It had been watching him for hours.
Rayne could feel it, like cold breath on the back of his neck. At times, the flickering glow of the computer screen betrayed a glimpse of its grotesque reflection—impossibly tall, unnaturally twisted. But he didn't dare turn around. Something deep inside him, primal and ancient, screamed "don't".
His body trembled. Sweat clung to his pitch-black hair, sticking it to his brow. His palms were slick and cold, his breath coming in shallow gasps as though the air itself recoiled from the presence behind him.
And then, just as suddenly as it had appeared—it was gone.
The suffocating pressure lifted, leaving a strange, hollow quiet in its wake. Rayne stared at the empty room in his monitor's reflection, his pulse still thundering in his ears.
*I didn't imagine that.* He knew he didn't.
Still, he forced himself to rationalize. He began typing frantically, searching for an answer. "Visual hallucinations", the search results read. "Stress-induced psychosis. Sleep deprivation."
Rayne exhaled, shaky and unsure. Maybe that was it. Maybe he'd cracked, just for a moment. The thought didn't comfort him. It should have.
Then came the voice—from downstairs.
"Rayne, sweetie! Dinner's ready!" his mother called in her usual warm tone.
He smiled. Weakly, but sincerely. The fear began to recede, just a little. He stood up, muscles sore from tension, and opened his door.
That was when he heard it.
A whisper. Barely audible. Urgent. Coming from the closet beside his mother's bedroom.
"Don't go down there, honey... I heard it too. That thing isn't me."
Rayne stopped cold. His breath caught in his throat.
Two voices. Both his mother's.
Before he could choose which one to believe, a scream shattered the silence—his mother's scream, rising from the floor below.
Without thinking, he bolted for the stairs.
"NO! STOP! COME BACK!"
He turned.
There she was. His mother—hair wild, eyes bloodshot with fear—standing by the closet, just as pale and panicked as he was.
Behind him, something heavy pounded up the stairs.
Rayne pivoted, grabbed his mother's arm, and together they dove into the closet. He slammed the door just as a monstrous force rammed into it, causing the wood to splinter but not break.
Then came the voice again.
"…Let me in, honey... Let me in HONEY. LET ME IN. LET ME IN! LETMEINLETMEINLETMEIN!"
The voice distorted, unraveling into something unnatural—grotesque, guttural. The door rattled as the thing outside clawed and slammed against it.
"Quick! Block it!" his mother urged.
They pushed boxes and anything they could find against the door. Finally, in the dark quiet, Rayne collapsed against her, trembling. She held him close, her voice a fragile thread in the overwhelming dread.
"It's okay," she whispered, rocking him gently. "It's over now."
And somehow, in the cradle of her arms, with the chorus of the monster's roars muffled by cardboard and wood, Rayne fell into a dreamless sleep.
---
**Three Years Later**
Rayne's eyes snapped open.
The sweat, the phantom feeling of eyes on his back—it never truly left him. Not after that night.
He was barely thirteen when the world stopped making sense.
Now, seated alone in a loud, fluorescent-lit classroom, Rayne stared at a desk covered in scars: sharpie-scrawled names like **Monster Boy**, **Psycho**, **Freak**. The others talked, laughed, joked. He sat in silence.
Once, he'd been one of them—smart, popular, admired. But that version of Rayne had died in the closet that night.
Mrs. Fayad returned with a student in tow and directed the class to open their textbooks. Rayne didn't bother. He hid behind the book and pulled out his phone, scrolling to chapter 7 of "An Anthology of Monsters" by Edith Hamilton.
Since that night, monsters had become his obsession. Not the storybook kind—real ones. Things that wore skin like clothing and whispered through walls. It cost him friends, reputation, normalcy. But he didn't care.
They called him delusional. But Rayne knew the truth.
Monsters are real.
---
As the bell rang, a warm voice broke through the grayness.
Navia. Curly black hair, hazel eyes, always with that crooked grin that pulled him back from the edge. She looked at him with concern as he approached.
"You okay?" she asked.
Rayne hesitated. "Last time was two weeks ago. They're coming more often."
Navia frowned. "I'm worried about you."
"I like to keep you anxious. It's good for your skin," he quipped with a tired grin.
She smiled despite herself. "I'll be sure to thank you, then."
But behind her eyes, he could see the worry.
As they walked the corridor, Rayne glanced out the window.
There—on the horizon—something vast moved in the clouds. Too big. Too fast. Wrong.
"You see that?" he asked.
"Probably a plane," Navia said with a shrug.
Rayne nodded, but the unease lingered. The shape was…off.
At lunch, the cafeteria was packed. It was Nacho day after all, and the lines stretched like a prison sentence. Rayne waited, staring at his phone.
Then the video appeared.
Shaky, low-res footage. A city in chaos. A hulking figure—like a mountain with limbs—moving through buildings like they were paper. People praying, running, dying. Bodies dismembered like pieces of some grotesque mural.
Rayne remembered the shape in the sky.
Then came the alert. Every phone in the cafeteria blared at once.
**EMERGENCY BROADCAST ALERT**
The world was no longer hiding the monsters.
And this time, closets wouldn't be enough.