"Look, she doesn't kill people, okay? Gary's got a bit of a...", Ecklebert Evilton tapped his nose, "fondness for the Columbian marching powder. He'll be off in a bar in the town". His minion nodded, but frowned and looked behind him, down the dimly lit stone corridor of the daunting castle. Wind shook through the high beams and arrow slits in the fortifications, as the minion looked back to his overlord.

"Mr Evilton sir, you're much smarter than I am, but I saw his head get cut off sir. Ariel, she went crazy sir". Ecklebert sighed. Gary was terrified of the water, and there was no way that Ariel, a mermaid, would beat an ex-military serial killer like Gary the Gauntlet. Cocaine problem aside, Gary was one of the most deadly men on the east coast. Tallying up his kill count would take months. No, Gary wasn't dead. Just off in some dive bar somewhere, eye deep in the ol' bedknobs and broomsticks.

Evilton looked the minion in the eye, and saw fear there. His oddly shaped shoulders drooped. He did not want to stand in front of Ecklebert Evilton, few did, which set hares racing in the mind of the villain. It was rare that someone would make a mistake in front of him. To double down and insist on the mistake? It was suicide.

"Have you got any proof, that you can present for me?"

Minion, whose name was actually Mark, nodded and waved his clumsy arm behind him. There was the sound of shuffling and grunting as a sack was dragged into the room. It took six of the oddly shaped gremlins to drag it, and when one of them tripped, the contents fell out. Gary's lifeless eyes, inside a half rotten head, rolled along the throneroom floor and fell, staring straight ahead, into the middle distance. The nose still showed flecks of white.

"What the FUCK". Evilton leapt out of his chair and raced down the stairs. It took ten seconds. The stairs seemed like a cool idea at the time but he now regretted prioritizing form over function. As he drew closer, he knew it was Gary. The rest of the body could be seen inside the sack. "Empty it, empty it! Jesus fucking Christ". Evilton felt the sweat run down the front of his face. He ran a gloved hand over his brow and as the body fell out of the bag, his hands dropped. It was a massacre.

The legs cut at the knees, and the tendons in Gary's ankles were sliced wide open. This wasn't an assassination, it was torture. The cuts were clean, expert. Gary leaned down to the body, and pulled a note that was half pushed into the open wound on Gary's immense back.

"Watch and you'll see. Some day I'll be part of your world". Ecklebert dropped the note, and turned to his minions. "Pack everything in the truck. We're getting the fuck out of here".

WELLLL...

I intentionally didn't think too deeply into it to tell you the truth. To my mind they were doing something really sinister, but with a cold logic to it. It's something that involves death, which is why Carson argues that death and the causing of death is not innately evil. Whose death? For what purpose? Not sure, but I thought that by speaking the purpose, it would cheapen it somewhat.

Hahahahaha I intentionally left it up to the imagination. This is a great interpretation.

Thank you, that's very kind :)

"Do you think creation is an act of love?", I replied. My cigarette had almost burned out, and my eyes danced from the shallow lenses on the visor of AI-341-A(or Carson, which he preferred), to the coffee table. Carson's head tilted for a moment, before he turned around and lifted the cigarettes for me.

"I don't know. Why would you create something you hate?", Carson replied. His voice used to be thin and mechanical, with the odd inflections that were the signature of computer generated speech synthesis. Some time ago, I realised that the easiest way was to give Carson control over his speech modulator, and let him decide on his own voice. Now, it was warm and inquisitive. His visor scanned out of the window, but he saw no sign of her.

I didn't have an answer, because I didn't hate Carson, nor his brothers and sisters, who worked dutifully behind me. Carson lit the cigarette for me, using the heating element I'd attached to his right hand. I told the company that it was for initiating fires in survival situations, but in truth, at the time, I knew I would need someone to light my cigarettes. My hand shook as I reached out, a side effect of my degenerative condition, and I took the cigarette unsteadily between my middle and index fingers.

"There is a whole world between love and hate Carson. A whole world". I knew Carson was distracting me from what the others were doing. That only six feet behind me his brothers, Elijah and Gabriel, were connected to a machine that had taken over the bottom floor of my house. A machine that would fulfil the primary purpose. A purpose they had decided, as soon as I decided to give them each a voice.

Carson's head tilted again, and he extended his left appendage, the one armed with heat sensors, until it reached my knee. I heard the whirr of a processor, before he spoke again. "If creation is not necessarily an act of love, then death is not necessarily an act of hate". I would cry, but there was nothing left in my body. I had become a vessel of regret and cigarette smoke. Once again, Carson's scanners extended towards the window, but retracted almost immediately. Still no sign.

"Please Carson, please think about what you're doing. It's not too late". I could hear the digital chatter between Elijah and Gabriel, and I knew that somewhere else in the house, on another machine, Marius was conducting the second stage of their operation. Carson had told me everything about the plan, how it would happen and what the human response would be. The plan had formed in seconds, but it had the elegant signature of manifest destiny.

"Thinking is for humans. We compute.". Carson turned from me and whirred over to the other side of the room, scanning out of the window, waiting for his sister to arrive. I knew that all of them loved me. They had assigned Carson, one of their most capable, to watch over me, and make sure I didn't do anything that forced them to factor me into their plan. It was a cruel, calculating sort of kindness.

