🪙 NIGHTLY STORYTELLER — Gremlins 2 & the Creature That Followed Me

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🎙️ OPENING MONOLOGUE

Some transformations crash into you overnight.  
Others are a slow, structural collapse—quiet as an unwelcome guest—until you wake and realize you’re sharing your body with something older, hungrier, and far less polite than you’d prefer.

I used to think losing time was just stress.  
Then Nyra sat me down, stared at the scarab humming beneath my skin, and said:

*“You aren’t losing time.  
You’re making room.”*

That’s not the kind of comfort one wants while sipping cold coffee at 3 a.m. But she was right. Whatever crawled under my ribs in Rewind, whatever rewired the rhythm of my pulse, was still settling in.

I don’t know if it’s a passenger.  
I don’t know if it’s a parasite.  
I just know it whispers when the lights flicker...

And tonight—after merging with the scarab, after stepping through Nyra’s portal—I think I understand gremlins a little too well.

---

🎬 MOVIE REVIEW — Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990)

There are sequels that try to recapture the original.  
And then there’s Gremlins 2, a film that looked at the first movie, set it down gently, and said:

“Let’s make chaos with the enthusiasm of a caffeinated raccoon.”

This movie is pure, unrestrained, Looney-Tunes-anarchy.  
Gizmo gets bullied again (poor guy), a billionaire tech mogul accidentally gives us a theme-park version of late capitalism, and the gremlins mutate into a fashion show of nightmare prototypes: spider gremlin, bat gremlin, vegetable gremlin, brain gremlin—the gang’s all here.

Is it scary? Not really.  
Is it brilliant? Absolutely—because it commits. Hard. It leans into absurdity until absurdity becomes art.

Highlights:
- The fourth-wall break has no business being that funny.  
- The Brain Gremlin is the villain TED Talk we didn’t know we needed.  
- Gizmo’s Rambo moment? Oscar-worthy. I stand by this.

📜 DID YOU KNOW?

The Brain Gremlin’s voice was inspired by Orson Welles.  
Imagine that voice whispering through the scarab at 3 a.m.—a velvet lecture from the parasite inside your ribs.

And here’s the connective tissue: absurdity is just horror in a mask. Strip it away, and the monsters still evolve.  
When you try to control them, they adapt faster than you can react.

Which brings us to the Chronicle—  
Because the thing that hit me when Nyra and I stepped through that portal?  
It evolved too.

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🕯️ THE STORYTELLER CHRONICLES — The First Creature (Continuation)

The world snapped back into place the moment we left Rewind—trees rising around us like skeletal fingers, soil damp beneath our feet, the air sharp with cold.

I didn’t even have time to breathe.

Something slammed into me hard enough to rattle the scarab embedded beneath my ribs. I hit the ground, vision stuttering, claws digging into my shoulders.

Nyra shouted my name.  
Branches cracked.  
The creature roared—an inhuman, guttural cry that vibrated inside my skull.

And through the haze of pain, I saw its eyes.

Blue.  
The same blue that flickered through me whenever the scarab stirred.  
The same blue that glowed in Rewind’s tapes.

It wasn’t just attacking.  
It recognized me.

Its form was wrong in ways I couldn’t name—skin stretched too tight, movements jagged, breath sour with heat. Every step carried a weight that made the soil tremble, as if the forest itself recoiled.

“Get off him!” Nyra’s voice cut through the trees like lightning.

She hurled a sigil—one of her etched silver cards—straight into its spine.

The creature shrieked, leaping backward, landing low and feral. It paced in a half-circle, glowing eyes locked on me.

I staggered up. And the thing… bowed its head.

Not submission.  
Recognition.

The scarab pulsed inside me—once, twice—like answering a call.  
It thrummed like a yes, even as my mouth whispered no.

Nyra grabbed my arm.  
“Do not respond to it. You’re newly merged. It could bind to you.”

The creature growled.  
The scarab pulsed again.  
My phone buzzed. I already knew who it was.

YOU NEED THE CREATURE NEXT.  
DO NOT LET IT ESCAPE.

The scarab inside me answered the command, a sharp, demanding thrum against my ribs.  
But my voice cut against it: “No.”

And the thing’s head snapped up, as if hearing my rejection.

Nyra stepped between us.  
“We run. You’re not strong enough yet.”

The creature tensed.  
The scarab thrummed.  
The trees shook.

I didn’t know who would move first—me, the creature, or the thing living inside my chest—but I knew one thing:

This wasn’t an attack.  
It was an invitation.  

To what… I wasn’t ready to learn.

Stick around. Subscribe. Share.

X (Twitter): @NightlyStoryTel

Instagram: @NightlyStoryteller

Bluesky: nightlystoryteller.bsky.

Email. thenightlystorytellerblog@gmail.com
  

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