Leave It Closed

There was only one rule: don’t open the door.

I wrote it on the best piece of paper I could find with gilded gold edges and everything. Suppose you'll be pissed that I ripped it out of the back of your special edition Tolkien. Ah, well. What's the use worrying now?

I locked it after I scheduled the text. Nifty, huh?

Then I sat in the chair and contemplated why I wanted it to be dark. Wasn't it enough? The nightmares always started in the dark maybe I thought I could end them that way too. The screeching, clawing, terrible thing that flayed my mind open and hammered rusty nails into my soft thoughts only existed in the dark.

There was a monster inside of me.

One I could only kill in the dark.

The beast's blood was hot on my knife. It poured over my throat, down my chest, across the lazy spread of my thighs like a quick cancer. A killer.

I could taste the satisfaction in my mouth, cold and full of iron like an angry blade.

By the time she came home, I was an ethereal thing standing in the middle of the mess silently hoping she would listen and leave the door closed.

She banged and screamed, rattled the doorknob and begged. It was an ugly sound but not half as bad as the carnage in the room. The taste of iron. The slick on the floor. The useless heap of regrets curled and blanched on the floor.

And there was the ding of the text.

Leave it to the cops, darling.

Then the second ding.

Leave the damn door closed.

The rattling stopped. The footsteps carried her away. It was a simple rule, wasn't it? To just leave the door closed.