The Printer

      There wasn’t much movement down 5th street, in one of the rare moments of that seaside town, the breeze was barely blowing at all. No birds flew in the sky overhead, no cars drove down the moon-lit street, and no people moved in the houses surrounding. Nothing at all moved besides a solitary hunched figure, stooped with age and the weight of a tremendous box he was carrying. The same was true of 6th street, and 7th street, and B street, A street, Gerard Avenue, even the normally busy Cromwell street; each street he walked towards darkened as he walked and became still. Doors five blocks down could be heard slamming, and the loud sound of metal shutters being secured rang throughout the night.
      The old man didn't mind however, and slowly carried his load into the dark night. The bright moonlight was ideal for his work- and he knew that he was not completely alone anyways. Quiet as the night was, he was acutely aware of the cold gaze of the satellite that was undoubtedly fixed on him. He knew that it was a necessary precaution, if he failed in his work he could release a terror the likes of which the world had never seen, but it didn’t mean that he had to like it. They were lucky that they could even find someone who knew how to deal with creatures like this, you would think that they could afford him a little privacy to do his work.
        Throwing baleful thoughts at the sky, the old man continued his trek through the night. As the minutes turned into hours and the moon reached its peak, the man came to his destination. A large amphitheater opened in the ground here, marking the remains of the old city park. The neon signs that surrounded the place silenced their humming quickly as he approached, and the old man could not help but smile as the automatic systems brought down solid stone slabs in front of the doors. The poor fools, those slabs wouldn’t save them if he failed. They probably wouldn’t even slow the creature down.
Setting the box down in the middle of the amphitheater’s stage, the old man pulled out two long needles from his jacket as well as a blank ream of paper. Those who had recently come to his profession as a printer would normally use more advanced tools, probably machineguns with the way the youngsters were nowadays, but there was really no substitute for an old fashioned printing. This behemoth would probably be trouble though. There had never yet been a recorded case of the Incident affecting anything old, just the new stuff, but here it was.
        Sighing as he lifted his needles into the air with one hand, he pried at the lid of the box. A groan emanated from the re-enforced cardboard as he did so, potent runes shining on the box’s surface, and the resistance increased ten-fold. These newer containers were so much harder to open then the old ones, but then again they failed less too, so it was worth it he supposed. Forcing the lid to the box, a shriek shattered the night as the runes snapped in half and the air surrounding was quickly sucked into the box’s extra-dimensional space.
        Immediately, long black cords struck out of the box, howling fury into the night sky, extending a full thirty meters into the night in all directions and enveloping the entirety of the amphitheater. Looking at the thing from the safety of the wards that surrounded him, the old man sighed, Hebrew. The thing was Hebrew. While he knew how to read it, it had been a good thirty years since he had worked with something written in that language. In addition, this work was long, clocking in at over a thousand pages. Looking carefully at the creature that surrounded him, he found its head and stabbed a long needle into it.
         Roaring in agony, the creature struck at the old man uselessly, twisting around him in a futile attempt to break him. Knowing that he was safe, the old man brought his needle to the page and pinned the beast there. Twisting in anger, the body flailed around blindly as its head was absorbed into the page, but no further. No one was sure what had happened to the world to cause these beasts to start coming out, the old man’s personal theory was that God had finally noticed the depravity in his children and attacked them through the oldest media that they had, but the government blamed the whole thing on bacteria that had somehow become self aware in the ink. He didn’t buy it for a minute, as it was only text that seemed to be affected, not printed pictures.
         Not like there was much left with which he could prove his claim any more. As soon as these creatures began appearing, books and newspapers were burned right and left. Even before that, they were being phased out in favor of blogs and stream of consciousness forums, with few but the most die hard of readers even remembering what a book looked like. In retrospect, maybe that was the cause of this whole thing. Whatever the case, the things that came out of the books seemed to be made out of the words that the book was made of, and wanted to return to paper.
      Looking down at the page to see what kind of beast he was dealing with, the old man’s heart sank as he saw what was written there. בראשית ברא אלהים את השמים ואת הארץ. If he pinned that phrase down in the correct position, he was going to be in for a long night.