Greener Grass

The night Max walked into his closet was the night of his High School basketball tryouts. He didn’t make the team. He assumed he wouldn’t, but had tried out at the request of his father. After being dropped off back home by a schoolmate’s mother, he was greeted by a plate of cold meatloaf and potatoes, with a thin napkin draped on top of it. The grease from the meatloaf had begun to soak through, polka-dotting the ghost-white blanket that lay on top of it. He stared at the plate for a while, before placing it in the microwave and then taking it up to his room.

His mother was a nurse, who worked twelve hour shifts, three nights a week. On those nights, he didn’t see much of her. Instead, he found a plate of cold food on the kitchen counter, in her place.

His father worked out of town.

He didn’t blame his parents. They tried to talk to him, when they weren’t busy. But as he got older, he found himself spending more time in his room, alone, and spending less time with them.

His bedroom was small, but it still acted as a haven for Max, barricading him from the stresses of life. His bare walls were painted off-white and were contrasted by the sea of dirty clothes and plates of food on his floor. There was a patch of clear carpet next to his bed, where he sat eating the reheated potatoes, listening to the murmur from the TV in the room next to him. He could hear the muted laugh track of a sitcom. His mother was most likely already asleep.

Out of the corner of his eye, Max saw something move. His closet door was creeping open, the yawning mouth stretching wider and wider, until it ever so gently tapped up against the adjacent wall, and finally came to a stop. He got up, examining the door of the closet and then flicking the light on to look inside. The usual collection of junk littered the floor: old toys that he no longer played with, buried under shirts fallen from their hangers, shoeboxes stuffed with old drawings and movie stubs, and a glimpse of a stuffed teddy bear, pinned between a suitcase and the back wall. He looked for some sort of problem with the latch on the frame and found nothing. He shut the door and returned to his plate of food, which had already gone cold.

The door opened again.

Was it his imagination, or did the door swing open faster and bounce against the wall a little harder this time? He remained seated.

Clearly his closet door just needed to be fixed, he thought, he would mention it to his mother in the morning.

The closet light flicked on.

Light poured out into his room. He stared at the open closet, chewing a bite of cold meatloaf, his hands clasped in his lap. He swallowed the bite and inched his way toward the closet.

The light turned off.

He stopped. Ice coursed through his veins, he thought about going to get his mother.

No, he told himself, he shouldn’t wake her.

His feet shuffled forward, the full doorway of the closet finally coming into view. He froze. The entrance to his closet had become an impossibly black wall of shadow. The dark was impenetrable; the weak light from his bedroom lamps gave him no line of sight into the closet.

He flicked the light on.

Nothing.

He moved his hand past the threshold, first dipping only one or two fingers into the pitch-black, and then his whole hand. He waved his now concealed hand around. It felt no different.

He took a deep breath and closed his eyes, sticking his head into the closet. The air in the closet felt a few degrees cooler, but he detected no other differences. He opened his eyes and was greeted with absolute darkness. He felt for the walls and breathed a sigh of relief when his fingers found the wood paneling. He stood up straight, his entire body in the closet now, his feet shuffling up against the pile of shirts on the floor.

The darkness reminded him of playing hide and seek in his old house. He could remember hiding underneath the kitchen sink, listening to his parents walk around looking for him. His father would begin opening cabinets close to him, until he eventually found the right one. The cabinet door would whip open and he’d see his father grinning down at him and hear his mother giggling from the living room.

He sat down against the wall, pulling his legs into him, and pretended he was back in that house, hiding under the sink in the kitchen. He closed his eyes and listened for the sound of his Mother’s TV, just barely making out the hum of voices. If he tried hard enough, he could convince himself he was hearing his mother and father.

***

Max jolted awake, still huddled up against the side of his closet. He had no idea how much time had passed. He saw the wall of the closet in front of him, just making out the seams of the wood.

He stood up and pressed his hands against the wall behind him, searching blindly for the doorknob, feeling nothing but smooth wood. He turned around and squinted his eyes, scanning the wall up and down. His hands ran across the same featureless planks, his heart beginning to beat faster. He scrambled to the corner of his closet, checking the adjacent wall.

His search grew more and more frantic, breathing heavily, he moved back and forth from wall to wall, quicker and quicker, checking impossibly high and low for any sign of the doorknob. A pit had formed in his stomach and it was now in freefall, threatening to sink him down into the floorboards. The walls began to blend together, he had lost any semblance of direction and found himself turning in circles. As he moved to another wall, his hands pushed forward to meet solid wood, and instead found empty air.

His weight sent him sprawling forward onto the floor. He fell hard, onto bare wood, tears welling in his eyes.

He sat up onto his knees, stretching his arms out to try and regain his bearings. He reached forward into more air, where there should’ve been a wall.

He couldn’t make out anything around him, save for the wooden floor beneath him. He crawled forward, scraping his knees on the wood, panic rising in him. He wanted to get up, run, scream for help, do something. He knew he had already crawled well past the dimensions of his closet, but he also knew he couldn’t stop, couldn’t turn back.

