A little girl isn’t supposed to be out this late.
That’s what the voice likes to say. Really, that’s what most of the creepy crawly, bumping in the night sort of creatures like to say. You know – the ones that the adults don’t want you to believe in. They live in closets and under beds. I’m particularly unhappy with the one that lives in my garage.
Same old thing as always though. I was walking down a path at night, a sidewalk of course since the road is made of metal dragons and lava rocks. At night, the lava rocks cool down, but the dragons don’t necessarily stop, so you still have to be very careful when you cross at one of the stripped bridges.
I don’t like the sun, so I let the moon keep me company. I’m a night owl, or at least that’s what I’ve been called over and over again. Night owls need to spend time under the moon to charge themselves up for dealing with everybody else during the day. It’s like a battery. Sleep isn’t really easy to come by. Daylight-lovers have sleep as their currency for the day. We do not get that or need as much of that.
Sometimes I walk with others because it’s “safer” but I’m an extremely enthusiastic explorer extraordinaire, so I’m safe. In fact, I’m the best at what I do. That’s why I see or hear the creepy crawly, bumping in the night sort of creatures. I’m also safe because my gramma and grampa’s house is close. They’re super extraordinaires themselves.
This park I walked to has lots of creepy crawly, bumping in the night sort of creatures. An infestation even! Another night I walked there, I saw a whole group of tall, really creepy creatures. They looked like drapes for the window, but they also looked like giant shadows. They went in a circle on a hill of grass, and I watched them. I wanted to see what the monsters were doing, but then they noticed me! They turned and looked at me. They didn’t even have any faces, but I’m sure they were looking. I could feel it!
Needless to say, I took a tactical retreat. That would be a monster for another day. Now, I was back, but the ritual circle of shadowy drape-people wasn’t there. They were nowhere to be seen! I trekked further into the park and searched. I explored and used my extremely enthusiastic expertise to find what must have been the source of all the creepy crawly, bumping in the night creatures that had been in the area!
A door. Immediately, of course, I knew that this was a demon door. What else could it have been? It was dark red and pretty. The wood was carved into intricate little spirals and symbols that I don’t have any words for, but it wasn’t a good sort of door. Now, that’s not because I have anything against demons. I had made friends with a demon in one of my last grand adventures, you see. She was very nice and strange. This door, though, was causing trouble for trouble’s sake. I needed to stop it!
You can’t make friends with doors, of course, so I had to take a different approach. I walked up to it. Closer up it was still very pretty and still, of course, very dark red, but it was also a bit beaten up. The door had bits missing from it and scratches on one side. The writing was equally illegible from this closer distance, unfortunately. The scribbles stretched across the top and bottom borders and left me wondering what they could’ve possibly been for. Above the door in the frame were much larger swirls and tendrils that made me think of a squid’s tentacles.
On the door itself, and this was the prettiest bit, once up close you could see an entire pattern of swirls and loops, crisscrosses and crosscrisses. It made me want to open it despite the door being most definitely a bad door.
Mist swirled behind and around the door, coating the park with a thick layer of fog that made it somewhat scary. Even extraordinaires get a little scared from time to time, you see, and this was one of those times that I began to think that I should have brought a friend with. Maybe I should have brought Tigger? She was a girl cat named after a boy T-I-double guh-er because I really liked Tigger when I named her. I still really like Tigger. I didn’t bring her though, so I had to face this alone.
No worries! I could do it! I faced my fears head-on with my curly-wurly pigtails firmly affixed to the sides of my head. I gripped the handle of the door and shivered hard.
Unfortunately, I didn’t realize before I grabbed it that the handles were made of bone of some kind. They weren’t squishy and wet, so don’t worry, and they were fairly nice in the hand, but I have to admit that it was really worrisome and unsettling. I let go of the vertebra handle and wiped my hands off on my bright pink stretchy pants. Plan two.
Knock.
I raised my fist and rapped once, twice, three times, then decided to complete it by making sure to do the whole “shave and a haircut, two bits” thing, which I didn’t know the name of until very very recently. I think the name is weird, but it’s the best knocking of all, so we must accept the name for what it is.
I don’t like knocking. It’s hard on my knuckles. I like the idea of knockers, but I’ve only ever seen them in movies and shows, which only makes me more jealous of their knuckle-free knocking capabilities.
