A Monster in Lucas's Closet

 Dr. Freindlirg’s office is small and cramped, filled with an assortment of puzzles, board games and toys. Along the walls are posters starring an array of various cartoon characters; each of them spouting motivational advice in speech bubbles. Some are placed along charts showcasing different levels of stress or anxiety. One in particular shows the evolution of monsters along side their respective emotions. A fire breathing lizard is mildly annoyed while it’s last form is of a large dragon next to a word in large fire emblazoned letters “ANGRY!”.

Eleven year old Lucas sits underneath this poster. He fits inline with the small lizard. He has his hands folded over his chest, his eyes are lazily looking around the room, away from Dr. Freindlirg. She appears to not notice. Her position is calm and exhumes a routine. This is Lucas’s third appointment. Dr. Freindlirg begins with the usual line of questioning. She asks how he was doing in school? Has he been making any friends? If he wanted to play tic tac toe or connect the dots to pass the time? All these questions yield the same answer, a lazily shake of the head ‘no’. Dr. Freindlirg notices that Lucas looks at the clock she has over the door. They have in the room only ten minutes...fifty more to go.

“You know, talking would help pass the time.”, said Dr. Freindlirg.

“I guess.” Lucas sluggishly replies back. These are the first words Lucas have spoken to her.

“I was wondering what you’re voice sounded like.” she said, then Lucas smiled slightly. “You have a nice tone. You could probably sing really well.”

Lucas didn’t know how to respond to that. He didn’t reply and resumed his slump. Dr. Freindlirg smiled at him reassuringly.

“I can’t quiet put my finger on it, but I don’t think you want to be here.” she said. Lucas nodded. “Do you know why you’re here, Lucas?” Her tone was welcoming, Lucas looked up at her.

“Am I in trouble?” he asked.

“Not at all, Lucas.” she answered. “You’re here to talk to me about anything. Anything at all. Nothing leaves this room.” She sweeps her arms outward, showing that the two of them are indeed alone. “It could be school, what shows you like.”

“Can it be a secret?” Lucas asked.

“It absolutely can, Lucas.”

“You promise not to laugh?” Lucas looks directly at Dr. Freindlirg with open trust. She takes her index finger and crosses over her chest in an ‘X’ formation.

“Cross my heart and hope to die.” she said.

“Ok.” Lucas leans forward and looks side to side to make sure they are alone. Dr. Freindlirg moves her pen and pad away from her. She crosses her hands over her lap and looks at him with undivided attention.

“There’s a monster in my closet.” Lucas finishes the sentence and sucks in the air in the room, holding his breath for her reaction. Dr. Freindlirg does not show the slightest form of patronizing to Lucas. She does not smirk or hide a giggle. She takes him as his word. They talk about the monster.

Dr. Freindlirg first asks how long it’s been in Lucas’s closet. He can’t tell her exactly how long but it started at some point that summer. It would stay in the closet at first, sometimes it would breathe loudly. Lucas said it sounded like the air conditioner, “but bigger” he describes; “It’s makes other noises too.”

“Like what?” she asks.

Lucas doesn’t know how to describe the noise the monster makes. Dr. Freindlirg starts naming off large predator animals, such as wolves and bears. Lucas would get confused at this line of questioning, unable to give an exact answer. He becomes frustrated and scared. His breathing would be heavy and tears would well up in his eyes. Dr. Freindlirg did not stop the session, simply wait for him to answer.

“I don’t know.” he says. “It’s really scary.”

“Scary how, Lucas?” Lucas started to shiver, he looked at her with absolute fear in his eyes. Dr. Freindlirg was going to interrupt him, remind him that nothing leaves the room. Lucas manages to let out in a low-raspy voice, sounding too grown up for his age. “Sounds like a cry you make when you die.”

