"Are their monsters in the world, daddy?" Vic's son spoke on the other side of the room while Vic stood next to the light switch of his son's cozy little bedroom. The bedroom is spacious with many possessions that he supplied for his son over the past several years since his birth.
The anime poster of Dragonball Z hung askew on his bedroom closet with little tears on the corners of it. The closet space next to his bed is filled with many board games that are older than the hairs on the top of his son's head when he remembered playing those same games with his mother before she is called mom and he is called dad, before marriage became the spectrum of their futures.
That is one of the many past times that they enjoyed before they got married, had a child, and worked on different shift where they rarely see each other with the exception of the coffee sprouts that is bubbling out the last of the water on the kitchen counter space. The talks between them are minimal when Vic knew that they are getting farther and farther apart from the point of no return, wondering if this stake is going to go over the point that it will drive into his heart that he can't pull out in metaphorical afterthought.
When will the bills be paid so he can spend time with his wife? He didn't know, either did he want his son to worry about the house that is slowly being pulled out beneath all three of them.
"If you tell me that in ten years then you will understand. You are safe and not in the presence of them though. So go to sleep, you have school in the morning." He waited for his son to hunker down in his pillow before turning off the light in his room, keeping his bedroom door open with the hallway light casting a ray of peace into his son's dark corner spot of his personal world. Vic went down the hall when he knew that he had to work a fourteen hour shift at the metal fabrication plant tomorrow when he crept by his work boots that is starting to show holes through the skin of it.
He wondered how long he had those boots when he poised to look at the photos on the wall, thinking of what went wrong in their personal world. What went wrong? He left that hallway alone when he moseyed into the cool dampness of his room with the light off. There are no shadows in the bedroom when Vic closed the door, seeing the streetlights yearning through the window when he looked at the cool sheets that are upon the bed and the throw over that is hanging on the corner, gripping on the edge of the bed like it is clutching its life breath to stay where it belongs.
Then he did something that no one knows. He answered the call that he had been dreadfully waiting since last night.
"Come Nalmo." He spoke to the empty room in silence tones.
"Come where I can see you in the light." He reached behind him and turned on the light when the room filtered into his field of view with many trinkets nailed to the wall.
Nalmo showed up in no time, wearing a priest's outfit, a rosary around his neck, and the smell of something foul beneath all of its oddity.
"What do you want of me now?" Nalmo smiled that viscous grin, creating no lines of possible clarity on that face that is gambled on the bad deeds that he have done underneath another name in his other life.
"I want you to watch out for my son. He will be plagued soon with the nightmares that I've suffered." Vic looked at the feigned priest of damnation that is within his room.
"I've suffered the nightmares enough when I was his age."
Nalmo pulled his arm from his side, jetting a card from thin air like a magic trick that is too fast for Vic to comprehend when he gave Vic the card with the lines printed on it.
"Write what else you would give up to keep him safe." Nalmo fretted his boots that are on the hardwood floor when his face did no change from the horror that is within it.
"Do I have to?" Vic asked him, feeling the nervousness on the back of his neck. He noticed that there are more scars on his chest when his wife wondered where they came from.
He couldn't say and either in this world that he cannot talk about.
"Your heart desires his safety from within himself. Surely you can understand." Nalmo the damnable priest smiled when Vic felt the air around him getting stale. He knew that his heart has been hurting for the past few weeks now when his hand felt like a thousand pounds when he grabbed the card from the hand of the dead.
"Fine. Do what you want from me but don't do anything to him."
"Agreed, these monsters will not trouble your son in life." Nalmo sneered when he knew that he had won.
Nalmo is reclaimed in the depths of a place that should not be named in life. He is created in the consul of Alchrose with many people that either go to Heaven noir Hell noir Purgatory. They are the haunting among children, the taker among innocence, the evils of sandman that smirk when the children toss and turn and turn and toss for the night terrors that do not end right away when they wake.
Who is the king of Alchrose? Vic does not know when he stood; five foot ten, one hundred and seventy two pounds in front of the being that is so lost that he does remember life before his passing.
"A singe of flesh will happen again. We talked about what it will do to your heart if the singe is too much to endure." Nalmo brought his hands together when Vic waited for the pen to appear in his hand out of nowhere.
He brought it up with his right hand and looked at it as it felt hot in between his fingers.
He placed the words right on the card, finishing it when he took the ballpoint off of the card.
"Let me see." Nalmo fished the card out of his hand when he looked at it like an obsession of seeing one naked woman strip her clothes on the other side of a forgotten road in her home where the blinds did not hide her truth.
"You sure," Nalmo spied a look of hopelessness in Vic's eyes when Vic nodded his head.
"Okay. You will be hearing from me again." Nalmo vanished in the light like an apparition that was not there to begin with.
He didn't want to speak what he gave up as he crawled into bed, turning off the light when he pulled the covers up against his chin and closed his eyes, waiting for the night terrors to chase him around in the infinite dreams that are wholesome and terrifying.
There is peace upon this night when his son slept with good dreams in his room. His sleeping is something of beauty as the night wind played on the chimes that are bolted to a lonely house on a road that is traveled and traveled far. The wind chime played on as the wind blew.