One night in a toy shop in the middle of Manhattan there was a little girl. Now you may wonder what a little girl is doing all alone in a toy store at night. She is the daughter of the owner, you might think, and they live above the store. Or maybe she got lost during the day and got overlooked at closing time. You might think up half a dozen other reasons why she might be there, but you’d probably be wrong.

You see this little girl is Alica, and she is a very special little girl. She has an imaginary friend. Now, normally, this wouldn’t make her very special. After all, many children have imaginary friends at some point in their lives. Sometimes they are people like themselves, and sometimes they are fantastical creatures. Usually, the imaginary friends of little boys and girls are just that, imaginary, but there are a few very special children for whom this isn’t true. They have a Sight that allows them to view the unique denizens of this world that are rarely glimpsed by those considered normal. They have the privilege, or maybe the punishment, of becoming LINKED with the first of these beings that they lay eyes on, providing, of course, that the one they first see isn’t LINKED themselves. If this happens, they often become Strays, disconnected partially from their Sight. They become known as psychics, or fortune tellers, muses, but this isn’t important to our story.

Oh dear, I do believe that I forgot to introduce myself. I am Alvin, and I will be your omniscient narrator for the duration of your “stay” here. I know how Alicia’s story ends, but I won’t tell you yet. Maybe I’ll give you a little hint; everyone dies! Just kidding … or am I? You’ll have to finish the story to find out.

Anyway, enough about me. I’m sure you want to hear more about this mysterious girl Alica, and here I am wasting almost two paragraphs not talking about her and how she ended up in a toy shop in the middle of the night. Come on, come on, I can almost hear you calling, get on with the story! Well just HOLD YOUR HORSES, I’ll get there! Just a little more backstory and you’ll know enough to understand Alica’s story.

Now, those who can see the creatures who live in this hidden side of our reality will note that you’ll rarely find two alike, as well noting as the wide variation between them. I myself can see them without needing any “special sight” or powers, as well as being able to see into quite a few more similar places as well. After all, I even know the meaning of life, which may or may not be 42.

Anyway, someone who can see them will also notice their differences in form. Some are bright, and nice looking, such as the rainbow-fleeced sheep that’s currently bouncing up and down behind you. A few are portrayed in incorrectly literature as being good. This writing stems from the disturbed scribbles of the few mundanes who have seen them and gone mad as a result, such as the dagger-toothed unicorn. Others are darker still. The unique thing about someone who possesses the sight, is their inability to ever see their own, LINKED, companions’ darker sides. They see their unicorn as beautiful, somehow overlooking their viciously barbed horns, and the mysterious red chunks sometimes caught between their needle teeth.

Sorry, I’m getting off topic again, aren’t I? Well, I apologize to all of you whose unicorn fantasies I’ve just ruined. Well back to Alica. Alica is one of those special children I was talking about, and her imaginary friend is part of the reason that she’s here at such a late hour. You see one of the problems with being born with this kind of special ability is that normally the child’s parents don’t have the Sight. No one can understand why exactly this is. Well, I mean, I know, but I’m talking about scientists and stuff - you know, the ones that take this kind of thing seriously. Usually, they don’t get far, but occasionally someone with the Sight, LINKED or not, happens to the said scientist. They usually get a bit farther than the mundane one, but soon after, a tragic accident occurs, and their research - and their life - ends there. You see, the Hidden Ones don’t like too much being known about them by those who aren’t one of them, whether they have the sight or not.

Yeah, yeah, I know what you’ve been thinking. Aren’t you omniscient, don’t you know why the kids’ parents are normal, and can’t you tell us? Of course I do! But I’m not going to just blurt out every secret just to prove that I’m really all-knowing. Like I’m not going to go right out and tell you that your future daughter, Starr, is going to go off and marry Peter without your consent … oops. Well … I mean from now on I’m not going to tell you things that no human knows, or is in the future.

Alica’s specific imaginary friend is of the Kingdom Invisibilia, the Family Umbra, and the Genus Compagibus. Yes, surprisingly enough, there are some with the Sight who have devoted their time to classifying these beings. After all, they live in the same world and take up space as we do. You’re probably wondering, well Alvin, if they are in our world, but we can’t see them, how come we’ve never accidentally bumped into one. Well, the truth is that even though they are usually astoundingly agile, you have most likely bumped into at least one in your life. Have you ever been somewhere where it was dim, or maybe you were tired, having just woken up and realized that you had to go to the bathroom? You were walking to the toilet, and you bumped into something and said Excuse me, or Sorry. Then when you looked back, you realized that there was nothing there, or that it was an inanimate object, and how could you have thought that it was someone? Well, it was. Your unconscious knows this, even though your conscious mind thinks it’s ridiculous.

