I think I might be going insane.

Either that or something very, very strange is

happening.

To start, I have no history of mental illness. I've been depressed once or twice, but
for normal reasons (homesick, break up, etc). I've smoked pot a few times, I drink
socially, but that's about the extent of my drug use. However, I think I've begun to
hallucinate or something. I don't generally believe in the paranormal, but I figured
maybe you guys could help.

I think this started about five months ago. I was still seeing my 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. I
started getting suspicious.

To make a long story shorter, one day I was over at 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 and still. 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 another 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, no 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 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 me 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 but 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 Mom 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 the man 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 site.

I bolted. 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 it's 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 1:30am, 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 please don't be disappointed. This is
pieced together from what I remember and what Mom told me. I really really hope
this doesn't like draw something out by talking about this. I mean I'm really
paranoid here.

Alright. One 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
away breath and hated everything that wasn't his Kingdom.

All the beings in the Quiet Place lived in fear and sadness. The couldn't ever leave
because the King would hunt them down and eat them if they did. Even worse, the
King would have them sneak to our world and steal things. They would steal voices
or memories, shiny things and toys, sometimes hearts and sometimes people. Some
of them liked this, but some 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 it meant that no one would play with him
or do anything but what the King wanted. He decided that the only way to solve this
was to become King.

(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 breath while he was
sleeping. Beau then crawled inside the boy's skin and waited for the King to 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 stolen voice perfectly (even
then when he was telling me. This made me cry and Beau had to stop telling so we
could play another game. However, he really wanted to finish 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. There
Beau pulled out all the voices that had been festering and rotting away inside and
he ate them all for himself. After stealing all that power, it was really 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 not happy.

Even though he had all the King's voices and now that he was King everybody had
to do what he said, he was lonely. He got bored. Everything was always the same in
the Quiet Place, and while he promised all the shadow people and other creatures
that they wouldn't have to hunt for him, he was growing restless. He felt all the
voices inside him, and he wondered what some fresh ones might be like. So he
started to wander.

First he would only steal little bits at a time while people slept. He'd slip out from
under their beds or crawl in through there window if there was no moon out. They'd
only wake up with very sore throats and bad dreams, so no one would really be
hurt.

Unfortunately, this only made him more hungry. The more time went on, the less
happy he was with just a little taste. He wanted much more. He thought about
stealing voices just like the Bad King had before him.
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 very
sad. At the time, my favorite movie was Peter Pan, and I remembered how Wendy
had met Peter sort of like this, so I tried to make myself be brave.

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

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

I told him he couldn't because I was using it. He said he knew I was. He had 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 the start. I can tell you about Beau and the Dark Place. That's a
little less "little girl heartwarming" and a lot more "I told this to mom because I was
having nightmares about it"

>>3448525

Sorry, 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 has decided to collect my voice, which
is terrifying, or there's something else pretending to be Beau, which is terrifying. I
really don't know what to do.

-
Okay so, Beau and the Dark Place.

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

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

Now why I was worried about a monster in my closet when I had this thing for an
imaginary friend is totally beyond me, but there's no getting little kid logic.

Anyway, this made Beau furious. He snarled and stomped and even 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 every naptime
even though there was no longer a monster in my closet, but it didn't do any good.
Finally one night I woke up. Beau slipped through my window and sat down on the
floor next to my bed. He looked terrible. It took another few days before he had
enough voices back so that he could tell me the story.

Beau marched right back into the closet, straight into the darkest shadows. As
you /x/files might know, closet shadows are some of the darkest. It took a very long
time, but he was determined. No one was allowed to scare me as long as I was his.

Soon the shadows began to move and groan. 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 closed because
they had screamed for so long. Some of them 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. All of them had spent so long trapped in this darkness
that they had clearly gone insane.

That's when Beau knew this was no normal darkness. This Dark Place was very,
very old. Of course Beau insisted none of this concerned 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 would taste good anyway.

