The Things Betwixt...

Monster in the Closet

"Daily Flash Fiction Challenge" 
Winner!
02-14-2025

Word Count - 300 -

It's hard to wear my mask anymore, it doesn't fit the thing beneath, but I still wear it when I have to. Sometimes it's on the boardwalk, or in a bar somewhere—anywhere that someone might see me. It's a disguise. An idea. A figment of the imagination. Really, it's just a face to the name. I might smile or laugh with strangers, but I hate them.

I loved her.

She was sweet as candy. All of her. I wooed her like so many others, then brought her home. There, she tasted pleasures that not many have. There's a thin line between pleasure and pain, and that is the path I walk. It's a path that I've taken others. Some of them say they like it, some run and never come back.

She, however, walked every step to the end. I went too far this time. The end of that path was unexplored territory to both of us. What was after the whips and the ropes? What was beyond the pleasure from pain? We breached that threshold together as two bodies with one heart—only half survived.

I went too far.

The mixture of drugs and ecstasy stopped her heart in a moment of rapture. What could I do? Cupid shot and his arrow was true. Now the only thing I ever loved was gone as quick as it came.

I did the only thing I could think of. I left her where I found her, at the docks. This time however, she was in the water with the rest of them. The only thing I ever loved; with all the other ones I hated.

Human. That's my mask.

Look in the closet, it's just a closet. You can never find the monster that hides inside—not until it jumps out at you...