You get home from the florist job you despise, knowing–like every other night–your mom would already be in bed. You hear what sounds like a child running down the upstairs hallway. Curious, you tread lightly up the stairs of your new apartment. The smell of freshly-laid cheap carpet already mixes with your mom’s cigarettes, burns your sinuses, and makes your eyes water. You keep the lights off so you don’t wake her. You’re accustomed to the dark because it has surrounded your life like a total eclipse, as if sunrises didn’t exist and dirty things that happen at night happen all day as well. You know if you look into the darkness, without protection, you’d go blind. The railing guides your steps through the shadows, and you wonder how many germy, greasy hands touched it before you moved here. Tomorrow you will take Lysol to every reachable surface, hoping to cleanse the dark shadows with the lemony goodness of yet another toxic substance. You shake your head when you realize that, in order to clean, you must also kill.

At the threshold of your half-unpacked bedroom, you turn on the yellow-snow-colored lightbulb. The weak light allows darkness to remain in the room. When you were unpacking earlier that day, you opened the window as wide as it goes hopng that the chemical carpet smell would swoosh out into the ozone before you climbed into bed tonight, even though your room would be freezing since the smell of another fresh snow fall promises another cold day.

As you slip your hoodie off, the cold dampness of the room causes you to shiver as you dig through a box for your favorite footed flannel pajamas that remind you of when you were still innocent. They embarrassed you when you wore them at your friend’s slumber party, but at home they covered you and kept you safe, you thought. The one-pieced with feet comfort you like the ones you wore until your toes were fully exposed because your growing feet kicked through the cheap material. Your hand brushes against the familiar pilled pajamas buried under the pile of other random things thrown hastily in the box. 

You bend over a bit to slip your right foot into the leg when the corner of your closet catches your eye. A different kind of chill vibrates your body. The yellow lighting doesn’t quite shine above a shadow, but you glimpse something move in the empty closet. Slowly climbing into your adult-sized footed pajamas, your hands shake a little pulling the long track of zipper up to your neck like body armor. For once, the flannel does not warm you. Despite the screaming in your head to run back downstairs where the lights can shine bright and cast out shadows, you move closer to the closet intending to close the door, but you notice a string hanging down from a bald bulb. After pulling the string you’re blinded by the brightness.

Another whimper emanates from the corner. Once the blindness wears off you find a little girl sitting facing the back corner. You wonder if this child made the running sounds you heard when you got home from work. Your eyebrows furrow knowing a small child cannot possibly be in your closet. Where would she have come from? She sits curled up with her knees held tightly to her chest as if she thinks it might make her safer, smaller. She wears what used to be a pure white summer nightgown, but now stains and tears note its age and use. The pleated sleeves with eyelet edges drop just below her shoulders and reveal the smooth skinned arms of a girl around three or four years old. Her brown wavy shoulder length hair hangs limply, oily and matted. Her gown ends right above her skinned knees revealing feet covered with callouses and dirt. You can smell the filth as if you wore it yourself.

You don’t want to believe your eyes, but you squat down to her level. “Do you need help? Who are you?” You feel stupid asking since you know this cannot be real.

The brown-haired girl lifts her head and looks at you with tears in her eyes. Without hesitation, your eyes begin to form matching tears while your gaze never leaves the child. When you shiver, you realize this scantily dressed girl must be freezing. “Let me close the window.” Your calves and feet tingle from squatting too long. 

You close the drafty window as tightly as Section Eight housing allows. When you turn around to return to the closet, the girl is gone. The frigidness heightens. You smell that filth again now recognizing a faint hint of sulfur close to you. You turn your back against the window. The little girl stands in front of you under the dimming lightbulb With the soiled white gown, clumpy brown hair and scabbed knees, she looks up at you looking helpless. Her tears flow faster, and the breathy whimper gets louder until it all halts when your eyes meet hers. Her face slowly starts to transform. Her eyes go from the green of a tulip leaf to spheres of black. The pale skin under the caked-on dirt burns a red hue. The corners of her mouth rise and reveal decay and rot so heavy that teeth are no longer visible. Her fingernails grow into claws as though the dirt beneath them gives them life.

Frozen to the windowed wall, you can’t breathe. You can’t even look away. It feels like hours, but within a few seconds the shadow-casting child lunges at you. Your back presses against the now-frosted window so hard you hear cracks form like a layer of ice breaking on a lake. Instead of falling through, you bolt up in bed, drenched, still smelling the faint sulfur. You shake so hard that the bedside lamp rattles as you pull the metallic string to turn it on. Eyes wide open, they dart around the room despite the glaring brightness. You throw the drenched covers off your sweaty body. You turn to put your feet on the ground attempting to wake enough to fully escape the dream. A little girl in a filthy white nightgown stands right in front of you. Before you scream, the demonic face begins to transform again into someone familiar. The little girl is you, and you know the sun will not rise again.