He walked along the tunnel for a long time until he finally came to a bigger cave.
The walls were made of old bones and shadows instead of faces. Every now and
then he thought one of the skulls moved just a little, but they were likely all faded
away. He said it smelled of rotten. Not flesh or meat. Just pure decay.

He called out to the back of the cave, which went on for so long that he couldn't see
the end.

"I am the King of the Quiet Place. You are trying to steal what is 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 only out of the corners of your eyes could you really
get a fix on it. It crawled out on a thousand hands, dragging its bloated form along
the ground of its den like a giant slug. It had at least a hundred eyes that looked in
all directions. Some of them were gouged out and some of them 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 said, "Didn't you tell her to hide under her covers? Doesn't she know to
go right to sleep?"

Beau said, "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. I can fight you too."

The Beast laughed, and that made Beau even angrier than he already was. He
screamed and let loose one of his angriest, strongest voices. It bounced along the
walls of the cave, crumbling the bones and breaking rocks before breaking half of
the Beast's teeth. That made the Beast angry, 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
against the wall next to the tunnel.

The faces that weren't so old they had rotted to nothing but bones bit and tore at
him, and the darkness started to burn into him, but 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, 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," it said.

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 all 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. Some of the hunters might even 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 from that
monster. He said he really hadn't 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 of his favorite songs for the next few days. Otherwise he swore
he'd steal mine and just be done with it.

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 said was,
"Please stop."

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

So I went into my bedroom, checked every freaking corner of the place to make
sure no one and nothing 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 my covers. I asked all of the questions and
waited for a response. I didn't get any, and I was honestly starting to just feel
agitated and stupid.

I can't stress to you all enough that I don't do this kind of thing. I'm really not into
all the ghost and magic stuff, not in real life. I know what I'm about to say next is
going to sound stupid and crazy, but I want to give every detail I possibly can just in
case it can 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 warm and fuzzies. I just felt
some sensation or change in the atmosphere of my room that I can't explain.

Then 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 it the hell out of my bedroom for the second
time tonight. Like that is just too much for me. It might be easy for you guys to call
me a pansy where you are, but you're not the girl alone in a dark apartment dealing
with some strange crap.

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.

Thanks, guys.

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.

Alright. Our adventures continue here, I guess.

Hopefully someone will be nice enough to provide a link to the archive of the first
thread. I'm taking on a tripcode only because it'll make things less confusing and be
easier to spot in the thread. Otherwise I'm not interested in attention whoring or
anything like that. I want to get better, and if people find this entertaining, that's
just a pleasant side effect, 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 mother reminded me that when I was a kid, I had a
creepy imaginary friend named Beau who told me strange stories and caused
silences like what I've been experiencing now. Like I said, please read because the
first thread makes a lot more sense than that summary.

Anyway, I got a couple hours of sleep on my 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 really 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 what my complaints are. All I told him was, I had started hearing a voice
and it was really worrying me. My therapist was actually very reassuring. He said
that often people immediately jump to schizophrenia when it comes to hearing
voices, but it's not always the case. Imaginary friends stem from a child's blurred
line between imagination and reality, and they arise out of a need for control or
comfort. If this imaginary friend has come back, it could be a sign that my mind is
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 horrible like that. We started the process of getting my
insurance to OK a CTscan.

His suggestion in the meantime is first to get some sleep. He said it's totally
possible that I'm sleep deprieved, and that combined with the stress of moving and
breaking up might be causing this. He also wants me to stop being scared. If I'm
going crazy, we'll handle it somehow. If there is something traumatic in my past,
one school of thought finds it important to acknowledge what the voices are saying
in order to determine what they might be 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 isn't telling me to set myself on fire or kill
someone. I'm not personally suicidal or even depressed, so he said it was no
problem respecting my desire to not go on heavy 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.

So 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 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, please 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 the time I was around 4 till I was 7, almost 8.

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

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

-The reason why, real or not, Beau freaks me out is that 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 to be aware of an underlying
danger.

