by Dan Dillard
*****
I have too many clothes now. There are so many that no longer wash them. There wouldn’t be anywhere to put them if I did. I could buy new clothes at yard sales each week if I still went out. What I have worn goes in the garage. There’s no room for the car anymore. The clothes cover the entire concrete floor and are piled almost five feet high. They shift sometimes. I watch them roll like waves on the ocean. I’m not sure if that’s my monster or not.
About two weeks ago, I started hearing the noise. It’s a low, grumbling sound that comes from underneath and from within my collection. I felt like it was talking to me at first, trying to communicate some message, but now I think it might just be the complaining rumble of an empty stomach. I fear that’s exactly what it is. My creature is hungry. Maybe that’s why it knocked over my boxes, and why it rolls through the mounds of clothing in the garage.
The noise didn’t bother me until the cat disappeared. That was just after the rumbling noise started. It quieted for a time, and then came back. At sun-up, the pets normally made their way down the narrow path from wherever they slept to my recliner where I’ve been sleeping. I’d feed them and then go about trying to find room for all the magical things I had stored in my car. It was stuffed full of newly found treasures. I haven’t had time to bring all of those treasures inside.
I haven’t seen my dog now in four days. The cat’s been gone for ten. I noticed the grumbling sound quieted again after the dog disappeared and the dog was quite a bit larger than the cat, but now there is no one to greet me in the morning.