Hurts has a minion!

Drip drop, the Evil Goop

At precisely three thirty-seven PM, on a dreary monday evening, a young girl is crushed to death on her way home from school by a delivery truck with an unfortunate brake malfunction.

That day, the little girl - who goes by the name of Lucy, though her parents call her Loo - had been doing a painting of a viking ship in school; she has it clutched in her tiny fingers as she walks. She doesn't want to fold it up to fit it in her backpack - the creases would spoil all her hard work and, being something of a perfectionist, she wants it to be just right to show her mum and dad when she gets home. As tires screech against the tarmac, the oncoming vehicle looks impossibly large and dark to her wide, blue eyes - more like the war-ship she'd drawn than the everyday delivery truck it was no more than a couple of minutes ago. She doesn't even scream as it hits; her last thoughts are that she really doesn't want the paper to get crumpled -- and then there is pain, blossoming and bright, and the world ends.

The parents she left behind do the screaming for her when the phone call comes from a stricken female police officer, whose voice shakes as she tells them about their little Lucy. She went quickly, the lady tries to assure them; she didn't suffer. They hang up before she can finish speaking, and it's not long until they're there at the hospital in front of her, calling her a liar, a fraud - it can't be their little girl, it can't. Why is nobody listening? It can't be Lucy!

The funeral goes much the same way; Lucy's mother sits by the graveside in the light rain, her black skirt - her 'funeral' skirt, scavenged from the back of her wardrobe - ruined by the mud under her knees, while her father listens gravely to the Vicar as he ends the rites, waiting quietly to break down in privacy. When all is said and done, they return home and do just that; the tears don't stop until exhaustion finally claims the grieving couple in the early hours the next day.

They both sleep restlessly; dreams turn quickly to nightmares in the wake of the burial. Little Lucy curled up in the gutter, all broken angles and red, red stains on her school uniform. Her painting, so precise - she always was talented for her age - caught under a still-spinning tire. Behind the wheel, a Viking warrior smiles wickedly with yellowing teeth.

And then, suddenly, the dreams change; clouding over like the sky at Lucy's funeral. Everything stops, as if paused, and becomes shades of blue and grey and emptiness. A voice whispers in their ears, perforates their unconsciousness with an unearthly ease; it is menacing, much worse than the grinning Viking. This new thing has sharper teeth, and black, black eyes; it sparks the animal instincts within them to flee, to hide -- but they can't, and it stalks closer by the second. There is pain, so much of it -- and it hurts, oh, god, it hurts. Something is torn away from them (they feel the loss of it both acutely and intensely) and, to their horror, consumed; eaten up by the thing with the teeth and the dark eyes.

In the morning, when they wake up, everything is normal. Routines happen as usual; teeth are brushed and faces are washed. Small talk is made at the dinner table over bowls of cereal and steaming coffee. When the alarm beside the microwave begins to bleep (time to go to work! it sings), little Lucy's parents lurch into action; frenzied are their efforts to tidy away evidence of breakfast. It is when Lucy's mother empties the dregs of her mug into the sink that she notices the painting of the Viking boat on the sideboard, left there untouched since the accident. She frowns, looking pensive for a moment, before picking up the paper -- and sweeping it into the rubbish bin. She feels nothing; no pain, no sorrow. Nothing hurts any more.

In the days after that, they both live on without feeling. With the lack of sadness comes the monotony of happiness; things they once enjoyed are now bland, dull and boring. Everything is robotic; from waking to crawling into bed in the evenings -- and when they sleep, their dreams are empty except for the memory of sharp teeth and black eyes--

--The creature with the whispering words that stole away all their hurt.