Now I had to come up with what to ask the door. Reddish yellowish lizardish eyes peeked out from one of the holes that were worn into the door and I stared into the eyes. I was taught that you’re supposed to look people in the eye when you talk to them because it is respectful and begets better conversation and listening skills. I had to assume that this applied to doors as well.
I asked quite loudly, “What are your doormotives, Mister Demon Door?”
The door – I’m going to assume that the door is a “he”, even though I’m pretty sure he’s an “it” because he’s a door… but calling something an “it” seems so mean and sad, so “he” it is, besides, he has such pretty swirls, so he must be a boy door – looked down at me with the eyes peeking out of one of the worn out holes. He didn’t say anything though. How rude.
I asked again, still quite loudly to make sure he could hear me, “Mister Door, you see, I need to know what your doormotives are, so I can make sure that you don’t go causing mischief for mischief’s sake. It’s very important, and I’m an extraordinaire, so it’s even more important that you answer me… and truthfully too!”
I had to remind the Demon Door that lying was bad and frowned upon, because I had never ever lied, and I didn’t know if he had ever never lied. If he had ever lied, then I needed to be sure that he wouldn’t lie again, and certainly not towards me. It would be far harder to succeed if he lied to me.
After a moment or two of awkwardly wondering if the door would actually say anything, he didn’t… but he did swing open, and that was nice of him. I didn’t have to touch the creepy bone handle again. I took a look inside and peeked my head in. It was red and grey and lots of normal colors of a desert. It didn’t look as crazy as I thought it would, but why would it look crazy anyway?
The door closed behind me and I jumped but didn’t get too super startled. If they knew I was super startled then they could smell my fear… or something like that. That might have been sharks though. A person on YouTube once said that “hummingbirds are the sharks of the sky,” and I wasn’t sure if he was right or not… so maybe they were a hummingbird type of creepy crawly, bumping in the night creature. Could hummingbirds smell fear?
They were not, of course, a hummingbird. Instead, before me sat a young boy, younger than me even. He looked like he was five, and had really cool clothes on, like a vest for instance. He was completely blue and strange, like a hologram from a movie, but actually there in front of you, and he had really pretty, long, tall horns. The horns were tinged in blue too and curled back to frame the shape of his skull before they came up in little slightly curled points.
He grinned, and I knew that this was one of the dangerous creepy crawly, bumping in the night creatures that I had met before. I had vanquished this one with the high notes on a piano, for he didn’t like them, but here he was again, and I had no piano in sight!
This was bad. He could knock me over or scare me if I wasn’t careful.
He was at a table, with a chair on the other side, and he looked like he was waiting for me to sit down. In the interest of being nice and accepting his offer of a chair, I sat down. I couldn’t be rude, of course, even if I kind of wanted to since he was so mean to me in the past.
He wanted to talk about the state of the world and philosophy, something I hardly understood or cared about since that was such a boring topic, but then he started talking about the animals, and that got my attention. He told me about the fish that I had gotten caught in the tree, and the baby bird that I had tried to help that ran away into the water, and he reminded me of when Tigger had gotten outside, and all the bad things that had happened on accident or on purpose.
I had had enough, and I stood up, brow furrowed at the mean little boy. I kindly reminded him that, “I saved a kitten from a pack of dogs. I tried to help that little baby bird. I tried to help the fish in the tree. I tried to help the butterfly whose wings got cut off. I tried. It isn’t my fault that things can’t always go my way, and it’s not your place to tell me otherwise! And I don’t care that you think that a little girl shouldn’t be out this late either. This is my night, my moon, and my park. Get out.”
With that, I turned and stormed off. The Demon Door was wary of me and opened straight away, letting me go back into the night and grassy fog of the park. I turned to look at the door as he closed, and the boy still sat there, looking very angry that he hadn’t gotten to me. I stuck my tongue out at him as a proper send-off from a somewhat annoyed extraordinaire.
The door closed and then disappeared. Everything felt a little better now, but I knew that things were going to get more complicated as time went on. The world was going to continue to need extremely enthusiastic explorer extraordinaires, and so I had my work to do. Some people like to call us exorcists or mediums, but I like my name best. I remind them that I’m the best and that I’m keeping my home safe from them, just like tonight. Just like every night.
