The Monster in the Closet

I always knew there was a monster living in my closet, but also knew better than to tell anyone.  My parents would latch onto the idea of a monster and would never let it go.  My brother would also never let it go, but in a different way.  He would never let me forget how silly I was for believing monsters were real.  But he didn’t hear the growling.  The moaning.  The scratching.  The noise happened at the same time every night – 12:58 AM – and I had gotten pretty good at staying asleep when the noises started.  I had trained myself to sleep through all unusual noises to the point where I didn’t wake up for anything except an alarm clock. 

If I ever had friends spend the night, I always made sure we made a fort in the living room so they would not hear the noises coming from my closet.  Then I knew they would come back again and not be afraid of my house.  It didn’t matter how much I explained the noises away to the old house, the noises never stopped. Then one night, everything changed. The first Friday in August was the night someone broke into our house. I had always thought our house was relatively safe, but that Friday night taught me more than I had learned in my life. It was the night we all found out there was a man living in a small room just behind my closet.