• If you were to ask me what our motives were, I don’t think I could answer you. We were born from darkness’ womb, from nameless mothers and the faint silhouettes of men. Some of us have no reason for what we do, merely the instinct to do it. Many of us will never live to be old men and we understand this completely. Misfortune, after all, was written into our genetic code at the dawn of time itself.

    We all know that we are neither saints nor sinners. Guilt does not wrack our conscious, and neither does arrogance. The only thing that we are even concerned with is our job, our purpose. Not humanity, not killing. Though we do partake in the latter. A lot.

    But let me explain before you judge. We do take lives yes, but not in the way you think. I guess you could say we are the silent reapers of your dreams, the executioners of your sanity. We are the whispers in the dark that make you do things that most people would consider crazy or pure genius. Either something good will come out of an encounter with us . . . or something horribly, horribly bad. It works both ways.

    Our influence over humans through the decades has become something of an oddity, from Martin Luther King Jr. to Adolf Hitler. Yes, we whispered in their ears many things. We breathed into their heads the inspiration to try and change the world. What they came up with was entirely their own invention.

    I guess it all depends on what type of person you are; positive thinking produces positive results, negative thinking produces . . . well . . . you get the idea.

    Through the ages we have been called many things; demons, nightmares, the monster in the closet.

    The last one seems to best describe us, I think. All that we are, what we do.

    We are the almost tangible shadows on the wall, the muted assassins of ideas which were never supposed to be, all your nightmares and discarded ideas come to fruition; the sexless mothers of all new thought and the fathers of your grief.

    We are Boogeymen.