When you’re little, the monster hiding under your bed or in your closet is evil, breathing heavily to frighten you before they eat you. Foul breath, dagger teeth dripping with malice. Skin with scales like razors. Claws made of cold, hard, cleaving knifes. Those red eyes blinking and wink-winking in the dark.

My monster, though, wasn’t a monster at all. He was an angel in fact. An angel without wings to better fit in my room. And I wasn’t little either. Old enough to know better. He was real through. He was. He had to be. Because I needed him. And I think he might have needed me.

I think I always knew he was there. I could feel his presence. Not cold like they say a ghost is. No, it was something warm that made my mind glow just a little. It made the room feel smaller but not in a bad way. Not like the walls would collapse on me and there wasn’t enough air, but cozy, comforting. He took up too much space and I felt closer to him. I liked that. I loved the closeness.

So I wouldn’t think about it. Because it made me feel good.

For so long, everyday, I had to be by myself. At school, the kids stayed away from me. I knew too much and talked too little. They didn’t get the same feeling from me as I got from him.

I couldn’t remember the last time my parents hugged me. I couldn’t remember the last time one of them really saw me. They were too busy lunging for each other, dropping hateful words like candy-coated grenades, waiting for the other to pick it up and getting satisfaction from the explosion and the retaliation. Too far gone to love, too stubborn to let go. Their fingers were going to snap off someday for clutching to those broken dreams so tightly.

I sought my comfort in the dark, curled into my closet behind the hanging clothes, the braided strings of my carpet curving into my hands. The blackness, the nothingness, muffled the fighting over my head. If I closed my eyes and tilted my head as if I was asleep, then I could almost not hear them. Or at least pretend not to.

This is when he came to visit me. Really, truly, for the first and last time, visiting me. He didn’t just stay in the shadowed corners, morphing into the blurry lines of the reality and fantasy. He was no longer that line. Now he was reality.

The air shifted in the way only a person can make it do. It wasn’t just an aura now. My breath hitched for a moment, my head sprang up straight. I knew I should be afraid, too terrified to even see. But I wasn’t. My heart beat a little faster because his closeness overwhelmed me. It was that feeling I’d possessed all those nights, amplified.

I wasn’t able to see where he was. He wasn’t physically touching me. Neither of us spoke but I could hear his easy breathing. Finally, I said, “Who are you?”

“I’m nobody. Who are you?” His voice lilted in a care free kind of way. It was soft with maturity, but still somehow child-like.

I smiled at his reference. Because it wasn’t a coincidence. He knew it was my favorite poem. He had to. Somebody had to. “I’m nobody too.”

Though I could’t see him, I could hear the smirk in his voice. “If you say so.”

“Why are you here?” I asked.

“Why do you think I’m here?” he countered.

I didn’t say anything. The truth? I knew why he was here. And he knew that I knew. He was just toying with me. I should have been frightened but I couldn’t bring myself to be. I felt utterly safe and comfortable. He wouldn’t be able to bring himself to hurt me. I asked him another question. “How do you get in without anyone noticing? Do you sneak in?”

“Something like that,” he murmured, not caring enough to whisper. “Are they always like this?”

I shrugged. “Mostly. I don’t notice it anymore.”

“Yes you do. And it bothers you. You hate it.”

I turned my head away. While I couldn’t see his face, I had a feeling he could make out mine. I wanted to see him; I wanted to put an image to that voice. I had thought he had stepped out of the shadows, but he hadn’t completely. For whatever reason, he decided this was the time to let me know he was here. Just not show me yet. I wished he would though.

“You can’t tell me your fine. Because I know you’re not. I see a little bit more – know a little bit more – than most people.”

“Or maybe you just pay attention more.”

“Maybe you’re right. I probably give myself too much credit. I don’t know more. I just look more.” He moved closer then and the warmth intensified, the edges of my mind getting fuzzy. My heart pounded in a way that made me think it had never truly beat before. This control, this effect, he had over me had nothing to do with attraction. It was something else entirely. Something I couldn’t begin to fathom. Innocent and otherworldly. I couldn’t tell what position he was in until he gently put his arms around me and pulled himself closer. I instinctually curved myself into him. He felt solid and big and oh, so real. He pushed my hair over one shoulder. His movements were brotherly. The heat had leveled out at some point, leaving me comfortable and drowsy.

I was unable to think much. I would start a thought but it was sucked into the bleariness at the perimeter of my brain before it finished. I was only able to feel. The angle of his shoulder and neck my head rested in. The soft curve of what I guessed was his chest where my hand was placed. His legs sharp and jutting where they crossed under me. His breath softly tickled my temple. There was something different about how he felt, like I could feel his molecules shifting beneath me. I could still hear my parents above us, but they had softened into an unintelligible mutter.

“They won’t find us,” he said. I felt the rumble in his chest more than heard the words. He had answered the question I hadn’t had time to think yet. He had a different tone then I, though. He made it sound like we were doing something wrong.

I said nothing, just closed my eyes most of the way and settled into him more. For the first time in a very, very long time, I felt safe and secure. I had a feeling of control. It was over nothing, but it was still control. Nothing was spinning away from me, fishtailing me along behind, leaving me bruised and whiplashed. No one was trying to push me down, down, down until I had no hope of being seen, heard, rescued. I was only there, in that moment, not doing, just being.

While neither of us spoke or moved, I didn’t fall asleep. I was much too aware to slip of out consciousness.

When the voices above us dissipated into nothingness by the muted thuds of a few slammed doors, I reached my hand up. Barely touching him, I slowly traced his face. His nose sloped steadily down, his jaw was rough. My fingers followed along the bumps of his lips and the arches of his cheeks. Sighing, I dropped my hand back to his chest.

“You want to see my face,” he stated. I nodded, the top of my head connecting with his chin and my chin meeting his chest. “You can’t.”

I pulled back slightly. “Why not?” I could hear the pout in my own voice.

“Did you know the human brain can’t invent a face it’s never seen?”

My shoulders sagged at his non-answer and I put my head back into the crook of his neck. His hand moved up and down between my shoulder blades, attempting to soothe me. It did. I forgot what troubled me so much about his evasiveness to my request.

I think I did fall asleep eventually, enveloped in the warmness and softness created by his invisible wings wrapped around me. But then I did wake up, and I didn’t feel the same. It wasn’t quite as cozy anymore and I couldn’t feel him pressed up against me. I knew he was around, though. I could sense him. Slowly, I reached my hand up and over my head, groping for the light switch in the dark. If I was discreet about it, hopefully I wouldn’t frighten him back into the shadows before I could see him. All I wanted was to see him. To know.

I flipped the switch up and the bare bulb buzzed to life, illuminating my hiding space and temporarily blinding me. When the white-hot fireworks cleared from my vision enough for me to see, I stiffened.

I was reclining and wide awake in my closet, no sign of anyone else.

He was gone.