Nowhere
Monster in the Closet
The heels of his shoes clicked on the cement in time with the metallic sound of the rain, the occasional passing of a car, and the beginnings of a migraine pounding in his ears.
This made for a bitter percussion quartet. His name was Dr. Nicholas Crionnacht. His throat tightened as he glanced up at the concrete sign anchored in front of the complex among some dying flowers, “Cherry Tree Apartments”. Funny how the nearest cherry tree was miles away.
As if walking six blocks in horizontal-rain, climbing three flights of stairs, and trying to open the wrong door twice wasn’t enough, as soon as he set his foot on the kitchen linoleum of Room number 313 it went out from under him.
Nicholas draped his coat over the back of the couch, too tired to hang it up in the closet, and retired to his small green couch with a glass of Jack Daniel’ in one hand and an ice pack in the other. He loved this couch. It was a double-sitter, man-eating one that had driven more than one potential girlfriend away with it’s moldy, worn out look but he always refused to get rid of it for one reason or another.
His eyes slowly drifted shut as the numbing sensation of alcohol took hold, dimming the images of the day. Sometimes being a lightweight had its perks. He had been working late at the hospital, spending most of the time in his office until his last patient.
It had been a relatively quiet day in the psych ward until one of his more recent clients had an episode and was rushed in when a neighbor called for help. A mother of three with a very clean record, few pre-existing conditions, lovely home and loving husband had murdered two of her children and husband while the third child hid in the closet and watched everything through a crack in the door.
Many times the Dr. had sat in a little coffee shop lost somewhere in a shopping mall and simply listened to white noise from the people’s mouths as they climbed the escalators and made their way into gift shops and boutiques.
Sometimes he thought it was almost comical how the people interacted. Their body language especially, and their expressions were vibrant regardless of what they were expressing. In his mind he saw threads stretching between them. Each person became part of a complex tangle that tied them to everyone else. Whenever he watched people like this he never saw himself attached to anyone.
Honestly, there was no one left. His parents were both deceased. No siblings. No relatives living anywhere nearby. No friends worth mention. And no love interest at the moment. Until now, he had felt little to no ‘need’ of human contact besides the occasional cavity-causing, “Why, good morning, Dr. Crionnacht! Beautiful day!” from the secretary in the lobby.
This detachment had lent itself well to his line of work; the ability to understand humanity, diagnose it, and prescribe medicine to treat it, and yet not have to look directly into its ugly face is what earned him awards. Today though, it seemed so much more fragile.
Further into the evening and bottle of Whiskey, Nicholas awoke. It was the strangest noise. At first he thought it was the neighbors upstairs having another one of their sketchy parties that usually involved moving a lot of (at least that’s what it sounded like. He hated to think what it might be) furniture. So he dismissed it as such and rolled onto his stomach, pulling a pillow over his head.
It was then that he began to hear voices. Or one voice rather. The Dr. couldn’t make out where it was coming from, only that it sounded distressed. Brow furrowed, he sat up and looked around groggily.
The closet was rattling violently as if someone was trying to get inside or outside rather. The Dr. reached for the lamp on the nightstand by the couch but instead rolled onto the floor with it. A muffled voice cursed and pleaded from within the closet, “Let me in, stupid door! C’mon!”
Eyes widening, he sought out the nearest weapon (which happened to be the table lamp) and pulled the door open slowly expecting to see some nightmarish monster waiting to skin him alive. Instead he was met with a pair of misty gray eyes. They both screamed. Nicholas fell backwards, and the monster on the other side pulled the door shut.
The Dr. sat up. His knuckles were turning white around the base of the lamp he was wielding. Gingerly, he pressed his ear against the door and held his breath. He heard the (somewhat) distinct interjection, “Crudnambbit!” come from the ‘monster’ in the closet.
Then suddenly the door flew open and sent him sprawling on the floor clutching his nose. The monster shut it behind them, bracing themselves against the frame as if the door might fall down.
The owner of those gray eyes panted for a moment, and then turned their gaze on him. It appeared to be a lady with an unruly mop of wispy red hair that shifted from iridescent cherry to violet in the light.
She sort of reminded him of a pirate that fell out of a book about the 1700’s except for the cowboy hat. She wore a white linen shirt with frills down the front, jeans (probably GAP), boots, and draped around her shoulders was a dark red captain’s coat trimmed with gold thread and brass buttons. At one point the coat might have been a more brilliant red but with time faded to burgundy.
The Dr. found this monster to be attractive. Not really in the ‘pretty face’ sense although she had that too. It was more of a lightheaded feeling that sent shivers down his spine and rendered him speechless. That combined with the alcohol was an intoxicating mixture. The monster offered a wide grin and hand in what seemed to be an act of friendship,
“Salutations! The name's Charlotte. Hmm... sorry if I spooked ya. Here.”
