FICTION
"In The Closet "
I am not going to breathe no matter how bad my lungs are sucking at me. My dad is still out there, and I will not give him the satisfaction of finding me. I can hold my breath as long as it takes for him to go the hell back to his hole in the basement. Or his smelly chair already by the front door. God I hate that chair. My last teacher could smell it the day she dropped off homework, I could tell by her face.
'Fucking pussy.'
My dad is kicking something. It is my shoebox full of stories. I knew it. He took it from under my bed and now I hear paper ripping and muddy workboots stomping. Everything I wrote since third grade, but still I will not breathe.
Now I know what it means, seeing stars. Little blinking swarms of glowing pinpricks. They look friendly. My brain wants to give in and go with the swarms into blackness, my lungs are frozen from exhaustion--they don't have the strength to keep suctioning for air.
Finally, the fucker is stomping out and down the stairs. Ow--I keep hitting something hard against my head; weird, since I am not moving.
I hid in the weeds out back until the moving truck left. My stuff only took me ten minutes to unpack. I opened the Blatz case and put my clothes in the milk crates, my stories under the bed, and my knives in my pocket; don't know where they'll be safe in this dump yet.
Oxygen is getting me high. Not so different than the pill my buddy's brother gave us back home. Except this is no fun because what the fuck is poking me in the ass? I am sitting Indian style on the closet floor. I am facing the door but can't tell because no light is coming under the bottom now; my dad turned off the light when he left. I can't tell how big it is in here. The floor is wood and I can feel dust and dirt with my hands. The air in this closet is another universe. A dead one. Nothing moves in here.
But something is making sounds behind me. Scraping. Little, tiny scrapings. I want to turn around. My hands hit the floor to support my weight, and a million soft crunches vibrate up through my hands.
What the fuck?
There is no time to think because smelly, bony fingers grab my neck and I kick out at the door but it doesn't open and I slam my hand back into the thing grabbing my neck and sickly xylophone chimes fill the closet before hard parts crumple behind me and my neck is free. I grab out for the door handle, find it, and twist, but now it is in my hand and when I drop it my hand retains its hardness and the image of a kneecap flashes in my mind. I pull my hand close to me and flex my fingers, but they are hard and getting harder and when I try to make a fist there is a clacking and awkard stiffness.
I have to get out of here I really can't breathe now even though I am trying and so I move to stand up but the hardness is spreading so fast through my body that I am Tinker Toys on ice and cannot get any traction and I crumple to the floor. Wormy tracks crisp their way over my arms and feet, and I push up to a sitting position and now I am solid and stiff and segmented. My thoughts are drying up with the evaporating flesh, but a dull outrage permeats my marrow and I long to have flesh and blood come through that closet door.
'What do you got to write about,' my dad would say. 'Ain't no skeletons in your closet.' Open yours, dad. I'm starving for it.
I am not going to breathe no matter how bad my lungs are sucking at me. My dad is still out there, and I will not give him the satisfaction of finding me. I can hold my breath as long as it takes for him to go the hell back to his hole in the basement. Or his smelly chair already by the front door. God I hate that chair. My last teacher could smell it the day she dropped off homework, I could tell by her face.
'Fucking pussy.'
My dad is kicking something. It is my shoebox full of stories. I knew it. He took it from under my bed and now I hear paper ripping and muddy workboots stomping. Everything I wrote since third grade, but still I will not breathe.
Now I know what it means, seeing stars. Little blinking swarms of glowing pinpricks. They look friendly. My brain wants to give in and go with the swarms into blackness, my lungs are frozen from exhaustion--they don't have the strength to keep suctioning for air.
Finally, the fucker is stomping out and down the stairs. Ow--I keep hitting something hard against my head; weird, since I am not moving.
I hid in the weeds out back until the moving truck left. My stuff only took me ten minutes to unpack. I opened the Blatz case and put my clothes in the milk crates, my stories under the bed, and my knives in my pocket; don't know where they'll be safe in this dump yet.
Oxygen is getting me high. Not so different than the pill my buddy's brother gave us back home. Except this is no fun because what the fuck is poking me in the ass? I am sitting Indian style on the closet floor. I am facing the door but can't tell because no light is coming under the bottom now; my dad turned off the light when he left. I can't tell how big it is in here. The floor is wood and I can feel dust and dirt with my hands. The air in this closet is another universe. A dead one. Nothing moves in here.
But something is making sounds behind me. Scraping. Little, tiny scrapings. I want to turn around. My hands hit the floor to support my weight, and a million soft crunches vibrate up through my hands.
What the fuck?
There is no time to think because smelly, bony fingers grab my neck and I kick out at the door but it doesn't open and I slam my hand back into the thing grabbing my neck and sickly xylophone chimes fill the closet before hard parts crumple behind me and my neck is free. I grab out for the door handle, find it, and twist, but now it is in my hand and when I drop it my hand retains its hardness and the image of a kneecap flashes in my mind. I pull my hand close to me and flex my fingers, but they are hard and getting harder and when I try to make a fist there is a clacking and awkard stiffness.
I have to get out of here I really can't breathe now even though I am trying and so I move to stand up but the hardness is spreading so fast through my body that I am Tinker Toys on ice and cannot get any traction and I crumple to the floor. Wormy tracks crisp their way over my arms and feet, and I push up to a sitting position and now I am solid and stiff and segmented. My thoughts are drying up with the evaporating flesh, but a dull outrage permeats my marrow and I long to have flesh and blood come through that closet door.
'What do you got to write about,' my dad would say. 'Ain't no skeletons in your closet.' Open yours, dad. I'm starving for it.
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