You sit down to write. An idea has just popped into your mind. Your thoughts pour through your fingers. When the letters stop flowing, you put down the pencil and read it. You change your mind. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t clever. So you ball up that piece of paper and toss it into the overflowing can next to your desk.
Those rejected ideas don’t die, though. No. They fester. They wallow in self pity. They wonder why they were dismissed for years after the memory of them has evaporated from your careless mind.
Then comes the crucial point in the life-cycle of a forgotten idea: It vanishes. It becomes a Vanished.
I am certain you’ve seen a few. You woke up because you thought you heard a noise. It was merely a Vanished. You saw a flicker out of the corner of your eye, but nothing was there. Only a second before, a Vanished stood beside you. That time you heard a sudden and unintelligible voice was the time a Vanished whispered in your ear.
You probably shouldn’t be afraid. After all, most people are only haunted by very sullen and distraught Vanished. However, on rare occasions, a person has created too many. They become furious, violent, wrathful. And they plot their revenge.