independently from each other. Was the woman who controlled them here? Could I use the bullet made of string?

The smiling people didn't target me then, though; that was the giddy people, the people who bled from nose and mouth. They gave me obscene looks and licked the blood from their lips. One man strode forward from the crowd and said, "The others want you dead, but I'd like to have some fun with you first. See if we can make you squeal."

I raised the gun. The man laughed. "Can you really use it?" he said. "Use up all of your love?"

He said love, but I was feeling something else. I felt a heat rising in me, a different heat then before; my vision began to turn red and my arms grew tired. The man looked at me with lust and said, "That's a good girl. C'mon, then, I can teach you to be bad."

My nose itched and I felt blood flowing down. I wiped it away with my hand and then raised the gun again. I felt my blood grow hot and then cool as all the feelings rushed forward into the gun. The man looked at me and said, "You can't kill me, dear. You can't kill love."

I shot him with a bullet made of blood. His head exploded in a shower of gore and everyone behind him collapsed into a frenzy, an orgy.

I felt tired, more tired than I had never felt before, but I couldn't stop. I began feeling the invisible strings around me like before. I took the string bullet from my pocket and I loaded the gun and I looked around. I couldn't see the smiling people, but I knew they were here.

I was pulled into the air then and then dropped onto a car. I felt the air rush out of my lungs, but I gripped the gun tight. I felt hands grabbing a hold of me, gripping me. I looked up into the sky and saw the woman with the stitched on smile. She wore a raggedy dress now and her skin appeared to be made of wood. "You can't shoot without any fingers," she said and motioned with one hand. I felt strings over my body. They felt like wires, cutting deep into me. Razor wire, she was going to cut me up with razor wire.

I couldn't move my hand, but my finger was still on the trigger, so I pulled it. The bullet went in the wrong direction, but as it moved through the air, it twisted and swept in a circle. The woman with the stitched on smile was laughing as I bled, laughing until the bullet hit her in the back of the head. Her face split and as she fell, the people holding me down fell as well.

I slowly got up. I was bleeding from a dozen places. I felt weak and tired. I wanted to stop moving and lay down and sleep, but I couldn't. I wasn't going to die here. I wasn't going to die.

As I walked down the freeway, a flock of birds swooped overhead. I shot them with a bullet made of lightning and wonder. I felt the awe leave my body as I did and the birds all died, their bodies falling from the sky.

I felt a mass of insects crawl up my legs, their mandibles chewing on my soft flesh, digging into my skin. I shot them with a bullet made of my own revulsion. Then I wiped away their corpses and kept walking.

The streetlights began to flicker and shadows stretched from their. Their dark fingers reached towards me, but I shot them with a bullet made from my own shadow. They dissipated and I noticed then, that my shadow was gone as well.

I had shot six bullets in the span of ten minutes. I felt more than weak. I felt empty. I walked until I couldn't and then I crawled.

The last thing I remember seeing was the man in the gray suit walking towards me. His shoes were black and shiny, their laces tied neatly. He looked down at me with a blank expression and I blacked out.

I woke up an hour ago in this hotel room. All my wounds are healed. My car is outside, my keys are on the dresser, and my clothes are neatly stacked beside the bed. I looked to see where he had put the gun and almost panicked, thinking that it was gone, that he had taken it, before I found it.

He had left the gun under my pillow.

The woman was beautiful, her face angular and symmetrical, her blond hair perfectly parted and falling down to her shoulders. She did not smile nor move a muscle on her face, she just sat down before me and said, "Hello, Elizabeth. I think we should talk."

I was sitting at a rest stop, fiddling with my phone, wondering if I should check my messages to see if anyone had called, if anyone cared where I was. And then she sat down and all the hairs on the back of my neck stood up and I knew she was one of Them. The monsters.

I pulled the gun up, but she placed her hand over mine and pushed it down on the table. "No need for that," she said. "I won't harm you. I only want to talk."

"Who are you?" I asked.

"My current appellation is EAT," she said. "You've caused quite a stir. The others are talking about joining forces in order to bring you down. I thought I might try a different approach."

"Why?" I asked.

"Because," she said, "do you even know what you are doing? What's happening each time you fire that gun, each time you kill one of us?"

"I make the world safer," I said.

"You unmake yourself," she said. "You've already lost your dreams, your guilt, your loneliness, and more."

"I don't need them," I said.

"No, you don't," she said. "But they are a part of what makes you you. You haven't crossed the point of no return yet. You can still go back. You can throw away the gun and leave this all behind."

"Why would I do that?" My skin felt hot and I saw beads of sweat crawl on my flesh until they ran together, until they formed a bullet. It was a bullet made of sweat and tears and when I looked closely, I could see an ocean inside.

"Do you even know what that is made of?" EAT asked. "It is made of your change, your ability to adapt and grow. Once you fire that bullet, you won't be able to change anymore. You will be stuck as you are now. You will become more and more like him."

"Him?" I plucked the bullet from my skin and I placed it in the gun.

"The man in the gray suit," she said. "You want to know more about him, don't you? I can tell you. I can tell you everything I know, which is quite a lot. But I will only tell you if you stop, stop before you are only a shell. So now the question is: how far do you really want to go?"

