Whispers

I'm a murderer.

I'm responsible for the deaths of 75 within two weeks. I've stabbed men to death, rendered bodies to ash, killed children in the womb, and even drowned whole ships at sea. I have changed the fate of kingdoms and seen to it that uncharted planets remain unfound. I would likely be the most prolific serial killer in the United States if not for one problem.

The police claim that if murdering fictional characters was a crime, they'd have to jail Stephen King and George R for multiple life sentences.

They say this as they laugh me out of the police station. They think it's a joke or that I'm not right in the head, but I can assure you that I'm as right as I've ever been. I listened to them tell their stories for years, and I've heard them scream when I ended their lives. I'm a murderer, pure and simple, and their blood is on my hands.

You're probably reading this, though, and thinking to yourself that I'm ready for a rubber room.

Let me start from the beginning.

I've always been a creative mind. When I was younger, I could hear them whisper to me about their homes, their verdant green kingdoms, the sterile majesty of their space ships, the feel of the rolling deck beneath their feet, and so much more. It manifested in my games, and my school friends would always gather around to see what today's adventure would be. We traveled the cosmos, fought wars between elves and men, and roamed imaginary prairies as we hunted wrongdoers on horseback.

As I grew older, the voices grew louder, more insistent, and their stories became my stories. I wrote about the kingdoms of my youth, the adventures of my childhood, and by the time I was 20, I had five books published; one even made the New York Times bestseller list. As I grew, so grew my fame. My writing was prolific, and all the while, the voices told me their story. I took my readers to fantastic places, and their patronage allowed me to live quite well. By the time I was 30, I had a home, a family, and enough published works to fill a bookshelf.

That was when the problem started.

It all started with Aberdeen Price, dashing archaeologist adventure. He told me of his next adventure, a trip to the City of Bone. However, I was working on something else at the time and didn't want to divert effort away from my current project. So I wrote some notes and promised myself that I would sit down and give some time to Aberdeen Price as soon as I was done.

This apparently wasn't good enough for Aberdeen. He came every night in my dreams and told me his story, over and over and over again, until finally, I couldn't take it anymore. I stopped what I was doing, and I diverted all my attention to writing his next book. It was a hit, a bestseller, and the biggest mistake of my life.

You see, this showed the voices that they could get what they wanted by badgering me. Every night from that night on, they would come to me and tell me their stories, each overlapping the other until I couldn't take it anymore.

"The kingdom of Verdengreen was once more at the mercy of the dark wizard Zophgor. His evil army threatens the"

"scanners once more alert Kelvern Gorl that he is nearing his destination. The dark planet Zephdes rises from the blackness of space as he"

"See the island of Cat'Mandreen off the starboard side of Elizabeth's Folly. The shore is quiet, but Captain Cree can sense the natives amongst the trees as he nears his"

"Quarry. The elusive Dr. Burton will strike again this night, and I will be ready to..."

Their voices towered in my mind like the screams of children as they try to make themselves heard.

That was my first mental breakdown and my worst.

My wife arrived home in time to save me from bleeding to death.

They put me in an institution for three weeks after that. Lisa thought it was all the strain of my busy writing schedule. "The strain of writing so much must have just become too much for you," she said as she stood at my bedside and looked down with pity at her poor, brilliant husband.

She had no idea. The worst part wasn't the IVs or the sedative, not the shitty tv that stayed on in my room 24/7, the sounds of sorrow from down the hall, or even the constant itching from the healing cuts on my arms.

It was the week and a half that I spent with my hands in restraints.

Without my hands, I couldn't write. Without writing, there was no way to stop the shrieking harpies in my brain from driving me insane. It took me a while to convince them that writing was a kind of therapy for me. The battle was made all the harder by my wife's constant arguments about how the writing had put me here in the first place. After a week and a half of no change, though, they let me began to see that there might be some sense to my arguments. I began to write again, and the change was noticeable. I started sleeping, became less hostile, finished my meals, and a month later, they were ready to let me go home.

