sirmyk
New Member
It's close to Halloween, so I thought I would bring out some of my short stories to share with all of you. Please comment and critique as harshly as you so desire.
THE LIGHT IN THE CLOSET
by Michael Bailey
There was a strange man in my room last night, wearing only black (a trench coat I think) with a hood covering his head. He’s a boogeyman.
A silhouette was all I could muster this time, thanks to the full moon glaring through the window at his back, but I think he wore military boots again, muddy ones. I knew they were muddy because of the dirty footprints that were left on the carpet after he went home; I had to clean up the dirty floor the next morning. I do every time he visits me in the night. If I don’t my mom blames the mess on me and I get in trouble.
This man comes to visit at least once a week and I can never tell whom this outsider is, or why he is so interested in me. He just walks out from my closet some nights, stands over my bed for a while, occasionally hours, and then goes back in, to his home in my walk-in closet.
At least he turned off the light in the closet last night. Sometimes he leaves it on all night and I wake up and see the outline of the closet door glowing in the dark room and have to hide under the covers to make it go away so I can catch sleep. I wait until morning to turn it off. I’m only ten after all, and things like that still scare me. Sometimes I’m too afraid to peek out from under my covers at night to see if he’s there at all.
In the daytime the closet is only a closet and nothing more. It holds my clothes, shoes, and some other junk. How someone could live in there I’ll never understand, especially in the nighttime. It’s only a four-by-eight closet and my stuff takes up most of the room. There are definitely many places to hide, a few nooks, a couple crannies, yet it’s very small. There are two bars that go across, one on each side to hang clothes from, a shelf or two, and a chain-pull light (a bulb poking down) centered on the ceiling. Sometimes I wonder as I’m choosing an outfit, if he’s hiding behind some of my clothes, but I never see feet anywhere underneath, or muddy boots for that matter. That’s another strange thing: the mud I clean up some mornings stops at the door; inside the closet, the carpet is always clean. I’ve looked for him in the closet before by sliding my things around, and have even moved all my clothes to my bed once, but only during daylight (each time my bedroom door was ajar in case I needed to make a run for it) and each time there was no one.
Someday he’ll show me his face. I think he’s scared of me, sort of, because he never shows me his face. Hopefully it’s not too scary like the rest of his body. These last few years he has never shown me his face, not once; it’s always hidden by the shadows. He also never says anything to me; he just looms there, gangly. His arms hang low and pendulum back and forth at his knees. His body is quite tall, even as he slouches like a question mark, which he punctuates with his heavy, dirt-caked boots. I can hear him breathing usually, like he’s out of breath, or fatigued. But he never hurts me, or touches me, nothing like that; he’s a boogeyman, not a child molester.
Closing my eyes to make him go away never works as he stands above me, glaring down with what I can only imagine are black eyes; upon opening my own blue eyes, he is always still around, his black figure towering over my small, shivering form under the sheets. Whenever he visits my bedroom gets extremely cold. Sometimes I can see his breath puffing out like he’s smoking a cigarette or something, but it’s only the cold he brings. The coldness comes from the closet. I know this because I’ve looked over before to see the mist or fog or whatever it is pouring out from the open door. Whenever he opens the closet door to visit, he leaves it open until he is done, and there is always cold rolling out.
The first time I saw him I was only eight years and eight months of age. I remember waking from a horrific dream of running through a dead field of some grain while being chased by a werewolf out for my blood, and just before I woke up I tripped over a rock in the way and determined it to not be a rock at all but a human skull, all broken apart and smiling like a jack-o-lantern, and the beast chasing me was panting and following my trail, getting closer and closer as the stalks broke under its feet. Turning, I saw the red eyes of the werewolf bearing down on me, and when I screamed in the dream it woke me up and I screamed aloud in my bedroom, which was completely dark at the time, except for the luminous shine coming out from the open closet door, and standing over me was the black shape of the boogeyman, and so I screamed a third time as loud as I could.
My mom’s pounding footsteps could be heard as she bounded down the hall to check in on me, and the stranger never even budged as she approached; he only stood there, as he always does. When my bedroom door opened my concerned mother flipped on the lights, causing me to look her way. “What is it?” she panicked. “There’s...” I started and pointed a finger, but upon turning my head back to the stranger, I found he was gone and I was only pointing to the empty window a ways away. Looking to the closet door, I also found it empty, and likewise closed. After a long moment of awkward silence she assumed I had only had a nightmare and flipped the lights back off. She closed my bedroom door without saying another word. Her muffled footsteps could be heard as she tiredly walked down the hall to my parent’s room. Wondering whether or not it had only been a dream, I bravely threw a peek to the closet door. The door was closed, but that thin line of bluish-white devilishly outlined its perimeter, with that foggy mist rolling out underneath. The closet light was on, the strange man waiting.
