The Abyss

  When I was very little, I was terrified of the thing in my closet. Every night I was consumed with the thought of it being in there, looking at me, even though I only thought it was really in there once a week or so. I had never really seen it, but I knew what it looked like. It was something like a wolf, or maybe a bear, but its fur was much longer and its eyes were more human, and it had fingers, but had not sacrificed its claws to get them, I could hear it click one claw against the wood of the door frame, only one click every few minutes, but that was how I knew when it was really in my closet, watching me, and I'd lie there in terror until I fell asleep with the rush of fear in my veins.

  As I got older, the thing showed up less often, to the point I knew that one day it would stop coming, or I would stop being able to perceive it entirely. And that night I heard the click of its claw and I realized that as scared as I was of the thing, I was more scared of my mom. I became aware that real life was the scary thing. I would always feel out of place among my family and friends. My mom would never become what she could and should have been. I would always be a disappointment, a walking resentment. I'd always do what others wanted me to do, I'd warp my own ideals to fit in, and yet I would never fit in. I could see the whole path laid out in front of me, a drear life not of my own making.

  The thing in my closet had never hurt me. But my real life hurt me every day. I felt old. I felt my childhood slipping out of my fingers, like a handful of dry sand.

  Most humans never act on these moments. It is why there are so few true heroes. It is to take action when everything tells you to stay, be quiet, do not fight. I say FIGHT. It is in my nature to argue and to question, it's why my mom and all the kids I knew disliked me. Why they didn't miss me when I was gone.

  I did not delay. In one movement I threw back my quilt and jumped from my bed into the mouth of my fear, right through the closet door (why was it my mother never closed the closet, when she knew how scared I was of it?)

  Well you know how this ends. I disappeared from my bed, in a house locked tight by a 'loving' mother. Some thought I was taken by a clever kidnapper. Some thought maybe I ran away. After a few years, pretty much everybody presumed I was dead. And that suited me just fine.