Inside The Wardrobe - A Short Story

This was a short story (adhering to a 1,500 word limit) that I wrote for my university coursework.

Inside The Wardrobe

She stood in front of her mother's bed, head hanging low.

‘Aren't you too old for monsters under the bed?’ her mother sighed tiredly, ‘If you really can't sleep, go get some milk to help you settle.’ She turned over, facing away.

Alys did as she was told. She drank the milk slowly and climbed into bed, pulling the covers over her head and cocooning herself inside them. Then she waited for the sounds to start. The horrendous scratching and shuffling of something moving inside her wardrobe.

By morning, the scratching had halted. Even so, the long nights of listening had let the sounds worm into Alys’ mind, and now they twisted and curled into grotesque images. She didn't touch the wardrobe, dressing in yesterday's uniform and shutting her room door firmly behind her.

‘What is a monster?’ She asked her friend at lunch, while they watched the younger kids playing football.

What do you mean?’ He said, biting into his sandwich. ‘Like the definition, or the general concept?’

‘The second one.’

He chewed thoughtfully then swallowed, ‘A monster is just something that people think is scary and abnormal. Like, the Victorians were scared of science, because they thought it was weird.’

‘So, monsters are only scary because they're strange to us,’ she said.

‘I don't know, I think serial killers are still scary and they're not that strange, they're a type of monster,’ her friend said, laughing and taking another bite of his sandwich.

‘Right. Some monsters are scary for a reason,’ she said.

By her next class, the noise-born beast had solidified in her mind; a slithering, many-legged demon with starving eyes and an enormous mouth. A creature with a thick, menacing body made for murder.

‘What's that you're drawing?’ her teacher asked, suddenly behind her. Alys startled violently, pen striking a line across the face.

‘The monster in my cupboard,’ she said, turning the page to the unanswered questions on the other side.

‘It's very creative,’ her teacher told her. "But it's not what you're meant to be doing, is it?"

‘Sorry,’ she said, cheeks warm.

‘Just make sure you get on with the work,’ her teacher said, walking away. Alys turned the page back, staring at the ink of the now scarred monster. She’d never been called creative before.

When she got home, the house was quiet. Alys pushed her bedroom door open. A breeze was blowing from the window, rustling the curtain discordantly against the tinkling wind-chime. She trod heavily as she approached the wardrobe, shoes thudding into the carpet.

‘Hello?’ she called out softly and paused to listen. The wind-chimes tinkled back at her. She reached out and opened the wardrobe, peering inside. Her clothes were pulled off their hangers, littered on the wardrobe floor. It smelt bad, like rubber and rust, and Alys could see strands of hair-like fibres clinging to the fabric. She turned away, checking under her bed. Nothing there. She checked the cupboard, inside drawers, behind the curtains, her searching becoming faster and frantic. Still nothing. She was alone.

Alys shut the window, breathing heavily. She sat, hugging her knees, staring at the empty wardrobe. She knew it would be back – the ghastly creature with its terrible jaws and grisly tongue. How long would it wait, stalking her, watching her from behind the wardrobe doors? She tried to think, but her mind squirmed too queasily to form a plan, instead conjuring images of unblinking eyes and dripping saliva. Alys stood and closed the wardrobe door.

Anticipation for the night to come pressed on her through the evening. Dinner felt rushed; the food from her parents’ plates gone too quickly. They cleared the table and she offered to wash the dishes, doing them by hand and going over each one twice - just in case she’d missed a bit. When she finally went to bed, her fingers were wrinkled and ugly, and the feel of her pyjamas beneath them unsettled her. She didn’t hide beneath the covers this time. She sat against the headboard, watching the wardrobe. Her breathing was the only sound. Until the scratching started. First, she heard a faint shuffle. Then another. Then the gouging sounds of the monster began. Its claws struck at the inside of the wardrobe, scoring gash after gash into the wood. Alys shook as she lifted herself off the bed and walked forward, hand reaching towards the wardrobe. She stopped before she could touch it. She was sure the sounds had faltered. That ceaseless scratching had stuttered for the smallest moment, like it knew she was there. Her arm dropped to her side, and she retreated hastily back to her bed. Under the protection of her covers, she revised her plans for confrontation.

