My Closet Monster

I miss the child I used to be. He was tender, softer than the other boys, but blooming with joy. I would do anything to be him again. Now, I am just a shackled bolt on my closet monster’s door.

In the 5th grade I saw him for the first time: my childhood monster. He was lurking just out of reach in the school coat closet. Darkness obscured everything but his eyes. Those eyes were a pale glowing purple, and they smiled as if he knew me. The shadowy corner where he lurked smelled like dirt and rotting flowers.

My monster appeared on the worst day of my 9 year old life. At recess, I had been plucking flowers from the community garden. I was full of quiet sunshine, kneeling in the grass. I began braiding the flowers into a crown, and wore it as I ran off to the swings. Just as I had almost swung high enough to touch my toes to the sky, an older boy knocked me from the swing and onto the gravel. My flower crown tumbled from my head, and was immediately crushed under the boy’s sneakers. It was with scraped palms and knees that I realized my crown was made of pansies, pink and purple.

Every day from then on, I would see the monster’s eyes in the coat closet corner. I began carrying my things with me everywhere to avoid setting foot in the closet. I carried my backpack and coat and lunchbox from school breakfast to after-school sports. I carried everything shamefully, as if they were a comfort blanket I couldn’t let go. I became obsessively fearful of the closet monster. Avoiding him desperately, my eyes were still always on the coat closet door. But as much as I feared seeing him, I feared anyone else finding out about him even more. 

When I finished elementary school, I thought the monster was finally behind me. And for a while, he was. But in the late autumn of my first year of middle school, I made a friend. He was my first friend. I could never get along with the other boys in my grade. They were always loud, and gross, and rough. But this boy was different, and he saw it in me too. We began spending our recesses together, away from all the noise and chaos of the other adolescents. We would sit on a bench under the biggest tree in the lot, sometimes chatting endlessly, and other times sitting in comfortable silence as we watched the falling leaves. This boy was kind and smart. I saw him as more worthy and beautiful than the other kids treated him. I envied his curly black hair and often stared at his freckled nose while he talked. One day, we exchanged numbers. I could text a friend on my flip phone for the first time in my life. I hid under my covers that night, the only light coming from my tiny phone screen. Having a friend felt like an incredible secret. My heart fluttered as I listened for my parents outside my bedroom. I didn’t know what I was hiding. I texted my friend for hours into the night. As midnight approached, I heard him. A long, snarling laugh came from behind the clothes hanging in my closet. My breath caught in my throat, and I was determined not to look. But his laugh kept growing louder and more knowing. I remember slowly slipping out from the covers. My monster’s bright purple eyes pierced through the darkness of my bedroom. I curled back up under the covers and hid my phone under my pillow. All night, I dreamed half-asleep of watching the leaves fall with my friend. But my dreams couldn’t escape the nightmare of my closet monster. I could smell the monster even as he quieted, now reeking of burning leaves. 

I began avoiding my only friend from that day forward, but the monster was already back. Every night, the monster in my closet rang out with laughter. Purple light seeped through my closet door no matter how many things I used to barricade it. His stench permeated all of my clothing no matter how many times I washed them. I never made another friend in school. Years passed, and I went through the motions of high school and college and graduate school, but my monster stayed.

And now, I’m an adult. I have a career and a home and a family, and I am still afraid of the monster in my closet. I have learned to live with the cocktail of fear and shame he brings me, sipping it slowly so that I only exhaust my glass at the end of the day. But after everything, he still makes me feel just as small as I did in my elementary school closet, clutching a crushed flower crown with scabbed hands.

I work as an electrical engineer for the local power plant, a path set for me without my input. I am grateful for the life chosen for me. I don’t have any aspirations of my own outside of hanging another padlock on the closet door. I set out for work early today. The November morning is foggy and dark. I step out of my car and onto the plant’s concrete lot. I look up at the outline of power cables against the dark purple sky. As I look up, my heart yearns for something unknown against my will. And then, a flash of lavender lightning cracks from the sky and buzzes through every cable and electrical tower. The sky erupts with noise and sparks strike me from every side. With a clap of thunder I hear a familiar howling laugh. In my path stands a closet. A glowing purple fog creeps out from under the closet door. There is a radium glass in my hand- a vodka soda with a floating green carnation. I down my drink and begin to run a circle around the closet, but it follows. I smash the glass against the closet door. I turn every lock and pound my fist against the door with a plea to finally leave me alone. I keep running, and another lavender lightning bolt strikes the ground at my feet and splits the earth. My world falls apart like fragments of a shattered mirror. Suddenly, finally, the only thing that seems clear is the closet door. So I cry. And I hyperventilate. And I unlock another deadbolt on the door with every sobbing gasp, and clutch the doorknob with a trembling fist. And for the first time, I am in the closet. 

Sitting before me is my monster. Under the warm light of a single closet light bulb, he doesn’t laugh or growl. The door behind me closes, and the world goes silent. My monster has tired lavender eyes, glowing dimly. His wrinkled skin is green and moss grows across his face and balding head. He wears a purple paisley suit. Pinned all over him are dried sprigs of lavender, green carnations, and pink and purple pansies. He smiles at me, and his teeth are yellow and crooked. He sits on a velvet arm chair. Behind him is a portrait of a little boy. It’s a portrait of the little boy I wish I still was. If only the monster would leave my closet, I thought I would still be him. The monster offers me a seat beside him, and I take it. I look up at my younger self, and in the background I see a monster. But I don’t see a monster made of fear or shame, that hides in closets and rots. I see a monster made of flowers and fresh leaves, who bloomed with me and was watered by my tender effeminate heart. I look at the monster by my side, who silently smiles at the ground. He has lost all his leaves, and his flowers have all withered. But after everything, he is still here. I offer him a drink. He smiles wider as his eyes meet mine. For the first time since the 5th grade, a small ray of sunshine comes up from my chest. A little purple pansy blooms from the top of my monster’s head, and I fix him a cosmopolitan. I sit in the closet with him and glow.