Balanced Equations

Daniel could hear its footsteps across his wooden boards.

"Can you make a sound

While you're breathing?"

It's voice was closer than before.

"It gets louder

Your heart is beating faster

I can hear it."

It was closing in on him.

"Come closer my darling, let me hear your heart beat."

His lip trembled as he tried to huddle further against the wall.

A creak sounded dangerously close to where he was hiding inside a cupboard.

And then it was silent.

His heart pounded in his mouth. His mouth which he had pressed shut, just shy of wailing.

A hand, knarly and red, shot into the cupboard, splintering the wood and grabbed him. Daniel screamed. The wind around him whistked and blurred in black till the monster was in front of him.

"Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!" It roared. Daniel quieted down.

"Where did you get me from?"

Daniel shook his head. "Don't know" he muttered. "Can't tell you."

"I know that it was you who brought me here. The Fates told me everything."

"Then they must've told you where you came from too."

"Where did you bring me from!" The monster's jaw opened till the length of the ground and snapped shut at him.

Daniel gasped, tears running down his face. "Came to me in a dream! You came to me in a dream. I made you up. Im sorry." His face was red with effort and he was shaking his head looking at his slippers.

The monster took a step back, it's eyes widening in hurt before it brought them back in control.

"You don't mean that."

"I'm sorry."

"No, that's impossible. How can I be...a figment of a mortal's imagination. Am I..am I not real?"

"No you're real!"

The monster looked up at the young boy with puffy green eyes.

"Just because you are from my dreams doesn't mean you aren't real, you are, just in another dimension."

"Then send me back.."

"What?"

"Send me back.", the monster pleaded. "I have no home, no family here. Send me back to the place I can live."

"But I don't know how to! Bringing you here was an accident. "

"Dream me back."

"What?"

"You said you dreamed me here. So dream me back"

Daniels eyes lit up, the guilt had finally cleared away. "Alright."