Finally, morning came. After she was sure the monster was gone, she opened the wardrobe. She reached inside, dragging the layer of trampled clothing out and pulling it into the laundry basket. She grabbed a pen and paper from her desk, writing down three large words. Alys placed the paper on the wardrobe floor and moved to close the door, but caught herself partway. Could monsters read? Maybe she should offer it food. What would a monster even eat? That malformed visage rose in her mind, eyes glaring hungrily at her in response. Shivering, she left to get some meat from the kitchen. She put it on a plastic plate, next to the note, and closed the wardrobe door once more. That evening, when she sat down to watch TV, she kept the volume a little lower than usual, listening.

Too soon, it was time for bed. Alys slid, fully clothed, under her covers, clutching a tennis racquet. It took longer, she thought, for the sounds to start this time, but when they did they were louder, harsher, more threatening. The beast was angry.

She didn't move all night, and awoke to the dark of her covers. Alys unclenched her hands from the racquet's handle, duvet falling away from her face as she sat up, her breath unfolding out into the cool morning air as she peered at the wardrobe. The twitter of the birds outside eased the clumping sickness in her stomach, for it came unaccompanied by any other sound. Her wardrobe was still. Alys stood, shedding her covers and walked toward it. She heard something move and her breath seized in her lungs.  Was the previous stillness only an act? When she opened the wardrobe, would the monster leap into action, freakish claws lashing out to wound her? She stepped back to grab the racquet again. This time, she approached weapon poised. She took a deep breath and swung the door open.

Her weapon threatened only the blank back of the wardrobe. It’d found no monster to ward away, a pointless precaution. Alys lowered the racket. The same fibrous hair littered the wooden floor, and the meat had been pulled off its plate and dragged to one side, chunks of it missing as if they’d been bitten off. Her note lay untouched in the centre, the words “What are you?” glaring out at her. Alys closed the wardrobe door, wrinkling her nose at the repugnant smell of rust, and left the room.

She didn’t hear the sounds that night, despite how long she waited, the tennis racquet gripped tightly in her hands.

‘Have you heard of The Overton Window thing?’ Her friend asked the next day.

‘No…’ She said, waiting for him to explain.

‘Well, it’s where what’s seen as the “normal” political view changes as society changes. I’ve been thinking about your monster question. I reckon it’s the same, what we see as a monster probably changes as society changes,’ he said.

‘But won’t some things, like serial killers, always be scary because we know that they’re dangerous,’ she said, frowning. Some things were scary for a reason.

‘Maybe,’ he said.

It didn’t return that night, or the following night either. She let the racquet sit beside her - released from her stiff grip - and tucked her covers gently beneath her chin while she waited. In the absence of the incessant scratching, her drifting mind latched onto the sour smell of spoilt meat that was leaking from her wardrobe. She cleaned it out in the morning. She threw the rotting chunk of meat in the bin but paused halfway through clearing the strange hairs. It felt important to keep something, to remember. Alys swept the rest into an old earring box, binding it with a hairband to keep it closed.

She never heard that strange scratching again. The monster had gone – whether because of her actions or in spite of them she wondered. She kept the box, even when she left the house years later. Sometimes she would hear a scuttling in the ceilings of the places she lived, or a scraping at her bedroom window, but never again did she hear the ungodly sounds of that gruesome monster. Her wardrobes remain unoccupied.

Commentary:

So, was it really a monster?
The story deliberately lack catharsis, there is no definite answer given. I wanted the monster's escape from resolution (through confrontation) to give it more power, leaving the story open to argument and individual interpretation. I also wanted to do this because, the concept of monsters has strong links to ideas of cultural assumptions concerning perception of difference. The lack of resolution to the monster question gave me more room to insert aspects of that into the story and Alys' character.

One of my intended interpretations was for the monster to be seen as a product of Alys' fears and assumptions, fed by the opinions and attitudes of those around her - her belief in the monster a reflection of wider cultural assumptions. Whether the monster is real or not doesn't matter, although it's real enough to Alys.

Alternatively, this story is about a sleep-deprived, scared, teenage girl and her overactive imagination. While she's drawing monsters, there's a rat in her house, doing rat things. Maybe she should have listened to her mother about being too old for monsters under the bed.

Ultimately, the story is whatever it's read as. There isn't really a wrong way to interpret it (unless you think it's Alys' mother sneaking into the wardrobe each night).