The Victorian on Sandy Pond

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            "Go on, get out of here."

I lifted the cup from the old birthday card, breaking the seal and letting the twenty-legged abomination out. I shut and locked the front door as quickly as possible and watched through the window panes as the creature scuttled off my wooden steps and out into the darkness.

Shivering from both the cold midnight air and my disgust, I turned the porchlight off and hurried back upstairs. I found my bedroom exactly as I had left it—in pure disarray. Though smaller than the usual beasties that escaped from my closet, this last one had caused the most damage.

I rubbed at my tired eyes and picked up the comforter I'd thrown off of myself and nearly twisted my ankle on mere minutes before. The glass I'd used to trap the creature had once been half-filled with water, but it had fallen from my bedside table in the struggle and spilled on the ugly brown carpet. It would dry by the morning, but my underwear drawer wouldn't pick itself up.

Setting my comforter back on my mattress, I crouched down by the drawer and a horrifying thought popped into my head. What if that thing had left eggs behind? Grimacing, I started to inspect every sock, bra, and undergarment in the light from my ceiling lamp. Minutes later, I was happy to report that tonight's monster hadn't dropped any spawn in my unmentionables when it tried to hide from the underside of my slipper.

With a groan, I lifted the drawer and put it back into place. I put my hands on my sore back, massaging where it hurt the most. I was just about to find the light switch when I saw it. A new Thing.

The closet door was ajar. One gray horn was sticking out under the doorknob, as well as a cloven hoof on my ugly carpet. The horn poked out a little more and I caught a glance at a beady eye staring at me. The monster froze, then retreated swiftly back into my closet.

"Oh no, you don't," I grumbled, darting to the door. "I have had enough of this shit!"

I grabbed the wood and thrust it open, seeing the creature struggling, its horns stuck in the loose-knit cardigan my grandmother had made for me. When it laid eyes on me, the monster started squealing an awful, high-pitched noise.

For once I was relieved that I lived by myself in the middle of the woods. How the hell would I explain this situation to someone if they came running to help me? Still, the sound was agony on my ears, and I needed to make it stop.

"Quit it!" I hissed.

I knelt down and grabbed the monster by what appeared to be its shoulders. It continued squealing until I shook it hard, then it ceased moving, save for its shallow breathing. Even in the darkness of my closet, I could see that whatever this thing was, it was terrified—way more than I was the first time this started happening.

"I'll make a deal with you," I said to the hideous bipedal goat-like thing staring up at me. "I'll free you, but—"

The monster started struggling again, trying to squirm its way out of my grasp. It opened the mouth at the end of its snout to squeal, but I shook it even harder.

"But you have to take me to wherever the fuck you come from. Do you understand me?"

The monster nodded, the motion of its horns knocking my sweater off of its hook. The thing before me stood still and allowed me to tug the unraveling yarn from its horn, and when I lifted the cardigan off of its head, the way it stared up at me was almost...cute?

No. It wasn't cute. It was vermin. Just like the rest of them.

Behind the monster, I could see a hole in the wallpaper of my closet. That was always there, but it didn't have that blue glowing vortex behind it in the daytime.