-At the same time, he never hurt me. This time around the voice hasn't hurt me. It's
helped me catch my cheating ex and freaked me out just by 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 sort of fame or attention. Outside the threads, the tripcode goes.
I just want to fix this and get my normal, boring life back. If /x/ is entertained, that's
good too.

-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.

That's totally possible, and I'm not discrediting any theories at this point. However, I
think it's important to note that it's been months and I'm really not that torn up
about him cheating on me. I think I said in the thread last night, our relationship
was already kind of cold. The break up was nasty but no moreso than any other I've
been through. I moved on, and I have had sex since then.

But. That doesn't mean something during it didn't trigger a defense like you're
saying, so who knows?

Alright. I'm going to tell these stories 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 again, sorry if they're stupid. I was 4.

First story: 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 occured 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
shrivelled with stringy hair and rotted teeth. Some were beautiful, but they had
emptyness 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 said, "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."
They said, "There is only one thing we want that you have. 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 pinchers and claws. He knew they wouldn't stop until they ate away
everything that he was 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
dug inside of his mouth and eat him inside out.

He said, "I can give you something better than just my body."
They all 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. 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 light 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 eated 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. The last one was sappy because
I wanted to show that maybe Beau isn't all bad. This next one, honestly, scares me.

>>3451689

Both. That's why I said, if they seem stylized it's because I'm trying to cobble this
together from old memories and things my mom has said. For instance, I have a
nagging feeling there was more to that Moon story, but there's no way to know now.

>>3451577

This I actually do remember. I woke up in the middle of the night and Beau was
sitting on the edge of my bed. He said something like, "I'm leaving now. I'll miss
you."

I remember this because I felt very sad. It was like losing a real friend to me at the
time. That's all, though. To my knowledge we didn't talk about anything else.

When I called my mom to talk to her about Beau, she became very serious.
Normally my mom is as 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 is very 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 sure quite what to
think about 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 healthy, happy 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 just something I needed.
And anyway some of the 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 way 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 asked me 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 theif. My mom would find random things hidden all around
my room. Sometimes stuff would show up that she had no idea where I had gotten.
Of course I blamed it on Beau, and she told me that I had been inform "Beau" to
quit taking things that didn't belong to him and find a new game.

Honestly this probably wasn't paranormal and was me. I was as terrible as any wild
kid at that 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 away from my bed 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 into while asleep or spots she should have heard
me going for. 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 have heard me come in and lay down in there. The cabinet was almost
impossible to get into and she 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 there 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 that she could
have dreamed the whole thing or the memory could just be blurred by time. But she
feels confident enough in this to tell me about it, which makes me think she feels
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 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 as she woke up and tried to figure out what was going on. As she
watched, her door opened.

The door opened with no sound, and as you all probably 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 aparently sleepwalking, but I was crawling on
my fingers and twos with weird, balanced crocodile kind of movements. I silently
passed through her room and into the little hall that connected her bathroom and
her 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 somehow seemed thicker. 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, my mom was pretty unsettled. She held the gold 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 she felt 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 that 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.

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 in my
mom's closet, 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 bad bite or anything like that
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 more of his voice 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
seriously an unsettling mental image, and as a kid if I really did imagine this, 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 to the window and beckoned me over. He didn't say this outloud,
but somehow I knew in the way that 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 our backyard.
It was a normal lawn with some trees and a swingset, closed in by a privacy fence.
The whole scene was flooded with moonlight and silent, 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 until 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 angry 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 definitely 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 them or see where they had run to, but they were definitely gone. In
the distance I heard what sounded like an awful catfight. For those of you who have
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 kind of 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.

Be right back. Noise in the kitchen.

I honestly don't know. I really don't. I think that's why I'm here in /x/ 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'm running to /x/ because I'm lost

Sorry guys. I 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.

