Bogleech.com's 2013 Horror Write-off:

"Clean Your Closet"

Submitted by Alexis Feynman

Mama always told me to clean out my closet.

I never listened. I thought it was just one of those grown-up things where they make something So Important because they don't have better things to do with themselves. Things like chasing your sister around, playing in the backyard, reading books, and all that. Parents never want to do all that. They just want to clean, clean, clean. And they expect you to go along with it.

Yeah, right.

I mean, so what if I had toys that had been lost in there for years? So what if stuff spilled out when I opened the doors and I had to kick it back in to close it? It was just a closet. I kept the room tidy like she wanted - mostly. You couldn't even see in the closet, so why did it matter?

And sure, I had to dig through it for half an hour to find my shoes. But I thought that was my choice. It wasn't any of Mom's business what I spent my own time doing.

Yeah, she could really be a downer. So I'd straighten it out every couple of months, show her how much better it looked, and she'd smile and pat me on the head and ignore it until she remembered that I'm not known for keeping anything tidy.

One day, she fell down and hurt her foot. Hurt it bad - she couldn't even walk on it, much less run an entire household. I mean, she did her best to keep everyone organized from the couch, but over the next few months there were plenty of things that never got done, like checking on my closet. And without its two-month maintenance check, it got messier and messier. After a while, I couldn't just kick stuff in to close it - I had to shove stuff in. I thought about cleaning it a couple of times, but then I remembered I had some books that needed reading.

Then one day I had to get my shoes. As usual, they were right near the top of the pile, so all I had to do was pull them out and shake out the odd Lego piece. Then I shoved everything else back in and pulled the door.

It wouldn't close - at least, not easily. I pulled on it a couple of times, but it kept getting stuck, so I looked at the floor to find out if I'd missed a lego.

All my stuff had slid out again.

I groaned, shoved the pile back into the closet, and grabbed the handle.

Before I could get the closet shut, the pile of junk started writhing. I let out a scream and jumped back. The pile bulged outward, like there was a huge bubble inside it, and more junk toppled out onto the floor.

I had no idea what to do. Would it be better to scream, try to shove everything into the closet, or just run away? I was still trying to figure it out when the pile stretched up into a cone shape - and then started to shrink, one piece at a time.

Wait, no, the pile wasn't shrinking. Something inside it was sucking everything in. I watched a toy car disappear into the pile, and a schlorp made it sound like it had been sucked into something.

I stared at the roiling, churning pile. It seemed to be stirring itself now, folding my tiny possessions into some liquid that I couldn't see. Then I did see it, and that was even worse.

It was thick and purple.

The creature churned and gurgled, sucking every tiny piece of junk into its growing body. What did it do with it? Was it turning my stuff into more of that slime? Or was it just keeping it somewhere inside?

It bubbled, and then I saw a half-melted toy car poke out for just a second. And I screamed.

Mom showed up in what seemed like seconds. I have no idea how she made it to my room, but she found me standing there, staring at the blob that was eating my toys and melting a hole into the closet floor. I was sobbing between screams, sure that the thing would come for me once it was done with the closet, with no idea what I could do to make it stop.

I screamed at my mother to stay away, but she walked straight to the closet and just looked at the blob for a minute before she turned back and looked at me.

"I told you to clean your closet."