The voices started ramping up again almost immediately. By this point in my career, I had seven stories running on and off; that's a lot of voices trying to be heard. I tried to keep up with them, but I could feel my sanity slipping again as they screamed for my attention day and night. By my second week home, my wife was ready to have me committed all over again. I had stopped sleeping and would lock myself in my study for days to make the voices stop for even a few minutes.

That's when my first murder took place.

That's not to say that no one had ever died in one of my stories. Characters die in stories, this is the nature of storytelling, but this was the first time I'd ever deviated from the path set by the voices. Detective Sam Umbridge was coming to the climactic end of his latest crime novel, and the shootout with the killer was becoming heated. I had meant to write that Dario West, the antagonist of this novel, was struck by Sam's bullet as he leaned around the door frame, but before I knew what I'd done, I'd written the death of beloved gumshoe Sam Umbridge instead. I had moved on to the next sentence before I caught my error, but it was too late by then.

He died in my head with a gut-wrenching scream, and just like that, his voice was mercifully silent.

For a moment, all the voices were silent.

It was as though they had all seen what I had done in my manic state.

I cleaned up the draft a little before sending it off. Sam and Dario had killed each other in the shootout, and Sam had died victoriously. Fans hated that Detective Umbridge would never make another appearance on their shelves, but they accepted it. The end was widely praised by fans and critics alike, an all-around success. My agent even called to congratulate me on the climax of such a loved series and to ask if everything was going alright for me?

"Last time we talked, you sounded as though you were a little shell shocked."

I guess I was in shock, now that I think about it. The process really made me think. Why not kill what was driving me crazy? I didn't have to kill them all, just enough of them to make the voices quiet down a little. Like any prolific serial killer will tell you, it's hard to stop once you've started.

Before I quite realized what I'd done, I'd ended them all. I ended my eight-book fantasy series with the deaths of the entire court and the eventual fall of the protagonist and his order. I watched as Kelvern Gorl flew his ship and crew into the Phantom Night, where certain doom awaited, and he would never be heard from again. After sinking the ship of his arch-rival, I had the Spanish Armada sink Elizabeth's Folly with all hands aboard while Captain Cree floated atop the waves after taking a sword to the belly. I dropped a tomb on the head of Aberdeen Price, the one to start this descent and make the ruins his tomb in turn. I killed them all, one by one, and the fans were livid.

"How could you just kill them?"

"Why wouldn't you simply end the series on a high note?"

"Why did they all have to die?"

I toyed with the idea of ending their series, but I knew that it wouldn't work the moment I thought it. They were never my stories to end. They were only my stories to tell. If I left them alive, they would always want just one more adventure. Killing them was all I could do to stop the descent into madness, and as I lay down to sleep that night, I felt myself smile at the thought of my long-awaited sleep.

It never came.

I've been staring at my sleeping wife for the last seven hours as I keep court with the whispering dead. Their spirits are unwilling to die, the part of my soul I put inside them reluctant to rest. It's only now that I see the folly of my actions. The dead, you see, are not to be satiated with adventure or the continued joy of existence. They moan, and wail, and bemoan their lives and loves that we're taken too soon.

At first, it was only for me that I wept.

Now, I see that this curse won't end with me.

You see, I watched my daughter as she played in the park yesterday. She played in the sandbox, her dolls, and her brother's action figures playing out an adventure of her own creation. I watched her going about her games of make-believe. When I asked her about it over lunch, she told me a story of knights and castles, hunts for dragons, and brave warriors protecting those in need from harm.

It was a story just like the ones I made up as a child.

The kingdom was similar to the one I left in ashes.

I beg you, anyone out there who hears the whispers, don't pass this gift to others. It must end with us and never darken the mind again. I must keep my own vigil now. I must watch my own daughter now before the madness takes hold. I can't let the whispers take her too.

Even if it means the death of another one of my creations, I won't let the madness have her.