First of all, I'm really flattered that you guys like the stories. Even with all the
bizarre shit happening, I don't want to be bothering or boring people. I really like
this board, and no matter how bad this gets for me, I don't want to be shitting
things up for everyone else too. Also, I got a look at the art, and you are all
extremely talented. Thank you so much for sharing. Also please, please forgive me
if there are typos or I ramble. I'm working on like 5 hours of sleep over the past two
days here.

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 ti,me
I try to think back, there's more. And I mean maybe there are lots and lots of them
because we're taking about a good 3 or 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
embarassing to admit, but because I was raised by a good Christian mother who
drilled into me 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 thread 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 one but
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 becaue 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 dreamstate (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, as this picture
explains, 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. As my
imaginary friend 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 would pass /x/'s test, but at the time it was good
enough for me.
I 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 ever 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 clearing coming from him not in my head or anything like that.
He was going to say something else, but his chest spasms 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 eyes 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
worst 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 CTscan 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 "Vox". He said my name. Just assume
from now on if Vox is used, it's just a stand in for my real name.)

Anyway, I think the topic of tonight's stories is dreams. 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 now
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 ever 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 stead.

"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."

Alright. Before I continue, let me answer these questions.

>>3458771

No, sorry. I don't think the way I look has anything to do with the stories and plus
the other poster is right. I would have avoided even saying I was a girl if I hadn't
thought it might help with diagnosing whatever the problem is.

>>3458717

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.

>>3458819

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. What I could see of his body looked
like an NBA player's, about that size with a longish neck. His smile is way too wide.
He has high cheekbones and big eyes. He had white hair and it was brushed back.

>>3458743

Believe me, I've noticed this. Everything is concerned with eating or taking.
However, this might just be from "Beau's point of view" because he seems so
focused on collecting things.

Let me just say this. No one has to believe me. Seriously. I'm not doing this for
attention and I don't need internet fame. I'm writing this stuff out because it helps
me to get them out of my head, and if someone here finds something in the stories
that might give clues as to why I'm going nuts or what it is I'm seeing, all the better.
That's why the only thing I ask is that you help if you can.

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."

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 Dark 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. This 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 thrist 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.

Sorry it's taking so long for me to write tonight. I'm so fried from everything, but I
feel like I have to keep this up.

>>3459112
>>3459068

All of the above. I explained in the last thread that these stories are a mix of things I
remember and my mom reminded me of. They might seem more coherent because
I've seriously been obsessing over this stuff and taking down notes of anything that
comes to me. I feel like there must be some clue as to why I'm going insane or Beau
is back or whatever in these stories, and if any little detail can help someone on
here get something out of it then I want to make sure I've got it all down. Plus it just
clears my head to get these out and have other people look over them so I'm not so
alone, you know?

>>3459096

Haha I honestly didn't think the stories were that good. They're just stupid stuff I
made up when I was a kid. I was more concerned about people being bored to tell
you the truth. But I do remember some guy asking if he could write a book about
this in the first thread and that really pissed me off. Like this is my life, you know?
Stealing is not cool. It might be a good idea. I'll look into it.

Hah, no. And not David Bowie or Johnny Depp, though that's not for lack of wishing.
He's got flesh on him. He just doesn't look especially human. I know there was some
amazing art in the last couple threads with some good interpretations. 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 in that dream.

Next one is Beau and the Child Snatchers.

I'm sorry but my head is pounding so bad I can't think and it's 4am here. I promise
I'll have more stories tomorrow, and I'll write them down beforehand so it'll go much
faster.
I'll stick around and answer questions. I just can't seem to think straight at the
moment.

>>3459315

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's having 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.

>>3459353

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.

->>3459392

Yes. He looked at the moon, loved the moonlight, etc. Incidentally, tonight is the
Wolf Moon (brightest full moon of the year).

>>3459405
>>3459388

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.

>>3459418

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

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

Wow. How about I not hit submit before I finish typing?

Anyway. 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 hut 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 are 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 are 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 were 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 occured 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 terrifed me, I forced myself to open my eyes. Staring up at the ceiling abover 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 gate 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 vainity 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 crossdressing
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 was 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 snacktime.