Dr. Freindlirg leans forward. They sit less than a foot apart. In the cramped room they are in, they appear closer. She lets Lucas’s last words hang in the air as his breathing comes back down. Dr. Freindlirg swears she could hear his heart rate come back down though, she’ll never mention it to anyone. When he calmed down, she asked him what the monster looked like. Lucas paused then bit his lower lip. He closed his eyes and sighed. She didn’t say anything, she waited for him to recollect himself.

“It was really dark.” he said “like it eaten away all the light in my room.” He crossed him arms, his hands cupping his shoulders as if the temperature dropped in the room and he’s cold. “It was big and hairy.”

“How hairy? Did you feel the hair?” She asked. Lucas shook his head aggressively.

“No, no, no. I scream when it walks to me.”

“What happens when you scream?” Lucas looks up at her with a much calmer demeanor.

“Mom and Dad come in”, he said. He smiles slightly with conflicting emotions showing on his face. “I know they’re getting tired of me doing it though.”

Dr. Freindlirg assures Lucas that many children his age scream for their parents in the middle of the night. She asks him if there was a night that they haven’t shown up to scare away the monster. Lucas told her that if dad doesn’t show up, his mom would be there.

“Good”, she said; “so you know that someone has always been there for you if you need help.”

“I guess.” Lucas replied. There was a short pause; Dr. Freindlirg asks Lucas “What would you think would happen if the monster comes to you and touches you?”

“I don’t know.”

Dr. Freindlirg has her hand out, not toughing Lucas but to show that she has it out for him if he ever needs to grab it.

“Lucas, we know that your parents will come to you whenever you call to them for help”, he nods “but we don’t know what will happen if the monster gets to you”, he shakes his head. “Tonight, if the monster shows up, see what it wants. Your parents are right down the hall.”

Lucas darts his eyes back and forth in the brightly-lit room. He looks back at Dr. Freindlirg then takes a long, deep breath. When he exhales, he nods his head and says; “Ok”.

Lucas’s parents knock on the door after the session. She doesn’t give details to them despite Lucas’s father eagerly asking how it went. Dr. Freindlirg gives a vague assurance that they had a good session, she left it at that. As they left through the door to leave the office building, Dr. Freindlirg glanced down and hadn’t noticed till now how thick and dark the hair on his father’s arms are.

…

That night, Lucas is tucked away by his mother. She tells him that he’ll have a good night, there will be no monsters coming out the closet tonight. Lucas can tell by her tone that this talk is a routine. She’s made the same speech every night for two weeks. She walks over to the outlet; checking and making sure the nightlight is on. It’s sitting in the opposite corner of Lucas’s room. It’s bright center casts away the darkness reciting there. The side of his dresser and a plastic toy-racecar playset can be clearly seen in the room. The dresser is blocking the light from casting on the closet; which is sitting directly in front of the foot of Lucas’s bed. The wide open door appears to swallow the light. All Lucas sees is darkness. Like everynight, Lucas’s mother walks over to the closet door and closes it. The hinges squeak softly. She turns back to him.

“Going to be no mon...” as she was speaking the hinges squeaked again, she turns back and sees the door slowly opening again. Lucas pulls the blanket up, covering his mouth and nose. Only his eyes and head are visible. His mother doesn’t notice. She grabs the door and closes it more forcibly. The hinges squeak once more and there’s an audible ‘click’ when the door and the molding in the frame wedged tight together.

“I’ll have Dad look into it tomorrow. Ya know”, she pauses to collect her words. “I’m pretty sure the door was fine last night” she spoke with a confidence of a rational adult talking to her irrational son. She kissed his forehead and reminded him that she will be down the hall if he needs her. Lucas notices the sleepless bags under her eyes as she says this. Lucas hides the guilt in his voice as he wishes her goodnight, he knows he’s the reason for those bags.

She closes the door. The nightlight in the corner is the only source of light in the room. Slivers of luminescence slightly reveals the closet door. There is a dull reflection off the door knob. Lucas begins to count ‘one….two….’ before he says three he rushes to pick up a small stool he uses to get to the top of his dresser and braces it against the door. His heart was racing but stopped when he swore that the door began to open right before he braced the stool against it. The door is closed for now.

