Monsters

The room was not black, but full of a soft purple gloaming born of the street lamps burning away the evening fog.  What was black, however, were the formerly comforting shapes along the softly illuminated walls. Books, jagged like rotted teeth, froze in mid-chomp above the menacing claws of tree shadows and the searchlight sweep of passing cars.  Toys grew large and looming, and button eyes gleamed.  

It was almost time, Nancy knew, and she pulled herself into a tight shape in the very center of the creaking bed.  Tonight, she made sure to drag the edges of her blanket in with her so that no corner draped over the edge.  Her eyes stared fixedly on the closet’s sliding doors, which she had had the foresight of bracing closed with a line of schoolbooks.  

After several mornings of complaint, Nancy’s father had attributed her fears to the patter of the family cat, who was now banished to the bathroom at night.  This meant, naturally, that the subtle bump under her bed was not Mr. Mittens.  Any minute now...

“Serves you right,”  muttered a smug voice from under the bed. Nancy was far too little yet to know the word “lugubrious”, but later in life she’d have the perfect reference for it in the voice from behind the dust ruffle.  It sounded very much the way Nancy herself might just after a crying jag, but just before she was ready to have people stop feeling sorry for her.  She didn’t respond to it, in any case, and hoped that the closet - 

The door rattled, very softly, as if a coat inside had fallen off its hanger and partially dropped.  A sound somewhere between a snigger and a snot burbled from near the headboard.   Still silent, Nancy reached over her head and pulled her pillow away from the headboard, just in case.  The closet hissed softly, and rattled just one more time.

“You’re not fooling her, you know,” burbled something from behind Nancy’s back, and the girl folded her feet together while trying to ignore the sensation of fingers on her back.  It wasn’t real; she was under her blanket and she was safe.  Those were the rules.  

Still, she let out a small sound when the closet door slide further open than she felt it could go, braced at it was.  An inch, two inches, two and a half - the widening gap ripped a black stripe in the lavender light of the wall.  The sound of the schoolbooks sliding hissed until one by one they tumped together.  Finally, though, it stopped, and something that sounded much like two sheets of paper rubbing together said, “....shit.”

“Gluh-huh-huh,” burbled the thing under the bed.  “Just kidding.  You’re really stuck in there aren’t you,”  it continued, and Nancy scrunched her eyes closed again.  Doing so prevented her from seeing a thin, thin hand, with fingers like raw and broken spaghetti, scrabble out and tap along the door.  She could hear it, however, those clicking clacks, as the thing in the closet tried to find the obstruction.

“....you could help,”  whispered the thing from the closet, its voice a hiss of irritation.

“S’not my fault you made yourself so short where it counts,” burbled the voice, and something thumped up under Nancy’s hips.  She risked opening her eyes to see the hand retreating back into the closet with a gesture her mother taught her was rude.

“...too fat to come out anymore...”  it responded as it disappeared again, and something clicked along the back of the closet door as it tried to find another way out. “..that’s why you won’t help.”

“That’s a lie,” came the retort from beneath the bed, but even to Nancy that sounded unconvincing, and something in the closet laughed in a thing and nasty way, like coat-hangers rattling.

Nancy uncurled slightly and began to sit up, pressing her lips together.

“...try it, then...”  whispered a challenge from the stickly monster, and Nancy watched as it slid its fingers between the doors of the closet, looking for the barricade still.

“She’s already awake, so it doesn’t matter now,”  huffed the second voice.

Nancy sat up the rest of the way and said, “Yes, I am,” surprising herself with the peevishness of her own voice.  After all, this had been going on for nights now, nearly a whole week.  “And I’m trying to get some sleep.  Can’t you be quiet?”

Silence fell over the house for a long few moments, and neither the closet nor the bed moved.

“Nancy?”  came her mother’s voice, and a beam of light erupted from beneath the bedroom door as the hall light came on.  Shadows in the room retreated from it, growing darker in their compressed space in the recesses of the room.  

Worried that she or even Mr. Mittens might get into trouble if she was caught away with the “nightmares” again, she dropped back down and covered herself with the blanket once more, just in time to avoid the brilliance of the door opening.  Her mother’s shadow fell over her, but she didn’t move.  

A second shadow joined the first one, but Nancy didn’t move an inch.  “...no, she’s not,”   whispered her father.  “....can we try to keep it that way?  She’s been having nightmares as it is,”  he said, and his hand came around to draw her mother away from the door.

Nancy listened to her mother sniffle as she turned away, and waited for the darkness to come back into the room.  She could hear her parents stepping down the hallway, and the click of the hall light as it went out, painting the room in light purples once more.   For a long time, the house was quiet, and the only sound was Mr. Mittens meowing to be let out.  Nancy was able to sleep.

---originally posted on Reddit