"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.

Which is not fishing for compliments either. I'm just saying, it'll be more efficient.

>>3464630

That was the end. It's a lead in to the Child Snatcher story because I realized that one might not make
sense unless you see how Beau was "teaching" me.

>>3464711

I'm at least writing the Child Snatchers now, and I'll answer questions.

>>3464673

Yes, he did mention things around me, which is sort of what the next story is about. Our adventure
sessions began to center around seeing these beings around me, but who knows how much of this is
paranormal or just little kid playing. Beau left the impression that some of the beings were always around
and some specifically targeted the people who could notice them or left themselves open. I think that's
what he meant by being caught.

Do you happen to know why a spirit would become attached to a person? Assuming this is a spirit and I'm
not crazy, I don't think I did anything to attract it. I've never talked to anyone spiritual about this stuff. I
wouldn't know who or how. That's why I came to /x/.

>>3464758

Not to read into it, but Beau's hunters were shadows. I used to "watch" them dance around my room
when he was around.

Beau never identified as human. Maybe he once was and he was totally warped and nuts, but I don't
know. He looked more like something trying to be human than a human trying to be something else, that
makes any sense.

Please do talk to your friend. I appreciate any insight I can get.

Sure, sorry. I missed it before. No, he doesn't seem like he's changed at all though he looked more real to
me. That might be because most of my memories have that early childhood memory haze on them, but
rather than being imaginary he looked, felt, sounded, and smelled real.

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.

To recap, when I was little I had an imaginary friend named Beau. He said he was the King of the Quiet
Place and stole voices from people. We played all sorts of games and he told me lots of stories. Five
months ago, I began to hear a voice. It started as a warning about my ex, then became creepy silences
and whispers in my apartment. A few days ago, I saw someone in my room. All of these sightings and
voices are like Beau. I've been to a therapist and I have a CT Scan scheduled for Wednesday. It may be
that there's something wrong with my brain or I'm becoming schizophrenic.

Paranormally speaking, Beau may be back to haunt me.

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 staring 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. Like this is something I wrote down this
afternoon:
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 trippy 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. 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 fourwheeler 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, /x/. 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. Like I'm losing speaking all together.

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 its 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, /x/. How do I confront Beau? How can I dig into my own mind?

My nausea has kind of subsided for a second, so I'm going to make myself a snack really quickly.
Answering questions too.

>>3472315
>>3472369

I really don't mind tripcodes and I wasn't upset about last night. Discussion in the threads might help me
figure things out too, so don't be afraid to talk.

For the record, I love you all too. It's good to know I'm not alone. I'm really not looking for pity or attention.
I'm just so scared, you know? I'm not the kind of person who goes looking for any of this stuff. It's just
found me.

>>3472438

The shrink says people can hear voices without being schizophrenic. He wants my brain checked out,
and he wants me to face Beau and see if my mind isn't trying to cope with something. Maybe there was a
traumatic memory I've been keeping suppressed and something triggered Beau again as protection or
maybe there's some unresolved stuff rattling around.

>>3472523
Not in any way that would traumatize me or leave a lasting impression. My family is very close, and
they've always been supportive to a point that's boring. My mom and I fought when I was a teen, but it
was typical teenage stuff. My brother and I get along pretty well. I've had friends.

>>3472463

Please don't say that. If I do have some sort of tumor, I don't want to die, and I definitely don't want some
childhood demon eating my voice.
>>3472530

So how do I open my mind? What could he be? I need to know what I'm up against.

>>3472519

No, you are completely right. I haven't been sleeping well, but I've been trying to get naps as often as
possible. My dreams lately have been super vivid. Example: Last night I dreamed that I got up to go to the
bathroom. I looked in the mirror and a beetle crawled out of my right ear.

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 (hurrhurrhurr)

-Hypnosis
-Ouija board
-That thing where you put pingpong balls on your eyes and play white noise.

