6. Monsters

Six monsters lived in Lizzie’s closet. They looked a bit like the monsters in Maurice Sendak’s “Where the Wild Things are”, only smaller. When Lizzie was a kid, they would come out at night and sit on the window sill, or walk with her in the park, or just listen to her childish chatter.

Lizzie had pretty much forgotten about the monsters, until some years later, when she opened the closet of her apartment and saw their six faces.

“What are you doing here?” she took out her cocktail dress.

“We needed somewhere to stay,” said Larry, the wild-haired green monster.

“You can’t stay here!” Lizzie said, “I’m thirty-two!”

The monsters gazed up at her with their huge, cute eyes.

“Just for a little while, okay. I’m busy these days.”

The monsters stayed in her apartment for a week. As Lizzie sat cross-legged on the couch one night, they told her their problems.

“Kids today – it’s all iPads, apps, T.V., baby ballet classes. They don’t have the time to daydream anymore.”

Lizzy nodded sympathetically and offered the monsters a Dorito.

“They just don’t believe in us,” said Betty, the blue fluffy monster.

Lizzy slowly realised the monsters weren’t going to move out, until she found them a new friend. She took them to the coffee shop on the weekend. Not one of the kids gave them a second look.

They walked around the city, browsing in the shops, eating lunch in the park, just the seven of them, like in the old days.

Then, on the bus home, a child peered around the bus seat several times. She glanced at her mother, then at the monsters, and broke into a huge smile.

The monsters whooped. “See you Lizzie!” they waved, as they hopped down the aisle.

Lizzie felt a little sad as she walked home alone. But then, it was pretty cool she could still see monsters.

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An exercise in micro-fiction – stories which run from zero to fifty

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© 2014 M. C. Dulac