On the horizon of the nothingness in front of him, a tiny dot of light was beginning to form. He crawled faster, the light growing bigger, illuminating the floor directly ahead of him. He made out two dots of light, then three. He got closer and they became bars, slanting from some unknown source. Finally, he got close enough to see that the light was coming through several openings in the slats of some kind of door. He got to his feet and ran to the door, stopping dead in his tracks a few steps away from it.

He had heard a voice coming from the other side of it.

He crept up slowly to the door. He couldn’t make out what the voice was saying, but it sounded familiar. The slats were angled so that he couldn’t see anything on the other side of it, but he pressed his ear up against it.

“And how did the rest of the tryout go?”

Relief washed over him. It was his father. He must have come home from his trip early. Max was back in his own closet. He grabbed the doorknob and twisted before he heard another voice and froze. This voice sounded familiar too, but whoever it was coming from was younger, and talking faster.

“It went well, they told me I made it pretty early on, and then had me playing with Varsity.”

A chill ran from his hand, still clutching the doorknob, up his arm and across his shoulders. He knew that voice.

“That’s great Max!”

Hearing his father speak his own name only confirmed what he already knew.

He slumped down to the floor, his hand slipping away from the doorknob, letting the latch click back into place. The talking coming from the other side of the door stopped. He held still. He didn’t want whatever was on the other side of that door, pretending to be him, to find him. But, after a few seconds, the conversation resumed. He kept his ear against the door, listening.

“You know,” he heard his father start, “number twelve, that was my number.”

“It was?” His own voice sounded different.

“Yeah, it was Grandpa’s too.” His father said. “But, I think Grandpa may have actually made a bucket or two wearing it. I don’t know if I can say the same for your old man.”

He heard both of them laugh. The noise sounded foreign. He listened to his own voice, speaking to his father more than he had in the last month, the last year, even. Is that what he always sounded like? No, he was certain this version of him, whatever it was, sounded happier.

He felt himself burning with anger, how could his father not recognize that he wasn’t talking to the real him?

He heard one last chuckle, then the bedroom light flicked off and he heard the door close. He waited there, against the closet door, for what felt like an hour. Once he was certain that he would be asleep, he grabbed the doorknob tightly and twisted it, doing his best to open the door as silently as possible. Once it was open enough, he poked his head through and got his first look at the room.

It was his room, at least for the most part. It had the exact same layout and furniture, but it was not as Max had left it. The first difference he noticed was how much cleaner this room was. He spotted no clutter on the floor and the surfaces of his nightstand and dresser were spotless. In the dark, he could just make out a row of trophies neatly aligned atop the shelves mounted above his bed. His gaze drifted across the room, to the door, where a backpack neatly hung from a hook. Below that, on a hanger hooked to the doorknob, he saw a basketball jersey. A tiny flame of jealousy burned in the base of his neck. The white number ‘12’ glowed clearly in the dark room, standing out from the black mesh of the jersey. His hands balled into fists. His eyes darted to the mound of blankets on the bed. His bed. He could barely see the shape of a head peeking out from under the comforter. But he didn’t need to see clearly to know for certain that it was him.

But it wasn’t him, not truly, he thought. It couldn’t be.

He shrunk back into the closet and closed the door. After adjusting to the faint light of the bedroom, the closet felt darker. He turned his head to look behind him, looking for some way back. Instead, he saw a void; he could sense the endless expanse of darkness that lay beyond. He dared not take a single step back into it, not when he could still feel the warm comfort of the bedroom, his room, through the closet door.

Max stepped up against the wall, right next to the door of the closet. He opened the door slowly and nudged it forward. He waited for a creak, but instead the door swung open silently, thumping gently against the bedroom wall. Max waited. After several minutes, he felt for the light switch next to the open closet door. He flicked it on. A single light bulb hanging from the ceiling scattered light into the bedroom. He waited for some sign of movement. Finally, he heard stirring coming from the bed, eventually hearing the soft thud of feet reaching the floor. Slow, measured footsteps crept closer and closer to the closet. He could sense the apprehension in them, in his own footsteps.

Step.

He must have been getting close to the closet now.

Step.

Only a few more.

Step.

He needed to wait for the right moment.

Step.

The footsteps stopped. He knew the other boy was standing just in front of the closet.

He waited until he heard the other boy grab the closet door, before spinning and stepping in front of the open entryway. The other boy was only inches away from him, his face contorting in terror, letting out a shriek. Max grabbed the other boy and pulled him into the closet, twisting around so that he now stood between him and the bedroom. Looking the other boy in the eyes, he shoved him further into the closet, into the darkness that lay beyond, quickly stepping back and slamming the closet door in front of him.

He held the doorknob in an iron grip, with his shoulder pressed up against the door, awaiting a barrage of pounding fists against it. Instead, he was met with silence. There was no pounding, no sign of any movement on the other side of the door.

