There are tales to be told, and I will bear witness.
I am alone.
Not in the poetic sense. Not the romantic, windswept, misunderstood genius alone. I mean the real kind. The kind that hums. The kind that glows blue at two in the morning and smells faintly of warm plastic and dust. The kind where the only proof you exist is the reflection staring back at you from a screen that doesn’t care if you’re breathing or not.
The monitor bathes the room in cold light, antiseptic and unforgiving. It strips the color from my walls, my hands, my thoughts. Everything becomes a shade of tired. The city outside my window murmurs to itself—sirens arguing in the distance, a bus coughing at the corner, somebody laughing too loud like they’re trying to convince the night they’re still alive. Inside, it’s just me and the glow.
During the day, I vanish into my work. I put on a different skin. There, I am sharp. Efficient. Dangerous in the quiet way. I conquer problems people pretend aren’t theirs. I bend systems until they admit what they’re hiding. I am respected. I am feared, a little. I am useful. In those hours, I don’t feel the ache. I don’t hear the ticking. I don’t wonder what happens when the lights finally go out and nobody remembers my name.
In the daylight, I am someone else. I am thriving.
But night doesn’t care about any of that.
Night strips me down to what’s left.
When the work is done and the mask cracks, I reach for another exit. Another life. Another door. A controller. A book. A stream. A film that promises meaning if I just keep watching. New worlds spill out at the push of a button, the turn of a page. I become a soldier, a god, a detective, a monster. I die spectacular deaths. I save civilizations. I love harder than I ever have in real life. The possibilities multiply faster than regret.
Every story feels like a beginning. Every beginning feels like a promise.
And every promise ends the same way.
Fade to black.
Credits roll.
Silence moves back in like it owns the place.
That’s when the sorrow hits. Not dramatic. Not cinematic. It’s a low-pressure system settling behind my ribs. A quiet realization that no matter how far I travel, I always come back here. Same chair. Same room. Same clock blinking like an accusation.
Yes, I travel. I’ve crossed oceans, stood under foreign suns, eaten food I couldn’t pronounce and smiled through conversations held together with gestures and bad grammar. I have stamps in a passport that prove I’ve been places people dream about.
But the places in my head? They ruin all of that.
A passport can’t compete with imagination when imagination has teeth.
I think that’s what drew it to me.
Hunger recognizes hunger. Thirst sees itself reflected and nods in approval. There’s no such thing as boredom when discovery is a lifestyle, when curiosity is a compulsion instead of a hobby. I am not just the sum of my labor. I am the weight of my intentions. When I want something to matter, it crashes into the world like a wave that doesn’t ask permission before breaking bone.
Impact. That’s the only scoreboard stories respect.
To be remembered is to survive. To be forgotten is to die twice. Oblivion stalks us all, patient and thorough, erasing names the way tides erase footprints. For people like me, that threat isn’t abstract. It’s a motivator. A blade at the spine.
So I keep going. I speak. I write. I read. I consume and am consumed. I suffer willingly, because suffering means I’m still paying attention.
Your perspective defines despair. Finality turns everyone into collateral damage. Endings don’t discriminate. They take what they want and leave the rest to rot.
So show me something new.
Whisper a different future in my ear. Tell me there’s another path that doesn’t end in static.
The room listens.
The digital clock clicks forward. 01:59 becomes 02:00 like a judge slamming a gavel. The television, left on out of habit, devolves into white noise. Snow and hiss. The sound of nothing pretending to be something. I don’t remember turning it on.
That’s when the hand comes through.
At first, I think it’s my eyes. Fatigue playing tricks. A shadow stuttering in the corner of my vision. But then the noise warps, compresses, like someone squeezing the air out of it. Pixels bend inward. The screen bulges, convex, reality stretching like skin pulled too tight.
A hand pushes through the static.
Not flesh. Not entirely. It’s suggestion and shape, fingers outlined by crawling light. The white noise clings to it like frost. It doesn’t grab blindly. It reaches with purpose.
I freeze.
It’s unclear who needs help here. It’s unclear who is supposed to be afraid.
The sound of cracked knuckles snaps through the room. Too loud. Too close. I realize it’s me. I’ve been sitting too long. My body protests as I stand, joints grinding like a concrete mixer full of broken glass. Blood rushes back into places it abandoned hours ago.
I laugh, weak and automatic. “I’m still alone,” I say, more question than statement. “Right?”
The room answers by not answering.
Then the voice arrives.
“You’ve seen much and yet, nothing at all.”
It doesn’t come from the screen. It doesn’t come from behind me. It comes from everywhere at once, layered and heavy, like a crowd speaking through a single throat.
I turn.
The chair spins before I can stop it. The armrests elongate, metal groaning as they extend, curve, coil. They wrap around my torso with deliberate patience. Cold. Strong. A python hugging its dinner. I should panic. I should scream. Instead, something inside me settles.
This isn’t death.
I’ve met death before. Death is abrupt. Clinical. This is ceremonial.
This is an invitation.
“The hunger is insatiable, isn’t it?”
I grin before I can help myself. Laughter slips out, sharp and honest. “You’ve got no idea,” I say. “So why are you here?”
The air thickens. Pressure builds behind my eyes. The room darkens, corners stretching farther away than geometry allows. A shape unfolds behind me, towering, draped in something like a cloak made of unfinished thoughts. Its face is suggestion and absence, eyes burning with reflected scenes—wars, love affairs, endings stacked on endings.
“I am here,” it says, “because you keep looking.”
Energy crackles. Its hands glow, spilling light like broken stars. They press against the sides of my head. The world lurches.
Everything opens.
Stories slam into me. Not one at a time. All at once. Births and funerals. First kisses and last breaths. Empires rising, collapsing under their own mythologies. I see futures that never happen and pasts that refuse to stay buried. Fiction bleeds into history. History fractures into narrative. Every lie ever told to make the truth bearable screams for equal time.
My eyes burn. Light pours out of them, reflected in the dark glass of the window. I am aware, distantly, of my reflection: glowing, rigid, mouth open in a soundless shout.
The monster—no, the archivist, the parasite, the god of stories—leans closer.
“You wanted impact,” it says. “You wanted to matter.”
I want to argue. I want to say this isn’t what I meant. But the truth is radioactive and I’ve already swallowed it.
“Yes,” I whisper.
The static behind me explodes into color. A mosaic of everything ever imagined, flashing faster than thought. The chair tightens. The energy surges.
Something breaks.
Not my body. My boundaries.
I am no longer just watching stories. I am inside them. Outside them. Above and beneath. I see the threads connecting everything—why one word spoken too late becomes a tragedy, why another spoken too early becomes a myth. I feel the weight of unresolved endings pressing against my spine.
It hurts.
It’s beautiful.
The thing behind me withdraws its hands. The light doesn’t fade. It stays, humming in my skull.
“You are no longer a consumer,” it says. “You are a witness.”
The bindings release. I slump forward, gasping, palms slapping against the desk. The room snaps back into place. The TV is dark. The clock reads 02:01.
I am alone again.
Except I’m not.
The glow remains, reflected in every dark surface. The city outside feels louder, sharper, like it knows I can see it now. Stories cling to people as they pass, invisible threads vibrating with meaning. I understand them instinctively. Their beginnings. Their endings. The lie they tell themselves to get through the day.
I sit back in the chair. It feels smaller now. Temporary.
I look at the screen.
It looks back.
And somewhere, in the vast, echoing archive of everything that ever was or could be, something smiles—because it knows I will never stop watching.
The Story Monster 