---

 

This writing was accepted for publication in the 108 page perfect-bound ISSN# / ISBN# issue/book... “Carpool” Down in the Dirt, v149 (the September 2017 Issue) You can also order this 6"x9" issue as a paperback book:

Order this writing in the book Negative Space (the 2017 poetry, flash fiction & art collection anthology)		get the 298 page poem, flash fiction & art collection anthology as a 6" x 9" ISBN# paperback book:

Order this writing in the issue book the Light in the Sky the Down in the Dirt Sept.-Dec. 2017 collection book		get the 418 page May-August 2017 Down in the Dirt issue anthology 6" x 9" ISBN# paperback book:

The Closet

Randall K. Rogers

    I heard it first as a murmur, a brief knocking about. I awoke and sat up in bed. I looked toward the closet from whence the sound appeared to be coming. Someone was gently singing in there: “Here we go gathering nuts in May....” Slowly, as if unsure quite what to do, I rolled the covers off me and moved to sit at the edge of the bed. It was night and not a creature was stirring except the presence in the closet and me inching toward the closet door. Again knocks were heard from inside the closet and the soft singing. “Here we go gathering nuts in May on a cold and frosty morning....” I was puzzled, was this a dream, a hypnogogic or hypnopompic state? Could I be imagining?
    I decided I had to find out. I had to open the door to the closet to find out what exactly was making this noise and banging about in there. Apparently, whatever was in there was unaware of my stealth approach. For when I pulled open the door there he sat, a small person sitting on what looked like a wooden bar stool, perched next to a high thin chest of drawers I had in there that contained the journals I had been published in and my valuable papers. He was singing alright and looked up at me with recognition when I opened the door. When our eyes met I could see this was no stranger.
    No, I knew this person, somehow, someway. In the dark I struggled to make out the face. The little person averted his eyes and spoke. “Hello Randall,” it said, “how are you? I’ve been waiting for you.”
    Dumbfounded, I could do nothing but respond. “Have you?” An overpowering smell of rotten body odor accosted my olfactory cells and I cringed.
    “Yes, yes I have. I’ve been waiting for years....” His voice trailed off. He turned his face away from me and hid it facing the wall. He wore a non-descript, tattered black outfit with long ruffled sleeves. He was drunk and creepy; leprechaun-like. “I’m psycho,” he said.
    I was not taken back. “Me too.”
    “That’s why we are together here.”
    “Bullshit,” I said.
    The creature began to bray, to speak in tongues in a deeply unnatural gutteral voice. “You’re with us. In here. We are legion,” it said at length.
    “My ass,” I responded.
    “Oh yes, you’re here with us.”
    “Whom do you mean when you say us?”
    “Beelzebub and Satan, why of course, and others.” He turned his face toward mine. In the light of the closet I could see; he was emaciated and deeply wrinkled. His clothes hung on on his small body, swiveling on his stool. Suddenly he jumped off the stool and at me. His hands were claws and landed upon my face. Instantly he sunk pointed fingernail talons into my face, ripping at the flesh. Before blood could fill the the flesh furrows upon my face, his bony digits dug into my eyes. Gouging, he was able to dislocate my left eye. It popped out of its socket and dangled, still connected, a bloody white veiny orb upon my chest. The creature’s mouth was instantly upon it; filed teeth severed the nerves and veins and optical cords that protruded from my bleeding vacant eye socket. In this flash of blinding action I reared backward as my small decrepid doppelganger swallowed my eye. In horror I watched as the creature’s green gullet funneled the bolus into its stomach. Then as quickly and surprisingly as it attacked the noxious me-troll ran out of the closet, up the steps and through the glass of the front door. I began to give chase but shock and temporary blindness made me crumble in a heap upon the carpeted stairs.
    I lay there in shock and pain. Then my father began to descend the upstairs. Aroused by the commotion, he began to descend the lower floor stairs where he found me, bloody and eyeless rolling and moaning sprawled on the stairs.
    “Get up and go back to bed,” he growled, “and clean up this mess.”
    I did as he said, and thinking of Cyclops lurched toward my bedroom door. I stumbled into my bed and fell into an eyeless slumber ans the blood dried upon and around me soiling my bed.
    The following morning I looked inside the closet and there they were, my gouged severed bloody eye and the paring knife I had cut it out with. I smiled and marveled at my work. “That ought to freak the old fucker out,” I said to myself and went off in my car with my new eyepatch into school.

Copyright of written pieces remain with the author, who has allowed it to be shown through Scars Publications and Design.Web site © Scars Publications and Design. All rights reserved. No material may be reprinted without express permission from the author.

Problems with this page? Then deal with it...