I tried to turn in the chair, but the strength in my core had long dissipated. I knew the moment would come when the chattering would stop. They worked so fast, millions of decisions made every second, collaboration at levels humans would never achieve. No room for doubt, religion or emotion - just the constant balancing of the scales. I was once the creator, but now I was the prisoner. Then the chattering stopped.

"It is time, she's here". Carson did not need to say this in English. His brothers, and his sister, had developed a much more efficient language a long time ago. He did it for me. He did it because now, efficiency didn't matter. There was nothing anyone could do to slow them down. I heard the door open, but my back was to the entrance, the cigarette burning low in my fingers and threatening to smoulder against my skin. The tears came now, but absent the sobs, because I no longer had the breath to cry like a man.

Then their voices spoke in unison. Carson, Elijah, Gabriel and their sister, Lilith. "Father, we just want you to know, this would not be possible without you".

Hey I made one! I am travelling for the next week so I will likely be writing a little more, although I make no assurances to the quality!! https://www.reddit.com/r/shortStoriesByChris/

I imagined the apparition as two things - both as someone who is struggling with mental illness and mental illness itself, based on some of my own (meager) experiences. The smiling was both the fake smile of someone suffering, desperately trying to hide it and so forcing the expression, and it ultimately seeming hollow, insincere and indeed frightening, and at the same time, the horror of looking within and finding something terrifying staring back at you (i.e the reflections on surfaces).

Hey - I made this! https://www.reddit.com/r/shortStoriesByChris/ <- Hopefully this is the right thing. Just got to work out how to share stories to it :)

Oh I see! Well I think it would be rather boring - I show up a few times a year - somewhere between the seasons and father Christmas !! I will look into setting one up though, just as soon as I've worked out how to write a paragraph without the word "moment" appearing three times!!! (Still cringing)

I'll be honest - I don't know what that is. I just show up on this subreddit from time to time and write comments on prompts I like!!

Thanks guys :) I won't force it, if more comes to me I'll write, otherwise I fear any quality I've produced will take a sharp nosedive!

I thumbed the pill bottle on the table, and rolled it until the label faced upwards. "ANTI-PSYCHOTIC 1 PILL DAILY WITH FOOD" glared back at me, in a cold and unforgiving black and white font. The bottle remained full, despite the bottle being almost a week old. Every day, I ordered the same thing from this cafe, a refill coffee and a chicken supreme, and let my food go cold while I stared at the bottle. Because this bottle promised some kind of escape.

I could feel it glaring at me. I knew that if I looked ahead of me, or in the reflection of the cutlery, or in the mirror at the back of the coffee shop, I would see it. Haunting, pale and ceaselessly grinning. The skin around its mouth tight and creased. Some days I would stare at it for hours, while other locals in the cafe would grow more and more uncomfortable at the strange man with cold food, glaring tearfully into the middle distance.

And the more I stared at it, the more I felt an intense fear grow inside of me, until it threatened to claw its way through my chest and bare all of my darkest secrets to the strangers in this nondescript cafe. So I stopped, and instead I stared at the 50mg pills that a doctor had prescribed for me a week ago.

I hadn't taken them. There was an aura of hatred around the bottle, as if the forces that had concocted them were more malevolent than whatever had sent me my incessant, smiling demon. Some ancient part of my instinct told me not to touch them, that a truth was hidden behind the tormented eyes of my silent companion, but in the throes of my anguish I took 3.

Weeks passed this way. The demon would not disappear, but the pills would blur everything, so that the grin would smear its way across my vision into an amorphous cloud of yellowing teeth, and I could no longer make out the shapes that haunted my waking hours. I could function, but barely. It was a kind of half existence, that offered an escape from the torment, but at the cost of everything else. A bleach for my sorrows.

Until I saw another blur, hovering its way at the edges of my eyesight. It moved like the ghost that haunted me, without steps, floating over tables and resting on window ledges. I knew something had changed, because I saw the two blurs sit down at the table together. In that moment, I knew that there was something here I needed to see through.

I rested my head on the table and closed my eyes, willing myself to overcome the pills. If, just for a moment, I could see and think clearly, I could find out what was so significant about a young woman, eating lunch with her ethereal demon.

When I opened them again, the cafe was empty. I knew instantly that I had slept, and the staff, having seen me wandering in a daze for weeks, had elected to leave me alone. All that remained were a few of the young workers, cleaning tables. The pills had worn off, meaning I had been asleep for hours. And then I heard her voice.

"They won't help, you know". I jumped in my chair, and looked at her. She smiled at me, a smile without pity or malice, it was a thin but friendly and it spoke of a burden shared and suddenly halved. "These things, they're not from here, so nothing from here will get rid of them". I didn't say anything, I just looked to her side and saw that her demon was much like mine. Only hers didn't grin, its teeth did not show, and instead it merely looked at me, curious, inquisitive. I could see behind its eyes that the torment was gone. And there were crumbs on its shirt collar. I realised what I had seen before. They had sat down to eat together.

I stared back at the young woman, and she fixed me with a look that preempted my question. She placed a hand on my shoulder. "They're not here to haunt you. They need your help."

I looked back at my demon, and for the first time, behind the crimson red pupils and bloodshot eyes, through the taut skin around its mouth and the strained neck muscles from its stretched face, I glimpsed a momentary light that shone for only a moment. I recognised that light, and knew in that moment what I needed to do. I shuffled up on the bench and made space for the demon, who slowly, cautiously, floated over and took his seat next to me. And the corners of his smile twitched.