This is clearly why I need your help.

Okay, I can sing. Got it. 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?

>>3472681
Aside from mace him, since I don't have a gun.

>>3472712

I did. It resulted in a weird sounding sigh and I chickened out before jumping ship. Now I'm too tired and
desperate to chicken out.

>>3472760
I've asked this a couple times. Why would a trans-dimensional being be bothering with me? I'm nobody.

>>3472757

It is possible. However, maybe I'm just biased, but he never struck me as a liar. In all the stories he had
certain qualities you can tell he cared most about. Justice, strength, speed, etc. More than anything, he
was vain. He didn't even like people mispronouncing his name. It wasn't even a defensive thing. Why be
so violently vain about a lie?

I'm sure he didn't actually fall in love with the rock in space moon. But maybe it was something else and
that's just the best name to put on it? Who knows?

Thank you so much for the advice guys. I know this isn't as interesting as the stories, but I want some
solutions, you know? It beats waiting around to hear whether or not my brain is eating itself.

And to those talking about medical conditions, believe me, I know. I was on WedMD all this morning. I just
figure I'll leave that to the trained medical professionals and not get myself worked up over death odds.

>>3472924

He lets the voices fall out of his mouth without using his lips, but it definitely comes from his throat. I can't
do that, sorry.

>>3472946

Nah. I started playing music back when this all started to see if it would stop the silences from happening,
but it didn't work. I think he likes voices coming from the source. I don't think I'm a very good singer. As
I've said, I have no idea why he'd be attracted to my voice over anyone else. I'm just lucky, I guess (hurrr).

No, I think I was too afraid to. I know that one boy, he stole his breath and wore his skin. Whatever it is, I
don't think it's good.

Might be a good idea. In some of the stories, the piece of the moon acts like a conscience. To him. Might
work.

>>3472973
Right. He wasn't speaking with his mind. He was definitely making sound. That's what makes these
sightings so bizarre. I mean no offense, but it's one thing to hear something in your head you can just
shrug off or see something see-through briefly. This was flesh and blood. It was so real.

Alright, anyone have any question requests for Beau? Anything I should look for or pay attention to?
_

Alright. So here is what I'm going 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.

__

I know. I'm late.

As always, I appreciate everything you've done to help me. If it matters, I'm feeling much more calm. 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 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 travelled 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."

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 transdimensional 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 livingroom 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 gutteral 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 offguard enough to snap me out of my terror. Anger welled up again within
me, and I think I might have glared into his face. Honestly though, I probably just looked like I was going
to throw up all over him. Either way, he wasn't toying with me as I expected. 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.

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 embarassing 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. 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 embarassment and frustration on my Uncle Joe'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.

Which, 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 and embarassed 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 tapdancing. "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 saddened. 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 vengence. 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 more calm. 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.

>>3478911

The memories are like after you've read a book. You know how you can see it in your mind from the
descriptions? It's like that. I don't know if they actually looked the way I'm describing (beyond what Beau
said). I just figure it makes the stories less boring.
__

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 bloodwork will still take 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 it's 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. Like I've said from the beginning, I'm not interested in attention or e-fame. If a week from now
no one knows who "Vox" was, that's fine by me.

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 adament in protecting them (even spent money copyrighting 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. 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 laying on my stomach, and
across the bed I saw the top of a man's head staring at me. Everything about him was real. I could see
his pale skin and milky eyes. I saw his wrinkles, white hair, and even the pores on his cheeks. 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 outright
touch him. But as I rested my hand there before him, he lifted his 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.

__

This is 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, traveller," 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 quiet 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 at 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 all together, 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.

"Is 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 errupted 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 was 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 corpse 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 childeaters, the woman-
monster had a very large oven, and like so many childeaters, 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.
__

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 stood by my bed 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. 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 darknesses 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 no 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
will 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 now?"
Beau knew, just as the Stars did, that no matter how sad 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 that she was there.

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

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

___

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