The monbeast grinned, showing the eighty sharp-pointed teeth I knew it possessed. "Sorry, I'm here to stay. I'm your brainchild, you know, so I'll have to stick to you."
I gulped. "Stick to me?"
"Only figuratively," the monbeast said. "But I'll be around." He cocked a bug-eye at me and said gravely, "We'd better get a few things straight right from the start. One of them is that as far as you're concerned, I'm as real as that bedpost."
"Real?" I tried to laugh that off, but the sound came out a little weakly. "That's silly. You're just a product of my imagination."
"Am I?" the monbeast said.
He thrust the scaly face close to mine and yawned. Suddenly the room became a turkish bath.
"Okay, okay," I said hastily, "turn it off."
Coolness came, and I breathed easier as the steam dissipated.
"Secondly, you're going to create bigger and better BEMs and make them more convincing," the monbeast continued. "With all you writers turning us loose, we can have a swell time in this world."