Aaa!

It's significantly past midnight, and the Writing Demons are in the next room playing poker for my soul. Every now and again one of them will look over here through the haze of cigar smoke, chuckle evilly, and return to the game. My family is asleep, and does not know of their presence. But they take no trouble to hide from me. No, no! In fact, they make very sure I know they're there.

They like nighttimes. They know my fatigue gives them strength. They loom and leer with more cartoon-like extravagance each passing hour.

Shh! I just heard one of them say, "I'll see your five heartless rejections and raise you —" there is a dramatic pause — "one completed manuscript that took months and years to write and never even gets an agent." They all gasp at the audacity.

I'll be checking the Yellow Pages™ in the morning: Exterminators — Demons, Writing.