TRIGGER WARNINGS

The feeling of dread was crushing, pressing Jimmy into his mattress with a hundred small, invisible hands. The comforter felt like soft lead, squeezing the air from his lungs.

Jimmy’s focus was on the window on the other side of the room—that thin pane that separated him from the solid black of the night. Shock-wide eyes transfixed on that glass, certain something he couldn’t see could see him, this night and every night, something getting more impatient and bloodthirsty and evil with every stroke of midnight.

He wished it would go haunt his parents, they who had yet to get around to putting up a curtain in his room. He wished they could experience just a taste of the terror he felt every single night in this terrifying room, in this terrifying house. They wouldn’t think he was just a stupid kid with a wild imagination…or maybe they felt it too and didn’t want to scare him worse.

But if that were so, why not put a fucking curtain up? They had curtains in their bedroom.

There was a sound…a single tap on the pane.

Jimmy froze, his breath on hold, eyes dry. His throat clicked.

Another sound, this one from the other wall. Jimmy’s eyes wrenched to the dark maw of the closet, the door permanently open 24/7, because monsters were less scary if they just strolled right out versus slowly turning the doorknob. He could see the frame of the closet, or his brain just drew it for him.

No, the moon had shrugged a cloud, and now his eyes adjusted to something moving in the closet. Not coming out at him, but…moving up and down. The sound from the closet had been a familiar sound: a sigh. His mother’s sigh, sounding odd this time, not impatient. When it came again, it was ragged, frail.

And then Jimmy saw breasts. Through the blinding terror and darkness, he still registered his mom’s chest before he saw her face. In the moonlight, she glistened, facing the bed in a sitting position. She appeared to be having sex, but Jimmy could not see who she was sitting on, could only see her rising and falling, an occasional soft sigh of pleasure drifting out.

Jimmy almost called to his mother then, thinking no monster would appear as a parent, would not appear naked or having sex. But why then, were (presumably, both) his parents having sex in his closet? He knew he wasn’t dreaming, but he also knew this wasn’t real.

But it sure felt real, and now there was a musty odor in the air, and on that air rode his mother’s voice between increasingly labored breathing. “Jimmy!” she whispered. “I have to show you how you were made…this is h—ah!...how…you were made.” Her movement over her hidden partner quickened, and her voice rose. “This is how you were made. THIS is how you were made!”

Jimmy wished she would not look at him, but she held his stare, and he was unable to blink, much less remind his arms how to work and pull the covers over his head. He wished he could stop noticing how his mom’s breasts swayed, and hated how he was reminded of how he had wondered on previous occasions what they looked like. He wished she would stop moving seductively. Most of all, he wished she would lower her voice, because her volume was now adding to the terror, almost a shout, more than loud enough to wake all the monsters in the house and maybe a few outside.

Another single tap on the window, louder this time, but Jimmy couldn’t pull his stare from the closet.

His mother, almost screaming now: “This is how…uhh!...oh God!...this is how you…were made!”

There was the sound of flesh on flesh, and quick sucking sounds, and another tap on the glass.

“This is…oh, GOD!...get it out of me! GET IT OUT OF ME!”

Jimmy’s mom was thrashing about now, nodding her head rapidly, black strands of hair stuck to her face, breasts heaving. Her hands shot out on either side and gripped the frame.

“GET IT OUT OF ME!”

Out in another room, maybe the living room, the frail and distorted wail of a baby came. And then Jimmy’s mom screamed…really screamed. It was a true scream that sounded more violent than anything else Jimmy had ever heard. There was true pain and fear in it, and he knew he would never be able to forget it.

And then his mother disappeared into the dark and something did come out at him then, a hulking figure…Jimmy’s dad, or something that resembled his dad. Also naked and glistening, it bellowed in a rage as it reached the bed, and in that second, Jimmy realized that his parents were monsters, and that a curtain no longer mattered, because the monsters had finally come for him.