MicroHorror

Victor was always afraid of the monster in his closet, which is why his abusive and drunk father often locked him in there as punishment, laughing at the boy’s desperate cries to be let out. Victor could feel the monster’s hot breath and smell his stink, and Victor tried to take up as little room as possible, hugging against the worn door as hard as possible, making himself as flat and tiny as he could. Victor didn’t know exactly where the monster was in the closet, but it wasn’t that large an area, so he wasn’t taking any chances.

Eventually, after Victor had been locked in the closet dozens of times, he began talking to the monster and became friends of a sort with it. No one had ever talked to him before, the monster said, so he had a lot to say. He told Victor that his name was Norff, and that he had lived in various closets in this apartment house on the west side of downtown Manhattan since it was built some 90 years ago. His cousin lived under the bed in an apartment on the fifth floor, in a four-year-old girl’s bedroom.

Norff said that he consumed fear, which was strong in children, particularly children terrified of the dark, monsters and being locked away. He had never had a friend, since everyone was either afraid of him or didn’t believe that he existed. Others’ fear filled him up, Norff said, made him strong and savage, which was fitting for a hideous monster, if indeed he was hideous since it was pitch black in the closet.

Victor didn’t mind being locked in the closet now, in fact he preferred it to being with his violent and mean father, and his mother, who was gone most of the time, since she too was afraid of her husband. Norff was nice to him, and told him great fanciful stories about his monster life and the things he had done in his very long life. Victor told him about the outside world and what he did at school, and what life was like with his awful parents.

One particular night, when Victor’s father was really out of control, threatening to cut Victor’s ears off and stuff them in his disrespectful mouth, Victor ran into the closet and slammed the door shut. His enraged father threw the door open, bellowing for Victor to come out, and when he didn’t, the father reached angrily into the darkness amid the hanging coats. Norff pulled him all the way in and then turned Victor’s father completely inside out, a gooey, dripping mass of muscles, veins, nerves, organs and fluids which he casually tossed back outside the closet door. Victor’s father wriggled horribly on the floor for a few minutes, convulsed violently a couple of times, and then stopped.

Victor coaxed Norff out of the closet, and Norff didn’t look so bad after all. He seemed to get more normal looking the longer he stayed out in the light. He showered, shaved, put on aftershave and some of Victor’s father’s clothes, and in a couple of days no one in Manhattan gave him a second glance. Even Victor’s mother thought Norff was an improvement and decided to stay home more. He became Victor’s new father and both enjoyed much better lives.