THE LIGHT IN THE CLOSET
by Michael Bailey
There was a strange man in my room last night, wearing only black (a trench coat I think) with a hood covering his head. He’s a boogeyman.
A silhouette was all I could muster this time, thanks to the full moon glaring through the window at his back, but I think he wore military boots again, muddy ones. I knew they were muddy because of the dirty footprints that were left on the carpet after he went home; I had to clean up the dirty floor the next morning. I do every time he visits me in the night. If I don’t my mom blames the mess on me and I get in trouble.
This man comes to visit at least once a week and I can never tell whom this outsider is, or why he is so interested in me. He just walks out from my closet some nights, stands over my bed for a while, occasionally hours, and then goes back in, to his home in my walk-in closet.
At least he turned off the light in the closet last night. Sometimes he leaves it on all night and I wake up and see the outline of the closet door glowing in the dark room and have to hide under the covers to make it go away so I can catch sleep. I wait until morning to turn it off. I’m only ten after all, and things like that still scare me. Sometimes I’m too afraid to peek out from under my covers at night to see if he’s there at all.
In the daytime the closet is only a closet and nothing more. It holds my clothes, shoes, and some other junk. How someone could live in there I’ll never understand, especially in the nighttime. It’s only a four-by-eight closet and my stuff takes up most of the room. There are definitely many places to hide, a few nooks, a couple crannies, yet it’s very small. There are two bars that go across, one on each side to hang clothes from, a shelf or two, and a chain-pull light (a bulb poking down) centered on the ceiling. Sometimes I wonder as I’m choosing an outfit, if he’s hiding behind some of my clothes, but I never see feet anywhere underneath, or muddy boots for that matter. That’s another strange thing: the mud I clean up some mornings stops at the door; inside the closet, the carpet is always clean. I’ve looked for him in the closet before by sliding my things around, and have even moved all my clothes to my bed once, but only during daylight (each time my bedroom door was ajar in case I needed to make a run for it) and each time there was no one.
Someday he’ll show me his face. I think he’s scared of me, sort of, because he never shows me his face. Hopefully it’s not too scary like the rest of his body. These last few years he has never shown me his face, not once; it’s always hidden by the shadows. He also never says anything to me; he just looms there, gangly. His arms hang low and pendulum back and forth at his knees. His body is quite tall, even as he slouches like a question mark, which he punctuates with his heavy, dirt-caked boots. I can hear him breathing usually, like he’s out of breath, or fatigued. But he never hurts me, or touches me, nothing like that; he’s a boogeyman, not a child molester.
Closing my eyes to make him go away never works as he stands above me, glaring down with what I can only imagine are black eyes; upon opening my own blue eyes, he is always still around, his black figure towering over my small, shivering form under the sheets. Whenever he visits my bedroom gets extremely cold. Sometimes I can see his breath puffing out like he’s smoking a cigarette or something, but it’s only the cold he brings. The coldness comes from the closet. I know this because I’ve looked over before to see the mist or fog or whatever it is pouring out from the open door. Whenever he opens the closet door to visit, he leaves it open until he is done, and there is always cold rolling out.
The first time I saw him I was only eight years and eight months of age. I remember waking from a horrific dream of running through a dead field of some grain while being chased by a werewolf out for my blood, and just before I woke up I tripped over a rock in the way and determined it to not be a rock at all but a human skull, all broken apart and smiling like a jack-o-lantern, and the beast chasing me was panting and following my trail, getting closer and closer as the stalks broke under its feet. Turning, I saw the red eyes of the werewolf bearing down on me, and when I screamed in the dream it woke me up and I screamed aloud in my bedroom, which was completely dark at the time, except for the luminous shine coming out from the open closet door, and standing over me was the black shape of the boogeyman, and so I screamed a third time as loud as I could.
My mom’s pounding footsteps could be heard as she bounded down the hall to check in on me, and the stranger never even budged as she approached; he only stood there, as he always does. When my bedroom door opened my concerned mother flipped on the lights, causing me to look her way. “What is it?” she panicked. “There’s...” I started and pointed a finger, but upon turning my head back to the stranger, I found he was gone and I was only pointing to the empty window a ways away. Looking to the closet door, I also found it empty, and likewise closed. After a long moment of awkward silence she assumed I had only had a nightmare and flipped the lights back off. She closed my bedroom door without saying another word. Her muffled footsteps could be heard as she tiredly walked down the hall to my parent’s room. Wondering whether or not it had only been a dream, I bravely threw a peek to the closet door. The door was closed, but that thin line of bluish-white devilishly outlined its perimeter, with that foggy mist rolling out underneath. The closet light was on, the strange man waiting.
