The Door

No matter how long Daddy was shut in there, or how eldritch the screams. Piercing the night, and rising and falling. Stitching pain to the darkness itself.

The little girl stares at the door, hugging her knees with goosefleshed arms, the floorboards hard and cold under her bottom. Sometimes, with Babbit tucked tightly under an arm, she clamped her hands over her ears. What creature could make such sounds? What kind of teeth and claws went with a noise like that? Fearsome. Razor-sharp. What kind of throat were they ripped from, and worse, what could possibly do the ripping? Daddy always came out eventually. Tired-looking. Pushing his little round glasses up his nose, or else taking them off and cleaning spots of blood of them. She'd seen him spattered in it, wiping it from his hands and wrists with a rag. She imagines him pushing his hands into the monsters, and pulling out their insides. Plucking their hearts like strawberries. Chopping the secret parts of them with shiny silver knives. Daddy didn't look like a beast-killer. He was tall, thin and neat. He wrote lots of notes in cramped script. When he wasn't slaying beasts, he read her stories, and then kissed her on her forehead and the tip of her nose. Tonight, she worries what might came out. Would he win again? Would a giant brute burst through the door, splintering the frame and bearing down on her? Or... would something Daddy-shaped emerge?

...Had that happened already?

Last time, she'd heard a baby cry. Is that how he did it? She'd imagined the Creature crunching on its legs, and was nearly sick.

But whatever he did to survive, he always came out.

Tonight, it's gone awful-quiet. Something tar-like is seeping under the door.