Dragon

“When you read this again in a couple years, don’t forget to pour a little more salt in the wound…”

There’s a dragon in my closet.

Not the kind with scales and wings, but a dragon nonetheless. It’s been there since I moved in, pacing back and forth, watching and waiting for a chance to strike. A true serpent in disguise, it hides in the shadows, plotting and scheming, eagerly anticipating the day I’m forced to contend with its cruelty.

It hasn’t got me yet, but I know someday it will.

There’s a dragon in my closet.

I’ve tried to tell anyone who cared enough to listen, but I always get the same answer. Get over yourself. Move on. Learn to forgive and forget. They think it’s a simple fix – a personal issue that I’ve somehow failed to resolve. But they’re not the ones living with it. They can’t smell the sulfur on its breath, the rot beneath its skin. They can’t feel its piercing blue eyes burning into their soul, surgically dissecting them like some sort of perverted doctor hell-bent on removing anything good and leaving only the cancer behind. Or the way it hisses to me at night, singing a fiendish lullaby that calls to me like a starving siren. No, they don’t know, because they don’t want to know. And they don’t want to know, because who in the world would ever want to face down a dragon?

It hasn’t killed me yet, but I know someday it will.

There’s a dragon in my closet.

I know so, because I’m the one who put it there. I remember spending years sweeping up the fractured bones of all my skeletons trying to make a nest for it; the day it finally hatched, breathing life into its lungs only to steal it from mine. It was small at first, something I thought I could manage on my own, but no man can truly govern his own demise. One minute you shut the door and the next thing you know it’s bursting apart at the seams, frothing at the maw and ready to devour anything that comes too close.

I tried to evict it once! But I didn’t have the heart…

Maybe I’ll try again later.

There’s a dragon in my closet.

It stands about six feet tall and weighs a little over two hundred pounds. It has a nasty limp in its right leg and more scars than anyone would dare to count. Its eyes are a flashing blue, with a tongue that spews hellfire and lies. It’s bruised up, banged up, and extremely pissed off; a cross between a decent man and wickedness made flesh.

Death? Oh, it loves death!

Pain? Ha! That’s the only thing it eats anymore!

Fear? Didn’t you hear?! That’s the first thing it ate!

Yes… I have a dragon in my closet.

It lives in my mirror.

And it hasn’t beat me yet, but God knows it probably will.