One day, Bill and Kenny were roaming around the lower caverns and tending the still. Okay, maybe they were a little drunk.

Kenny eventually passed out. Bill got bored and went stumbling back toward the lift to return home. He heard something shuffling along behind him. Bill turned around and stared at an ugly grey lump of a monster.

Bill asked it "Are you a Grendel?"

It didn't answer him. All it did was mumble something incomprehensible about files. It continued creeping toward him. He saw several more of them in the shadows.

Bill got frightened. "I haven't had that much hootch! Run!" And he ran for the lift. But Kenny was left behind... Bill heard horrible chomping noises from behind him. Then, an agonized scream from Kenny; he had awakened too late to save himself. Bill ran for his life.

"Those bastards! They killed Kenny!"

He crashed into Grah, the local grendel. "Look norn! Watch where you're going!" Bill got back up, saying "There's monsters chasing me! I have to run!" And he ran.

"I'm the only monster here," Grah replied to Bill's back.

Grah turned and saw what had frighted the norn so badly. There was a pack of ugly grey beasties creeping toward him. They were muttering about "dot dee-ell-ell" and "invalid" and other things that Grah didn't understand. Annoyed, he went up to them and began hitting them.

Bill heard Grah's dying cry as he rode up the lift. "Maybe these monsters aren't all bad."

He hopped out of the lift and ran through the garden yelling "Run norn! There are monsters following me! They're right on my heels!"

The other norns followed Bill to the house. They barricaded the door. They opened the gun cabinet, passed around the ammo, and prepared themselves for a fight to the finish. They pushed the babies behind them.

"Somehow, I always thought we would be using these on Grah," said Linda. "Those monsters KILLED Grah!" replied Bill.

"We'll make it! Grah had nothing but claws and fangs. These grey monsters can't resist our raw fire power!"

They listened to the muttering voices in the garden.

"dee-ell-ell", "file corrupted", "registry corrupted", "upgrade", "windows cannot find", "system reset", "the end is near"

The door crashed open, and they stared at the monsters. "Look how they grew!" cried Bill.

"Don't look at them! Kill them!"

The monsters swarmed over the struggling norns. They didn't have a chance. The last thing a norn said (the youngest child) was "Look ugly."

Everything went blue.

This story was inspired by a dream I had while I had a fever. I was sick, okay?

The Annoyance comes from Win95 Annoyances. No disrespect for their work was meant by this story.