Flash Fiction: We'd like to 'ear another story

He stared at the keyboard, fingers trembling. They would come again tonight, they always came. He could run, they would follow. He could hide, they would find him. No door could stop them, no wall could keep them out. Tiny eyes, glowing red, would watch him. Then grimacing mouths, full of razor teeth, would open, and they would speak.

“We’d like to ‘ear another story,” they’d say in their hackneyed English accents. Their tiny heads, beneath their little bowler hats, would nod as one. They were naked except for those bowler hats.  They would repeat their request and look to each other expectantly.

“We’d like to ‘ear another story.”

He loathes to remember the night he did not have a story ready. He can still feel those talon-like nails tearing at his skin. They had screamed in his ears, ripped at his clothes, scratched at his eyes. They were like children, demon children. One day, their tantrums would kill him.

How much more could he take? There were no more stories to tell. They demanded entertainment and he had nothing to give them. He panicked, stood from his chair, paced the room. He felt the coiling snake of despair in his stomach. He wondered what would one day be chiseled in to his tombstone.

Death by writer’s block.

He dreamed of escape, even if that escape meant death. He had tried before. Oh, how he’d tried.

“No, no, no,” they would say as they patched him up. “Not tonight, no, not tonight.”

Would he ever be free of this torment?

“You are wasting time,” he cursed himself. His future hardly mattered, it was the present that concerned him, and they would be here soon. He could not take another night of torture. His fingers began to type.  With sudden vigour and purpose, he typed. His tired eyes widened. It was a good story, perhaps one of his best. He did not look up at the clock until he was finished.  It was almost midnight. He was elated, at least for the moment. He cast a final look at the tale and sighed relief. He had done it.

They came as they always came, sitting down and waiting patiently for him to begin. They loved him, he knew, but it was a very conditional love. While his words continued to fill some void in their demonic little lives, they would continue to come, night after night. If his stories stopped, or failed to be interesting, that love would turn to hatred. The tiny demons would cast him aside, rip him asunder, discard him to the shadows and loneliness and death that awaited him; then they would move on, restless to fill the insatiable void once more.

“We’d like to ‘ear another story,” they said, their eyes aglow with that red excitement.  

He spun his tale. They listened. He had survived one more night.