It was like when the lightning hit the tv, but didn’t electrocute him. It never played images the same. In the evening as the sun set, the child was drawn to the closet. His feet, usually warm against the carpet, went cold. His parents couldn’t understand why he sat on his knees crying. When he learned to talk, he would tell them the closet stared back.
A few weeks before he collapsed on the floor of his bedroom, his grandparents pushed him along the boardwalk. Faceless shadows moved around them. It was a humid July. The night cut by a sickly-sweet smell mixed with the thick salt air. His Poppop smiled at him and fed him pieces of cotton candy, freshly spun from a nearby machine. Decades later, a therapist would be told that this was an early association with happiness. Near where the wooden planks of the deck met the sand his family gathered after playing carnival games. Fireworks looked like cotton candy lit on fire and doused in rainbows. He hated the sound. Suddenly alone, he hated absence. Where was his family? Where was Poppop? A sole moccasin that was formerly on his grandfather’s foot stuck out of a sandcastle like a flag. The toddler ran towards the parking lot, searching for certainty.
Later as an adult he often had panic attacks when stress led to too many sleepless nights. Once his wife found him on his knees in the bedroom, crying and pointing at the closet. Last time she nearly had him committed out of fear for his mental health. This time though, she needed to go away on a business trip. It was all very sudden, but she thought he could handle it. Soon after the sun set, he sobbed on the floor of the bedroom. Goosebumps ran down his arm like an endless highway.
The demon pitied him, which somehow felt worse. He walked into the closet. Claws wrapped around his neck; the man shook, muscles spasming from the anxiety. Thirty-two years of haunting and he tried something new. He hugged his demon. It hurt. The claws punctured his lungs and made his breathing laborious.
The next morning his wife called. She had a dream that he had fallen out of the window of their third story apartment and died. Sitting on the sidewalk outside their apartment, he told her that last night he had the best sleep he ever slept. He couldn’t even tell if the sun was rising or setting.