Nicholas sat at his desk, typing away on the keyboard of his desktop computer. He had been working on his book The Withering for almost three hours now, but due to extreme perfectionism and writer’s block, he only had but a couple of sentences written. God damn it Nicholas! Why is that every time you sit at the computer ready to type, your mind goes blank! Why! Damn it! Why! I’m sick of this crap! Nonsense just pours from my mind like shit from my ass! This is the worst thing I’ve ever written!

Nicholas slammed his fist into the keyboard, enraged at his muse. He was spending more time venting vitriol to himself then he was writing. Fuck this! Nicholas saved his work to the hard drive and walked downstairs to take a break and see what his friend/roommate, James, was up to.

“Hey James…” Nicholas opened the refrigerator to pull out a bottle of Fosters Beer.

“Hey Nicholas—how’s it goin’!?” James said, averting his attention from the documentary James was watching on television.

“Pretty shitty… my muse apparently likes to fuck my mind in the ass whenever it gets a chance…” Nicholas popped the bottle of beer open and made no hesitation to guzzle it down.

“Ah… writer’s block gettin’ to you eh?” James dug his hand into the bowl of popcorn nestled between his legs, stuffing abundant amounts into his mouth.

“Yeah…” Nicholas took a seat on the leather-couch next to James. He raised his eyebrows in befuddlement when the documentary cut to a scene of a Rhinoceros standing up on its hind legs propping itself against the behind of another Rhinoceros where it then began to move its hips in a forward and back motion. “What the hell is this?”

“Some kind of documentary on Rhinos,” James said, “Man oh man… now I know what Ben Affleck had to go through when fucking J. Lo,” James sat there, staring at Nicholas who was engrossed in the documentary, expecting some kind of a cackle from him. Since childhood, James always loved to make people laugh (that is, if he could), even though he usually failed and ended up making a fool out of himself. Nicholas found most of his jokes to be hackneyed or of poor taste. “Yo!” James tapped him on the shoulder. “Did you not get what I said!?”

“What… that sorry excuse for a joke? Ha, ha, haa—that was lame… there, you happy?” Nicholas gulped down the rest of his beer and shot up out of his seat towards the kitchen to pull out another bottle of Foster Beer from the fridge.

“What furry little critter crawled up your ass this morning?”

Nicholas ignored James and proceeded upstairs to make another attempt at writing. He opened up the file he saved his book to and again… it was happening. Everything about his writing was off. He couldn’t structure his sentences the way he wanted to. He was having a hard time finding the correct word even after rummaging through his vocabulary list. It was so bad that he couldn’t even type a full sentence without having to delete it to start it all over again. It was just a matter of moments when he decided to give it up for the night.

He opened American Online and logged on to check his mail. What he found was a series of e-mails advertising penis-enlargements and breast augmentations, instead of anything worth reading save a piece of mail from his boss at work—his other job as an Asst. Manager.

Nicholas sighed after being informed of the ill tidings, OH lovely, I get to go back to that hellhole in a couple days!

Sure, Nicholas was a published writer, but unfortunately most writers make mere pennies to begin with, and Nicholas had only just recently had his first book, Black Moon Rising, published.

He clicked on his favorite places list and opened up one of his favorite chatrooms, Shreknet, a place where writers in the area gathered together to talk about well… writing. Unfortunately that night, it wasn’t his favorite place to be. Nicholas was ranting about his frustration with writer’s block and he may as well have done so in front of a brick wall, seeing that no one was paying any remote attention to him. Nicholas clicked the X at the top right corner of the window to cross out the website. As he was about to sign off, an instant message box came up.

Bloodrose13: Hello

Nicholas clicked the buddy info button at the bottom of the message box to see that there was no profile on file.

Zeus13420: Uh, hello… may I ask who this is?
Bloodrose13: A wanderer… looking for conversation.
Zeus13420: Um, okay… may I ask who this is?
Bloodrose13: Ohhhh… quite eager for answers are you…well… I’ll tell you this much, I’m no one you know… but I know full well who you are…

Nicholas grimaced. He didn’t much like how the conversation was starting.

Zeus13420: Uh… okay…
Bloodrose13: I see in your profile that you’re a writer…
Zeus13420: Yeah… and?
Bloodrose13: What do you write about?

If there was anything Nicholas hated it was when people asked him what he wrote about. But nonetheless, he usually tried to be as polite about it as possible.