I pulled the trigger and shot her in the chest. "As far as I can," I said. "As far as I am able."

Water gushed from her wound and it poured from her mouth and nose. She wiped it away with one hand and said, "So the lesson today is how to die? Interesting. I can feel my Camper fading, one by one. I tried, Elizabeth. At least I tried. And now class, are you sitting comfortably? Then let's begin."

She fell and her face hit the table and I left as the life leaked from her and spilled onto the ground.

A hand was placed over my mouth and I was pulled into an alleyway. I remember my mother warning me about alleyways, to stay away from them; she also warned me about hitchhikers and white vans and talking to strangers and how I should never answer the door when she wasn't there. Everything she ever told me flashed through my mind as I was pulled into the alley by the rough hands.

The hands belonged to a man in a long, white straitjacket  His red, scraggly hair covered his eyes, but as I turned around, my own eyes were fixated on his mouth. On his smile.

It was wider than his face. Somehow. I don't know how it was possible, but it was. It was like looking at one of those impossible objects - you don't notice how wrong it is until later, the aspect that just couldn't possibly work in real life. The staircase that goes on forever, the fork that cannot possibly exist. The smile that is wider than the face.

He had a knife in one hand and his other hand was still gripping me. He didn't say a word, but he didn't have to say anything. I knew what he wanted to do. He was what my mother had warned me about; he was the stranger I should never talk to, he was the person inside the white van, the hitchhiker on the side of the road, the man who knocks on doors to see if anyone's home. The man with the mile smile.

I took the gun from its holster and I pointed it at him, but he wasn't afraid. He slashed forward with the knife and I felt an arc of pain in my hand. I almost dropped the gun, but held onto it despite the pain.

All of my mothers words, all of the images of white vans and hitchhikers and strangers, they all poured out of me and into the gun. I watched as another bullet was made. It looked like a bright white tooth.

The man still gripped me with his other hand and he pulled me forward, pushing his knife against my throat. I felt the cold steel and then I raised the gun against his chin and I pulled the trigger.

Needless to say, he died with a smile on his face.

They all had smiles stitched on their faces. I had stopped at a fast food restaurant - I may not dream anymore, but I still eat - when I noticed that everyone around me looked...wrong. The workers behind the counter, the people flipping burgers, the people behind me, men, women, children. They were all smiling. And then I could see it: the invisible stitches in their faces.

The attacked at once. I ran, but they grabbed me. They pulled me back, threw me down. I pulled the gun out, but I had nothing to shoot, no bullet, no target. They pulled my arms up and to the side and I felt strings pull them until my feet slipped off the floor.

I was a puppet on a string.

A woman walked forward. She had the same stitched on smile, her eyes unblinking as she looked at me. "So this is her," she said. "A bit disappointing, really. I had such high hopes. Such vision. But I guess it didn't take that much to stop you. Not much at all."

My hand gripped the gun. It felt heavy, too heavy to be real. It felt like it weighed a million tons, but I couldn't let it go. It was the only thing I had.

The weight of the gun seemed to increase until the strings holding my hand couldn't sustain it and they snapped.

"Ooh," the woman said. "Wasn't expecting that. How neat!"

I raised the gun as I felt strings encircling my throat. They tightened and I couldn't breathe. My lungs burned and darkness began to crowd my vision and I knew I was helpless. I was going to die here.

And then that feeling of being helpless slipped away. It melted, along with all the strings around my body. Control? I had no control. All my control had slipped away. All my control was now bound together in one bullet. It was a bullet made of string.

Before I could pull the trigger, however, the woman snapped her fingers and everyone in the restaurant fell to the ground. I looked at their faces, each one a grimace. No more smiles.

The woman's face, however, still had the smile. She said, "Bye bye," and then the smile slipped away and she was gone.

I still have the bullet in my pocket. It's waiting to be used.

His skin was a pale, sickly color and it was pockmarked with scabs and scars. He smiled and his teeth were the color of urine.

"Why are you here?" I asked.

"You know why," he said. His voice was weak and straggly, but simultaneously strong. "I know better than the others. I know more than them about the inevitability of death. So here I am. Let's be quick about this."

"You want to die?" I asked.

"No one wants to die," he said. "Not even me. However, that does not stop the slow, inexorable push into oblivion. With every breath, every second, our death grows larger, looms closer. The others think they can avoid it, that by killing you, they can stop it. But I know better. Everything dies. Best to go out now, I say."

I held the gun up. "I need a bullet first," I said.

"You are afraid of death," he said. "Don't deny it. Use it. Everyone fears death. It's that finality, the period at the end of a life, they fear. They cannot conceive of no more moments, of no more time. Not even silence nor darkness."

As he spoke, I took that fear of death, of dying, that nervous, jittery feeling in the pit of my stomach, and I made a bullet. It was a bullet made of grave dirt and coffin wood and it was riddled with worms.

"Good," he said. "I want to feel the end. I've been apart for so long, I want to see how I come together before it's over." He smiled. "United in death. I like that. Go on then. Let me die."

I pulled the trigger. The bullet entered his body and he convulsed like he was having a seizure. As he shook, I saw afterimages of him, echoes of what was inside, as they fell into his body. There were hundreds, thousands, and then, after a minute, there was just him.

He clutched his chest. "Thank you," he said and died.