Pale

A pale creature crawls through the vents of my house at night. No one in my family believes me. But I’ve seen it. It hides in the room behind my closet. Behind an old double door that an architect must have envisioned a second story storage room. Under the eaves and my unease it scuttles through the dusty passages of the house everyone else has forgotten about.

The beat of my heart shakes my bed as I lie awake at night. That creature inspires a fear so large it would make my heartbeat show up on a Richter scale. I try not to think about it. But it’s like saying “Pink Elephant,” and not imaging it. It’s stuck in my brain like a mammoth trapped in tar. I am stuck in this bed. A small box of books holds the closet door shut and I pray to all the pantheons that no foul strength is tested against my hardback collection of Ray Bradbury.

I don’t think it wants to hurt me. It would have done it by now. I hear the way it’s gaunt body slithers through the walls. How overgrown nails tap against the wood floors as it slinks through my waking nightmare. It would have hurt me by now, I tell myself. The anticipation is making my hair fall out. I spend my mornings staring into the haggard face of a frightened sixteen year old. Once in a while I catch a flash of pale white as it moves past the vents. My breath catches and my joints lock in place. I try to shake the spell of playing dead— having no wish to share traits with an opossum. But nature knows there’s a predator in the house— and it is not me.

My friends ask why we never hang out anymore. I don’t know how to lie, so I mumble that I’m too tired for sleepovers. We used to hang out all the time at your old house they say. Things change. I don’t want them to see the creature. I don’t want the creature to see them. I don’t think the box of books would hold the closet door if it wanted to say hi.