Closet

Looking back I was a funny child. I am slightly ashamed as well. From even just a year ago its hard to imagine I am the same person. So careless. Fat. But everything changes.

These days, some call me O.C.D. People that know me say Its one of my more annoying traits, but it as far worse. This problem is not merely a bad trait, but a living, growing organism in my mind. You can think of it like a seed settling into the far corner of my head. The more time I have alone, the worse it gets. Fertilizing itself, looming over the every action I make. It brings me so far as to create rituals in my every day life. An idea, a little idea, like a seed.

I have a closet on the left side of my room. The white doors contrast strangely with the spearmint green color of the walls. The girl who had previously occupied the room had painted the walls pink. Sometimes I wonder if she had seen the closet as I do. Let me stop right here to tell you that I am not insane. The rituals that I speak of are merely my minds way of facing it’s demons.

It’s eleven at night on a Tuesday. I brush my teeth like I do every night, a fairly normal ritual that ensues with the monotony of my day to day life. I’m sure you can relate to this. As I walk down the short hallway to my room, the thought begins to surface in my mind. I start to prepare myself, and it takes over. The closet is built into the wall, 10’x10’ and fairly normal as far as closets go, full of compartments and drawers. A rack connecting to the dresser dangles with hangars. The only oddity is a small opening to the right of the dresser. It burrows deep into the house. Covered by the wall, the opening continues into the closet for some unknown reason. It’s darkness eludes me. Over my four years spent in the house I have created an image in my mind of some dark, sinister thing living in that closet, growing as I have, it is a seed. After four long years this sapling of an idea should seem meaningless, childish, even a little cliche: “A skeleton in the closet”, yet this is far too real. It represents everything that I fear in life, being alone, the dark, as well as an ordinary array of other fears, yet somehow my fears have been personified into this ominous slot in the wall.

I step through the doorway casually glancing at the closet as if to merely survey the room before heading to my bed. I take a step. Stop. Again I glance at the closet, this time with a more specified position. My eyes fall on the sinister crevasse with distaste, no, this feeling is not distaste but fear. The gap’s shadows snickering as if to taunt me into taking another step. My bed now seems distant and dreamy, it’s blankets are layered with protection from the closet like a fortress of sleep. Suddenly I move. I impulsively hit the switch on the wall and wander off in the dark to find my bed. It’s just a closet.