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anymore. I was home – it was over.
    I walked up the couple of steps to the porch and put my hand on the doorknob. I turned it thinking that it might be unlocked since my mother was awake; there was no sense in delaying the inevitable. There was no reason to knock. It turned the full motion, and I felt a mixture of both relief and apprehension. I was just about to push the door open when two arms wrapped around me and pulled me back, away from the door.
    This couldn’t be happening; I had evaded and outran my imaginary pursuers countless times in my nightly scramble from the woods, but this wasn’t imaginary. I looked at the silhouette in the window and tried to reach out. The arms constricted around my chest and lifted me off the ground while I struggled against them. I looked down at the appendages that had ensnared me – they were small, but there was something covering them.
    It looked like fur.
    I squeezed my eyes tightly shut. This can’t be happening! my mind roared. The monsters were just pretend! I opened my eyes again and looked at the arms that were crossed over my torso. It was fabric, not fur, but this brought no real comfort – I was still being restrained. I still needed to get free. I screamed as loudly as I could, “MOM! HELP ME! PLEASE! MOM!” The feeling of being so close to safety only to be physically pulled away from it filled me with a kind of dread that is, even after all these years, indescribable.
    The door I had been torn away from opened, and a flash of hope shot through my heart. But it wasn’t my mom.
    It was a man, and he was enormous. I thrashed violently and kicked at the shins of the person holding me. But even if I succeeded in escaping my captor, I knew that I would also have to get away from the person who had just come out of my house – this hulking figure who was now steadily approaching me. He reached his hand out for me, and it extended out of the shadow that had been cast on him by the porch light just above his head. It was a cruel and cracked claw, badly burned, with the consistency of a plastic bag that had melted and cooled.
    Up until that moment, I had never imagined that I could be in any legitimate danger from which my mother could not rescue me. But as I watched the man close the distance between us, and as I felt my captor’s grip grow ever-tighter, my fear was joined with rage; my mother simply could not be gone.
    “Let me go! Where is she? Where’s my mom? What’d you do to her?!” As my throat stung from screaming and I was drawing in another breath, I became aware of a sound that had been present for longer than I had perceived it.
    “Honey, please calm down. I’ve got you.”
    It sounded like my mom.
    The arms loosened and set me down, and as the man who had been approaching me leaned down and put his hand on my shoulder, he eclipsed the porch light with his head, allowing me to see more than just his frame. He was a large man, with a tremendous burn scar on his left arm. I broke my eyes away from it and moved them up to his badge; he was a police officer.
    I turned to face the voice behind me with hope that was still tempered by fear.
    It really was my mom. The dark brown curls of her hair brushed my face as she knelt down to embrace me. I was finally safe. Tears started flowing down my face, and I sobbed heavily while the three of us went inside.
    The backdoor opened to a narrow hallway. On the right was a door that opened to a bathroom, which was connected to my room via another door. There was a faint smell of mildew that emanated from the bathroom; nightmares of villains and ghouls that hid in my bathroom meant that I would never draw the curtain closed when I wasn’t in the shower, and would only mostly draw it closed when I was. Because of this, water collected in its folds and filled that whole area of the house with the faint smell of watery rot. To the left were our washing machine and dryer. My cat was sitting on top of the dryer, and I gave