In a moment he was on his feet. In that same moment his knees buckled due to the alcohol and he found himself awkwardly propped up by his beautiful hallucination. She laughed a breathless sort of laugh and held him upright while he regained his footing.
“Eh. Hmm. You smell nice, for a human. Here’s the couch. There we go, down…”
The Dr. stared after her as she headed for the kitchen and hall door. Once he heard it shut behind her he followed, staggering into the hallway. She disappeared around the corner at the end of the hall which lead to the stairs. On a hunch (and because he probably couldn’t manage stairs in his condition) he went down in the elevator.
For an agonizing second, he thought he might have lost her when he got down to the lobby and saw no one. He wondered if perhaps it had all been a dream but then he remembered her hair and how it had grazed the side of his face when she caught him. According to everything he knew as a psychiatrist, hallucinations were not tangible. That’s when he sat a flicker of red and caught a glimpse of her crossing the street.
The rain had slowed to a drizzle and as it hit the asphalt saturated with warmth from the day most of it evaporated into a thin fog. The Dr. was careful to follow at a distance. A flood of thoughts clouded his mind; he wanted to know who she was, where she was going, and most of all how she had ended up in his closet.
The lady from the closet led him to a popular night club a few blocks away from the apartments. Every Friday through Sunday from eight until three in the morning he had heard the music radiate from that club but he had never gone to investigate as he was always buried under a flurry of paperwork.
With a smile, the bouncer let her in ahead of the line. Knowing he wouldn’t be so lucky, the Dr. slipped around the side and let himself in an unguarded side door.
The lights danced on the people as they writhed to the music. His eyes darted from face to face, unable to find the strange lady. There was a laugh behind him at the bar, the same laugh the lady had. He turned and was met with her blank gray gaze.
“Stalker…” her lips pulled back in a grin like drawn curtains revealing her pearly whites.
Her grin never reached her eyes; it was as if all the emotion he saw written in her body language and face had been drained away from her eyes. They were as unreadable as a blank piece of paper. She patted the empty stool next to the one she was perched on and followed his every movement to it.
“So, what’s on your mind, Mr…” she started.
"Dr., actually—”
“—Dr., sorry. So… you’re the kind of person who when they see a light or hear a noise in the dark goes to investigate?”
“Eh, well—”
“—And you’re the kind of person, Dr., who wakes up each morning at five, looks in the mirror and frowns because they never learned how to smile, goes to work, curses their commute, ignores the secretary in the lobby because they’re not sure how to react to her “Why-good-morning’s”, comes home twelve or so hours later and… ” She leaned in towards him and sniffed, recoiling with a crinkled nose, “… pickles their liver.”
Sensing his discomfort, she continued, “But you don’t belong. You’re a stranger to your own life. So, that’s how you ended up talking to a lady in a nightclub after she magically popped out of your closet. Am I right?”
She waited, her fingers drumming on the counter. The silence between them seemed to tug at the corners of her mouth in satisfaction; she read him like a news anchor would on the eleven-‘o-clock news.
“Yes. But how—how were you in my closet?”
“Was trying to get in.”
“You mean out.” She shook her head.
“No, in. It was the first door I could reach in time.”
“But that’s not right, you had to have either climbed in the window or used the hall door... which was still locked, and I’m on the third floor.”
“Mmm neither. Like Santa Claus, I can open any door, anywhere, and go wherever I want to.”
Hung around her neck on a thick chain was a tarnished key, the kind used to secure mausoleums or old ivy-covered churches. The Dr. shook his head in disbelief until he was dizzy and stopped, his eyes fixed on the key while the voices in his head warred with one another over his already injured sense of reality,
“Show me.” Her eyes lit up.
“I like you! You are different! Oh! And apart from your breath, you smell positively delightful!”
He ignored the last bit figuring anyone who claims they’re like Santa Claus is entitled to be a little strange. They headed for the back towards the public restrooms.
The strange lady leading the way through the crowd and the Dr. in tow, their fingers laced together. Although many a happy couple entered one facility or another together for reasons better left up to the imagination, she assured him nothing of the sort would happen… much to his relief and dismay.
In the women’s restroom when the last prying eye had left, the strange lady removed the key from her neck and tried it on a stall that was marked “Out of Order”.
There was no keyhole, not even a way to open the door from the outside, and yet, it swung in. Light streamed into the restroom previously lit by flickering florescent lights.
It was warm and spilled onto the floor blinding them for a second before revealing a vast expanse of blue that faded at a vanishing point and became the start of the sky. The sand dunes beyond the stall door were covered with grasses trembling in breezes they could not feel as they stood looking in.
“Holy—”
“Shh. Don’t speak. Don’t believe me if you don’t want to… but I promise you one thing, Dr…”
The strange lady grinned a silly and yet contagious grin he couldn’t help sharing. The last time he felt this way was twenty three years ago, Christmas morning, when the world still felt magical.
“… the water’s wet.”
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