He runs back into his bed and pulls the cover over his whole body. His breathing is loud and heavy. It then slows down.

There is a weighted silence in the room. The blanket begins to feel heavy over Lucas’s face. He slowly pulls it up, his eyes are closed and he cups his hands over his ears as he curls into a fetal position. His fearful mind is screaming inside that as long as he doesn’t open his eyes and as long as he doesn’t hear the door open, then it won’t. Lucas hears the sound of his heart beat, it’s fast and loud in his head. He then hears the cry of the monster.

It’s a soft ‘yowl’ sound; muffled but very close, not like the sound of something behind wood in a small, enclosed space passed the foot of Lucas’s bed. The cry sounds like it’s underneath fabric and cloth. The ‘yowl’ sounds like they’re coming from under Lucas’s bed. Tears break out of Lucas’s eyes as a soft whimper seeps from between his lips. Lucas refuses to open his eyes. He’s telling himself softly that monsters aren’t real.

It’s claws scratch on the floor as it drags it’s bulging form from under the bedframe. Lucas begins to smell a deep, earthy aroma waft to him. Like nitrite-rich potting soil. It comes out from the opposite side of him, blocking out the meager light in the corner. Lucas still refuses to open his eyes as he hears a guttural growl passing through his cupped hands into his ears as claws click-clack against the floor; moving passed the foot of the bed to reach Lucas’s face.

Lucas begins to shake. The tears flowing more from his eyes, his whimper turning into a sob. He feels the presence of something large. He knows that if he opens his eyelids, it will be inches away from him. He feels the monster’s breath. It’s warm, wet and ancient. It carries a musty smell that is clogging his nostrils. The monster climbs onto the bed.

An enormous weight shifts onto the mattress, sinking in. It lays in front of him. Lucas stops shivering and crying. He lays still refusing to breath and wishing that his heart would stop beating so loudly. The very air holds still, Lucas will never be able to tell how long he laid like this. He hears a noise coming from the monster on his bed. It’s not a growl or a yowl. It sounds like the rumble of an idling engine. The sounds coming from near Lucas sounds almost like purring.

Lucas breathes in deep in surprise. The air around the room feels calmer. There’s something that scrapes against Lucas’s blanket that he’s under. It’s soft and rough, it was a tongue. It licked him. Finally, he opens his eyes and he was right. The monster is only a few inches from his face. He looks on at a feline head. Large whiskers jut out from it’s face. It’s long, black hair is disheveled, angled in opposing directions. It’s large eyes are closed. It’s angular face looks familiar to Lucas.

“Nu..Nugget?” It’s ears flicker at the sound of the name. The monster yawns, revealing large fangs. It nuzzles up to Lucas and continues to purr.

Nugget was a black, short haired cat that Lucas had since he was a toddler. His parents asked him what to name him and three old Lucas belted out “Chicken Nugget!” it quickly was shortened to just ‘Nugget’. Nugget would follow Lucas around the house and wait for him on his bed as he got home from school. He would lay down where the monster is laying down now. One day in the summer, Lucas came home from playing with a friend and Nugget was gone. He wasn’t at his food bowl in the kitchen; in fact, his food and water bowl were gone. He wasn’t sitting on his bed. His dad was in the backyard digging a hole in his mom’s garden. His mom was holding a small box. She placed it down to hug Lucas when he approached them.

“I’m so sorry”, she said to him.

Lucas wrapped his arms around the monster’s head and nuzzled his face in it’s dirty fur in between sobs. “I miss you so much”, he said. He cried, hard and deep. The wails carried itself down the hallway. His mom ran into his room and turned on the lights to see her son, curled up in a ball on his bed, hugging a pillow. She stayed with him, petted his head and whispered reassuring words in his ear till he went to bed.

There were no more monsters after that night.