The Gaper

Everyone has heard it. The voice in your mind that comes from nowhere, bringing absurd thoughts that you have to shake off. The voice urges us to pull into traffic, jump from deadly heights, and reminds us just how easy it would be to take someone’s life.

This phenomenon has been labeled as Intrusive Thoughts – Unwelcome involuntary thoughts, images, or unpleasant ideas that are upsetting or distressing, and can be difficult to manage or eliminate.

But how are these thoughts intruding? Where are they coming from? Why do they come?

There is a place rumored to exist between the living and the dead. This place, however, is not for the living or the dead. It exists just outside the reach of the souls who travel from this world to the next. It is a cold and dark place, and its only inhabitant is resigned to a lonely, miserable existence. It is beyond reach, but not beyond sight, and the poor create that lives in this real is forced to watch as the bright souls exit our world and continue their journey onward. The Gaper, as it is called, is banned from entering the next world, and so it stands with its mouth open and contorted in a frown of disbelief and anguish, watching as we pass within sight. The Gaper’s world is truly dark, and the only illumination comes in fleeting flashes from the traveling spirits. This comforts it, and in order to keep the lights coming, the Gaper nudges and prods us towards our end.

Psychologists have wondered why we get these intrusive thoughts, but the truth is, they don’t originate within out own minds. We are being used. Called to death like a match in the basement.