Also, they’re not always invisible to normal people’s eyes. Bigfoot, for example, is one who often lets people see him, and even sometimes take a pic. Or maybe you saw someone or something strange, then a car or a person went past and you lost sight of it, and once it passed, the thing was gone. This, of course, doesn’t mean that all mysterious legends and sightings are one of them (Sorry but I’m going to crush a few more fantasies). Vampires, for example - fake! Nessie - come on people! It’s a model attached to a toy sub that someone snapped a picture of as for money and started a trend. It was a doctor, Robert Kenneth Wilson, I think the bloke's name was. Anyhow, I’m getting off track again, aren’t I? I do that sometimes. Just yell “Alvin, snap out of it!”, and I’ll probably hear you and do something about it.

Alica loves to go places with her friend. He is always smiling, no matter what happens. He really can’t help it. His smile spreads across his entire face. In fact, it’s one of the two parts of his face Alica has ever seen or that is visible. That and his bright eyes that look like two flames floating in the air (I thought it might be time to give you a description of this pal we’ve talked so much about, but I think it will be best presented through an excerpt from Alica’s diary). I call him Immi, which he likes. He came up with it, he says it’s short for imaginary friend, which he thinks is funny for some reason. He is the strangest-looking person I’ve ever met, though he says that I will meet stranger when I’m older. Let me tell you what he looks like; he has two knees on each leg, and one of the joints bends backward. They make his leg look like a big letter Z. The whole top part of Immi’s body is shaped like a triangle with the point facing down. His toes are pointy and sharp, and for some reason, he only has three of them on each foot. His arms are odd-looking too - they are bent kinda like his legs, and he only has four fingers on each hand. Well, three fingers and one thumb. They are all as sharp as his toes. I asked him one time why his fingers were sharp, and he told me better to eat with and laughed. He doesn’t seem to get cold or stub his toes, considering he only wears a little clothing. He has rags tied around the middle of each of his big feet (Alvin here again, I just want to address your upcoming comment - no, Immi is not Bigfoot, I think he’s LINKED with Clarke right now), as well as some wrapped around his hands too if it’s cold. Also, he wears a lo-lo-lon-, what did Mommy say that was called? I had to ask her earlier today because I wanted to know. Oh! A loincloth-thingee. Thanks, Immi! Anyway, he also sometimes wears a long, kind of torn, scarf if it’s really chilly. He probably doesn’t get too cold because his eyes are like mini-fireplaces that keep him warm. Immi is also a really good climber and jumper. He knows that I like being high up, and sometimes carries me into the treetops. He’s surprisingly light for someone who, when he stands up to his fullest height, is more than twice as big as Daddy. His mouth is the super-hardest to describe. Here, let me draw a picture:

                                                                 ...

Hey, it’s Alvin again! As you can see, Immi isn’t just Alica’s imaginary friend, he’s also her best friend. They do a lot together. Her parents are often driven into a panic when she goes missing, ‘cause their backyard is like a small patch of woods. When they find her, it is often at the top of a tall pine or maple. Her poor parents aren’t tree-climbers - no matter how hard they tried when they were kids, they could never get the hang of it, so they are baffled how she does it so well. They have to call her down and hope that she doesn’t slip and fall. Her father stands beneath her to catch Alica if she does, while her frazzled mother watches her with fearful eyes. It’s startling to them how quickly she climbs back down (little do they know that it’s with Immi’s help, nor do I believe that they would be reassured by knowing this fact).

Alica isn’t a troublesome child, per se. She doesn’t mean to cause her parents to worry, but she has so much fun playing with her “imaginary” friend that she often loses track of time, and where she is. One day, she was playing hide-and-seek with Immi, who, by the way, is one of the kings of hide-and-seek. She was looking for him for a while, when she realized that it was starting to get dark, and her parents would be worried about her, and were most likely calling up every tree in the yard looking for her. She looked around and realized that she was nowhere near home. She faintly remembered crossing a bridge, and the buildings starting to get bigger, but Alica didn’t know how to get home. She started to get frightened and called out for Immi. He rose out of the shadow next to the fire hydrant adjacent to where she was standing. “Immi,” Alica cried, “where are we? I’m scared and I want to go home.” Immi smiled - he couldn’t really help it. “It would take too long to get home, we would get there long after midnight.” This made Alica even more frightened, and she started looking around almost frantically. She noticed that she was standing in front of a toy store, and her eyes widened. She pointed as she turned back to Immi, a smile starting to spread across her face as she said excitedly, “we could stay there!” As Immi turned to look, the first street light snapped on. A cool breeze meandered it’s way down the street, catching up with it various small bits of paper debris and trash. As it blew past Alica, she shivered. Humans are such fragile things, Immi thought. So easily harmed by things like cold, or a fall. Out loud he said, “let’s go, before you catch your death of a chill.” He grabbed her small hand in his and led her inside, the warmth gusting out as the automatic doors opened up into the store’s brightly-lit interior.