A knock coming from the opposite side of the room startled him.

“Hey, bud? Everything okay in there?” His father’s voice came from outside his bedroom. Max looked back and forth between the bedroom door and the closet in front of him, ultimately letting his hand fall away from the doorknob. His father opened the door, poking his head through. “I thought I heard a bang. Everything okay?”

Max stood next to the closet, his eyes glancing back to the door beside him. “Yeah, everything’s fine.”

“Why don’t you get back in bed? Long day tomorrow!”

He walked to the empty bed, the sheets still pulled back. “Tomorrow?” He asked.

“First day of practice!” His father said, pointing to the jersey on the back of the door and grinning.

Max sat down on the bed. It felt different. “Oh, that’s right.”

“You sure everything is okay?” His father asked.

The boy nodded his head, “Yeah, dad, I’m—” A faint clicking sound, coming from the closet, cut him off. His gaze shot to the closet door.

His father followed his eyeline. “What’s going on with your closet?” Before he could answer, his father was already crossing his room, reaching the closet door in four long strides.

“Oh, no, dad, you don’t have to—”

His father opened the door before he could finish. He flicked the light on and peered inside. Max prepared for the worst.

His father turned the light back off and turned back around to face him. “You know, you really ought to keep that closet cleaner. That junk will start to pile up.”

Max breathed out in relief. “Yeah, my bad, I’ll clean it up tomorrow.”

His father stepped away from the closet, leaving it ajar. “Well, I’ll let you get some sleep.”

Max laid down, pulling the sheets up around him. “Okay, dad, goodnight.”

His father paused, on his way out, his head still sticking through the door. “I’m proud of you, Max.” He flicked the bedroom light off and shut the door behind him.

***

When Max woke back up, it was still dark. He didn’t remember falling asleep; he had been restlessly tossing and turning for hours. Max sat up and immediately saw his closet, still barely open, as his father had left it. He stared at the opening, at the darkness spilling out, contaminating the brighter light of his room. Max laid back down, pulling the blanket on top of him. He shut his eyes, but his mind refused to power off. He couldn’t get the image of the boy’s face out of his head. It was his own face, the one he saw everyday in the mirror, only now it was frozen in horror, just as it had looked the moment that Max had pushed the boy into the darkness. The terror in the boy’s eyes pierced through him, even now.

A small draft drifted across Max’s toes, which he now realized were poking out of the blanket that covered the rest of his body. He sat back up, pulling his legs further under the blanket and looking to see if his window had been left open.

It was shut.

At that moment, he heard a small thud come from the opposite side of his room. He froze. He felt another draft trace across his skin, this one on the back of his neck. He knew what he would see before he turned around.

The door to his closet had swung open, the yawning mouth loomed darker than the rest of his room. The dark beckoned to him, and before he realized it, his feet were touching the floor. He stood there, at the foot of his bed, looking at the closet and waiting. He waited for any sign of movement, for something to jump out of the shadows. Instead, only darkness greeted him. Finally, he took a step forward. His steps were slow and purposeful, he could feel his heart pounding in every part of his body, from his fingertips to his feet, carrying him closer and closer to the darkness.

Step.

He just needed to make sure there was no one there, he told himself.

Step.

He could go right back to sleep, afterwards.

Step.

He was standing only a few feet away from the closet, now. He reached forward and turned the light switch. Nothing changed, the shadow persisted.

Max stood in front of the wall of darkness. It was impenetrable. He trembled, remembering that only hours before, he had been inside that darkness. The memory jolted him and he took a step forward to shut the door

Suddenly, hands emerged from the darkness. They shot out and grabbed Max by his shirt. A face materialized in the dark: his own face.

Max was pulled into the dark, inches away from himself. Panic coursed through Max’s veins. His arms flailed and fought to break free from the other boy’s grasp, but he would not let go. The other boy twisted him around, standing between him and the room, the light.

Max looked into the other boy’s eyes and saw his own eyes; he saw desperation, and rage, and sadness. There was no other boy, it was just Max.

The boy shoved him back and Max fell, down, into the dark.

As Max fell, he watched the light from the bedroom above him get smaller and smaller. Eventually, the light disappeared completely. With the only distinguishable feature gone, Max’s entire world became darkness. There was no sense of direction, no way for Max to know which way was up, or if he was even still falling. He gave up feeling around him for any concrete surroundings. The darkness threatened to spill into his body; he could feel the pressure of it pushing down onto him, like the weight of an ocean wrapped around the surface area of his skin. He felt the strain on his head, he shut his eyes and tried to scream, but it made no difference. Just as he thought his temples were about to crack, it stopped.

He wasn’t falling anymore. He must have been, all this time, until now, because now there was solid ground underneath him. Wood.

As Max turned in circles, tears of relief running down his face, something caught his eye. In the distance, he could see a tiny glimmer of light. Max took a deep breath and crawled forward.