From Where The Monsters Came

I Switched Off All The Lights But You Still Didn't Leave

112:30 pm 6 days before.

I wake up late and disorientated, with someone pounding on the front door and something else pounding inside my head. I ignore the door, take four painkillers and go back to sleep.

-

6:00 pm

The entire house is beginning to reek of something rotten.

I search all the cupboards and sweep under the furniture to find eight dead mice. Three are eaten out with maggots, two feel stiff as cardboard, and the remaining three feel warm and soft, blood still oozing from puncture marks across their backs. Each one is scooped up into a bin bag and half a bottle of air freshener is sprayed around the house until I can almost feel my insides sterilising themselves.

A timid knock breaks through a moment of silence I take in dedication to the fallen mice, and I know it's Leo before I've unlocked and unbolted and unchained the door.

-

"I'd stay for dinner, but..."

Leo looks half dead and I feel as though if I pushed him hard enough, he might just crumble to dust beneath my fingers.

"But you don't like microwave meals," I finish for him.

"I prefer something fresher." He hesitates, drawing patterns in the dirt on the un-vacuumed floor. "I'm assuming throwing out your red clothes didn't work."

"No. It didn't."

"Shame."

"Yeah."

A long time ago, we may have talked about it, but we've been through too many phases to dwell on things that don't work. We are too tired.

"Are you going to get any of them back?"

"No. Just in case."

Leo used to play piano, and he was really good too. His hands moved faster than his head; he fell right into the next notes rather than pushing the keys. Now, he drinks fourteen cup of coffee a day and chases caffeine pills with energy drinks. He remains lethargic and cold to the touch. His piano gathers spider webs. He does not blame me for any of my just-in-cases.

"Give this to Keira, would you?" I ask him on the way out the door, holding out last night's envelope. "It would save me a trip."

His face goes blank, then falls into something between sadness and exhaustion.

"Oh, Liv."

"The red clothes didn't work," I remind him needlessly.

He takes the envelope and sloes the door as softly as he can. Forty-eight needle teeth go with him and the smell of dead mouse fights its way through artificial vanilla.

-

1:07 am

I switch off every light in the house and go to bed as late as I can stomach. It growls from below me, and someone else's eyes flicker in the gap between the door and the doorframe.

"Night," I say.

-

3:10 am

The monster I draw has no tongue. A hand claws it's way from her mouth and her eyes are dead inside. She looks otherwise normal.

I screw up the image and throw it to the other side of my room. I cry and I get some sleep, because if it has to happen, I may as well try to be well rested for it.