Zeus13420: My writings vary from time to time, If you’re interested, I have a book on the market right now called Black Moon Rising. The best place to get it is at www.harperbooks.com.
Bloodrose13: mmkay… I’ll see to it that I am privy to your book at sometime.
Zeus13420: Okay…
Bloodrose13: So, Nicholas, do you have an actual job? I mean aside from being a writer… surely you aren’t making a living just off writing alone.
Zeus13420: I’m an Asst. Manager
Bloodrose13: An Asst. Manager for what…
Zeus13420: Lets just say retail…
Bloodrose13: Oh really? Well that’s an oxymoron… I couldn’t picture such a man as yourself working in such a field. Do you work at like a department store?
Zeus13420: Yeah… you could say that.
Bloodrose13: Where?
Zeus13420: A store.
Bloodrose13: :) Which store?
Zeus13420: I’d rather not say
Bloodrose13: And why is that?
Zeus13420: Because I don’t feel it is necessary to tell you.
Bloodrose13: Why not?
Zeus13420: Why the hell are you so adamant on knowing where I work?
Bloodrose13: Now, now darling… there’s no need to get hostile … I’m just curious is all.
Zeus13420: Well tell your curiosity to go fuck itself because I’m not going to tell you where I work. I’m a writer and an Asst. Manager, leave it at that.
Bloodrose13: You know… for a writer you’re not much of a conversationalist… that is of course if you are actually a writer… or if you just simply fancy yourself one...

That was it. Nicholas had enough. He opened up his settings and put the screename on block. After just moments, he received an e-mail from the same person. It read:

The night is a mysterious mistress who cloaks the world in tenebrous veils and treads the earth with the daemons of dread…

Nicholas was much perturbed by the words he had read. As he pondered the bizarre e-mail, he could hear James plodding up the stairs, “Say, Nicholas…” he said leaning up against the door, “What do you say we go clubbin’ tomorrow night… who knows, you might meet a woman… ya’ know… one of those really weird things with tits…”

“Yeah, sounds great,” Nicholas said, not paying much attention.

“You’re not listening to me are you…”

“ I’m busy…”

James smiled, “Ohhhhh! I’m sorry man… am I interrupting your preparation for a little one handed typing… I bet you’re just waitin’ for me to leave so you can get your rocks off on some kinky hermaphrodite porn,”

“Fuck you James.”

James laughed and walked off, “Have a good one man, I’m goin’ to bed.”

In Nicholas’s world—and in probably many others—strange e-mails were common. After reading over the enigmatic phrase at least a dozen times and contemplating what its meaning was, Nicholas typed up a reply message. The message he wrote was nothing spectacular, he didn't want to give off the impression he was creeped out if in the event it was some moron looking to entertain himself by spooking people out on the internet. He merely replied inquiring once more who he or she was.

But when Nicholas sent the message, an error message informed him that Bloodrose13 is not a known member. He checked the screename one more time to make sure he didn't by some slim chance make a typo and in his scrutiny he found taht everything was kosher. Every letter and number was typed verbatim. Seeing that in the third endeavor he received the same message, he came to the conclusion to just call it quits for the night.

Nicholas nestled in the soft comforting euphoria of his waterbed, throwing the sheets on top of him in preparation for his nightly rest. He knew that it was rather early for him to go to bed, but he figured he had nothing better to do than to either induce a migraine by continuing to solve the enigma of the strange instant messenger or give himself an ulcer by attempting to write again.

Nicholas looked up at his Jenna Jameson poster thumbtacked to the ceiling above his bed. If there was anything that could ease his mind and body to rest, it was the ravishing image of his favorite porn star. Slowly, but surely, he drifted into slumber.

Nicholas awoke later that night to find himself enshrouded by undulating smog in an empty house unfamiliar to him where everything was painted black—the walls, the floor, and even the ceiling. The smog gathered in front of a spiraling staircase, leading up to what looked to be a door at the top, and majestically wafted up the stairs.

With extreme precaution, he followed the ghostly haze up the staircase, knowing not what he was thinking to follow. Something about the enigmatic smog was alluring him as though it were controlling him like a puppet. The smog disappeared through the black granite door. The door creaked open to a crack where a polychromatic hue glistened.

When he entered the room he found himself locked in a padded room with a straight jacket latched firmly to his body. It was as if the door had teleported him to another dimension. He looked to his right to see something alien sitting motionless on a swiveling office chair in front of a computer with its back toward him.

He stuck his foot out, slowly swerving the seat around. What he saw was beyond human conjectures. The vision was so demoniacal and so malformed that Nicholas fell back, wriggling frenziedly upon the ground, mustering all his might to fight the madness it induced and holding back the urge to vomit. Upon the seat sat a grotesquely demonic visage of a woman gutted from groin to gullet, her viscera spilling out like a bloody waterfall all in one plop as it hit the ground. The anthropomorphic limbs of her body were arranged in areas anomalous to human physiognomy—legs in replace of arms and arms in replace of legs. Her hair of writhing black serpents hissed obstreperously as they wrapped themselves around each other, gorging upon the bloody foam that gushed profusely from her facial orifices. From behind her, continuous lines of the phrase Blood is Sweet scrolled up the computer screen like the credits at the end of a movie. The walls surrounding him ran crimson with oozing blood. The she-creature dropped to the ground, her gait as she proceeded toward Nicholas was so alien that she had to be of a world beyond what the human mind could even begin to envisage... That was when the phone rang so loudly as to save Nicholas from the ordeal.

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