Behind Closed Doors

“Go brush your teeth, honey.” Red and swollen were her eyes as she said it, her smile sad, her fingers digging into the supple flesh of his arms harder than she had intended to. He didn’t blame her, but he did flinch out of her grip and slipped his sleeve in his mouth, chewing. “Mama will be up in a couple minutes.” Nodding, he clenched his jaw and traveled up the stairs, climbed one step at a time until the fabric of his pajama was wet in his mouth. Focusing on the sounds he made helped; stepping stool scraping against the bathroom tiles, tap water running, bristles brushing against baby teeth, spitting and rinsing. He had gotten better at it—the ignoring. It was like background TV noise now, sort of, loud and garbled as the morning channels that told adult-only news on endless loops. He didn’t really like those, just like he didn’t like this, but he’d picked up the habit of tuning it out. Mama had taught him.

Sweetie brushed past him as he flushed the toilet, her tail looping around his leg and her purr an open-ended question. She hated it too, she made sure to remind him of it with that look in her eyes, like a fishing line thrown for prey, its hook ready to grasp and hold on for dear life. “What should we do?” the look asked him. “Just ignore it, Sweetie. We just have to ignore it.” He stroked the soft fur of her head, but she ran off into the direction of her litter box. Stray pebbles of substrate stuck to his socks, he shook them off then watched Sweetie as she whined and circled her box, full to the brim yet odorless to the trained nose. He suddenly wished Sweetie’s box could be swirled down the drain, just like him and Mama and Pop did. Much easier to clean. “Sorry, Sweetie.” He left her wide-eyed and hanging and stumbled over to his room—step, step, step.

He wasn’t really sleepy, but he jumped on his bed and made a cocoon of his covers regardless. Sleep always blurred the sounds, like cotton balls humming in his ears or fairies flapping their wings until he got dizzy and fell backwards into another land. He’d once tried to describe it to Mama—could they maybe meet down there at night, among the butterflies and the dragons and the woodland critters?—but she seemed to be a stranger to its magic. He wished he could bring her along to escape when things got too loud.

Suddenly, three knocks came from under his bed.

In an instant he was made of marble, ear taut, dreading the greasy cough that might follow. Pop couldn’t have come in here while he was busy brushing his teeth, could he? It couldn’t have been more than five minutes from the time he left the living room, ten, tops. Although, he had been so focused on ignoring—heavy steps up the stairs and into his bedroom easily could have been missed.

He didn’t want to look.

The images of what happened last time he looked still fogged his mind and fueled his nightmares.

And if Pop was in here, then where was Mama?

The fear grew thicker and hogged all of his air. He began panting softly, loud enough for anyone inside the room to pick up on. The cotton balls that belonged to the Sleep Lord had flown away like clouds in the sky, or in his case, hand-painted on the ceiling. His little fists clung to the bed sheet as if it were armor. Hard, made of iron, casted by the village’s most renowned blacksmith.

“Psst.”

He twitched. He didn’t know that voice, but it sure wasn't Pop’s. Maybe he could afford a glimpse? One quick peek under the bed frame?

“Psst, under here.”

The voice seemed friendly, friendlier than Pop’s, maybe not quite on Mama’s level. He emerged from his nest and slowly hung his upper body over the edge. His handful of blond hair bent the knee to gravity and blood rose to his head.

He blinked—the glow from his knightly nightlight didn’t quite reach these particular netherlands—and waited with patience unbefitting of his age. Then, he saw it. A pair of eyes, larger than his own, round and dilated, shining in the darkness. He gasped and clamped a hand to his mouth, his heart drifting down to his throat.

“It’s okay, I won’t eat you,” the creature said, its pearly white teeth shining like razor blades. “I’m here to keep an eye on you.”

Gradually, the beating in his gut subsided. “On me?” He moaned, glancing to the doorway. “B-but, have I done something bad?”

“Oh, nothing of the sort, little one.” Its smile curled high. “Let me rephrase that: I’m here to protect you. Keep you safe. Help.”

His head was starting to hurt from the pressure of the angle, so he drew free of the covers and crouched down to face the creature, his feet warm against the sticky floor. “But… Mama protects me.”

The creature nodded.

“She does, but her strength is beginning to falter.”

He thought for a second, confused. “Is Mama hurting?”

Again, it nodded, its blue eyes turning an unpleasant shade of yellow, its pupils narrowing. “She is. She has been for a while, but I think you know that. Listen to me, little one—you cannot ignore it forever.”

“But Mama says it’s best to ignore, always ignore.”

“What she says matters little.” The eyes burned a deep orange, like simmering flames. “You know what needs to be done, don’t you?”

He licked his lips nervously, playing with the hardened skin that protruded around his fingernails. “I… I’m not—”

“You hate Pop, don’t you?”

“No!” He was quick to shout. “No, I don’t!”

“Lying is futile, little one.”

This silence was the loudest thing he’d ever heard. Louder than Pop’s anger, than the fire alarm triggered by Uncle Joe’s cooking, than Mama’s screams, than even his dreams. There was nothing else he could hear, but this silence.

“Are you… a dragon?” He asked the creature.

Its tongue came out, forked and pink like a snake’s. “That is for you to decide, little one. Now,” Suddenly its hand came forward, retreating an object which had been ignored, left to the world of dust and forgotten things. “It is time.”

Slowly, he accepted the sharp object—from a skin of scales to human flesh. Deep down, this all made sense, and he found himself nodding as the creature’s eyes turned a deep crimson.

“Okay.”

After tonight, Mama’s tears would be no more. She would be nothing but smiles, and laughs, and kisses. She would follow him into the night land and see it all with her own eyes, the magic, the fairies and the dragons. 

In his little hand, the knife sang as it tasted blood.