Mimi's Demons

Chapter 3: There's a Monster on Your Shoulder

When Mimi was six, she saw a monster hanging on her stepdad's shoulder. It had a curly cue tail, shiny, skinny horns on its head, and purple-pink skin. It kind of looked like those dancing things in the boring song of Fantasia, with the big devil and—ah. Was it a devil?

That kind of scared her. Devils made you do bad things.

So she told her stepdad there was a devil on his shoulder. He was more concerned by how upset she was than being told there was something that would do bad things to him acting like a pet parrot on his shoulder.

She looked at it and it looked back. Its eyes seemed to want something and it scared her, so she stopped looking.

Her mom wasn't amused.

"How do you think that makes Tom feel to be told he has a devil?" she asked. "There's obviously nothing there, are you trying to hurt his feelings? That's mean. He loves you and works hard to provide for you."

It ended up as a big nasty fight where Mimi sat on the couch, crying variations of 'I'm not lying' and 'please believe me' and her mom looking down at her in pure disappointment. Tom made himself scarce, probably because Mimi tried to meet his eye to plead with him too. He'd just look away, the demon's curly screw tail swinging across his back.

Eventually, she was allowed to flee to her bedroom, where she cried long and hard on her pillow.

She woke up sometime later after the house had fallen asleep, to use the bathroom, her eyes sticky and puffy. Her room was filled with bright moonlight.

Which was why, when she swung her legs off the edge of her bed, she was able to see the clawed hand disappearing beneath her bed.

Fear, as cold and prickly as hugging a frozen cactus, struck through her.

Her mom's disappointment renewed on finding, the next morning, that Mimi had peed her bed.

Mimi had taken a sleepy, lonely bath, her thighs burning from the ensuing rash. Mom said pee was acidic. Made her wonder why it didn't hurt to pee acid, but Mom understood a lot of things Mimi couldn't.

Which was why it hurt all the more that Mom didn't believe that she'd seen a monster crawl under her bed and that's why she'd been too afraid to make it to the toilet.

However, Mimi at least could tell seeing her in pain made her Mom at least consider that Mimi might not be lying.

Mimi thought she'd melt with relief when she got out to the kitchen to see her stepdad didn't have the devil on his shoulder anymore. It would be even worse if it was still there, because he held her baby brother on his hip. He gave her a friendly smile and Mimi returned it.

"It's gone," she said, somehow thinking that, if she told him that, it would make up for the 'hurt' she'd done him the day before by telling him it was there.

"That's good to hear," he said.

Her baby brother drooled past his fingers in his mouth.

"Do it properly," said Mom, who was already dressed for work and eating oatmeal at the table. "Say sorry."

But Mimi wasn't sorry. She'd been warning Tom. If she had a monster ready to eat her face on her shoulder, wouldn't her parents say something?

But Mimi was tired of all this and just wanted it to be over.

"I'm sorry," she said.

Something moved out of the corner of her eye. She turned her head towards her parent's bedroom door and saw the devil, the one with the slinky-like tail and the wanting eyes, crawling out of their doorway. It met her eye this time and gave a slow, unnaturally curving smile that made her stomach clench with a bad feeling.

It seemed to be laughing at her.

As every fearful child instinctively does, she reached for her mother and started to cry, pointing at it. When Mom's face seemed sympathetic and worried enough to believe her, she pointed it out, hoping against hope that somehow, someway, they'd see it this time.

Her mother looked, but didn't get up. She just looked back at Mimi with steepled eyebrows and a frown.

"Maybe we should take her to doctor," said Tom. "She seems really, really upset, and if she is seeing things..."

Seeing things? Could seeing monsters really be fixed by a doctor? She'd never heard of such a thing, but then, Mimi was only six.

Her mother sighed. "It's going to be hard to ask work off. My boss has a stick up his—" she stopped, though Mimi already knew what bad word she was going to use. "Could you take her? You don't start work till one, right?"

"If anyone will make an opening to take her. I don't think Instacare would cut it."

"Hmm..."

Mimi didn't like how much her parents were talking. If a doctor would fix this they should be taking her to see one right now. Please, please fix it right now.

"It's scary," she sobbed. "Please, it's laughing at me, please make it go away!"

Her heart eased just a bit that her mother seemed to start reflecting her distress, even if only a bit.

"Alright, honey, don't worry, we'll get you to a doctor." She pushed aside her half eaten oatmeal and got out her tiny cell phone. "Let me up, I got to look one up on the computer.

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Please leave a like, star, favorite, comment, however Wattpad works. I miss my hubby. He's at work. I like his face. And he spoils me. Three-year-old son and Jim don't spoil me. Sad.