Midnight Pals: I Want to Believe

Stephen King: hey did you hear that thomas wrote an x files episode?
Barker: what? which one?
King: oh i think
King: i think it was called
King: 'thomas ligotti is from outer space' or something
Barker:
Barker: yeah i don't think it was called that

King: i heard you wrote an x files episode
Thomas Ligotti: hm
King: you know, i once wrote an x files episode myself
Ligotti: hm
King: it was about an evil doll
Ligotti: did the evil doll represent the existential void of an indifferent universe
King:
King: uh no
King: it was the regular kind

Ligotti: they never actually made my episode
Ligotti: they said it was too depressing
Barker: damn! whoa!
Barker: you? depressing?
Barker: get outta town!
Poe: clive
Barker: i'm just as shocked as you are!

Barker: so thomas this depressing x-files thing you did
Ligotti: hm
Barker: did it have mannequins
Poe: clive
Ligotti: yes
Barker: whoa! really defying stereotypes today huh tom?

Barker: wait wait
Barker: i'm on a role
Barker: i'm about to use my AWESOME PSYCHIC POWERS to make another prediction
Barker: was there a ventriloquist dummy in it?
Ligotti: yes
Barker: whoa! 2 for 2!
Koontz: are you really psychic?
Poe: no dean
Barker: yes dean
Barker: yes i am

Barker: damn thomas i am totally SHOCKED that you'd write about ventriloquist dummies
Barker: i am just so COMPLETELY SURPRISED because that's
Barker: like
Barker: SO out of character for you
Jon Padgett: s-shut up
Padgett: leave him alone
Padgett: just shut up!

Ligotti: a ventriloquist dummy is a cosmic doppelganger, real and yet not real, a mocking caricature of the spark of life, a reminder of the cruel joke the universe played on mankind that is sentience
RL Stine: yeah and also
Stine: what if one had a knife?

Ligotti: so mulder and scully face the truth that we are all just in a cosmically indifferent universe, specks upon the tides of fate, subject to unknowable forces beyond human ken that our blinkered minds cannot ever hope to fathom
Ligotti: the truth is NOT out there