THE GIRL IN THE cupboard had watched the three boys grow up and observed how the stress of adult life put strains upon their friendship. But she hadn’t been there from the beginning. First, she lived in the streets.

That was where the girl in the cupboard had learned about entering people’s homes, in order to get some warmth. The idea seemed crazy—every hobo could tell you so. The Crooked Man came up with it, said this was how he spent Christmas Eve.

The girl in the cupboard simply expanded on the idea.

One day, she waited for one of the boys to take out the trash, then slipped inside and settled into the bathroom cupboard.

They were three. Redouane, Sid, and Lee. Ages nineteen to twenty-two. The girl in the cupboard, she was somewhat older. Yet, she took a liking to their lot.

She was there when Sid got his job at Carrefour. She was there when the trio returned from a Back to the Future movie marathon. She was there when Lee cried alone in the shower about some girl named Suzie.

The girl in the cupboard was always there.

Mostly, she would wait for them to leave—going to work or whatever—and she would develop her every limb first out of the cupboard then out of the bathroom, walk around the flat a bit. Then feed.

The boys weren’t organised enough to notice their stashes depleting. Of course, some of her raids would lead to arguments, most concerning vanishing chocolate bars or treats. Still, the girl in the cupboard thought these conflicts would have occurred with or without her doing.

The frequent clashes, which came with new responsibilities and adulthood, were to be expected. So, it came as no surprise when she first heard the boys talking—more like yelling—about the rent.

These particular screams led to low mumbles about Lee not paying his due. Redouane knew nothing about this, nor did he know that Sid had been covering their friend’s ass. The scheme worked just fine but after three months of supplying two-thirds of the nut, Sid began to grow pissed off. That Sid saw no reimbursement in the foreseeable future did little to help Lee’s case.

Making matters worse, the boys had divided the three-room flat so that only Lee had his own room. Sid and Redouane shared a bedroom, and they had turned the last area into a living room. A war zone.

This might also have played a part.

At the time of the arrangement, Lee supposedly worked as a supervisor for some nearby high school. In reality, he didn’t often go to work. Mostly he stayed up late, playing loud, heavy bass riffs on his guitar, like a madman. Going through his phone, you would have found him certain that he was on the verge of becoming a rock star with his metal band, Pukestorm.

The situation would have gone on a bit longer if the girl in the cupboard hadn’t taken it upon herself to resolve the matter. In retrospect, she would tell herself she did it for Redouane. Truth was, her crush for Redouane came later. She simply couldn’t breathe, never knowing when the reclusive Lee would wake up. His constant presence made her life miserable.

He had to go.

***

The girl in the cupboard didn’t really know what time it was when she decided to get out of her lair. She only knew that she felt both disoriented and angry at herself, and all around, the flat remained silent as a sleeping cat. She exited the cupboard, her plan in place. She went into the kitchen, secured one Ziplock.

She did not like that the door to Lee’s room creaked, but it was a risk she had to take. Seeing the boy had stayed up playing guitar his fair share of the night, the girl in the cupboard felt somewhat safe entering the space, or not as scared as she might have been.

Snores greeted her. Her mind eased a bit. The girl in the cupboard took exactly three steps and stood next to the sleeping figure. With her Ziplock, she made a circle. She thought of kittens for a moment. Her dad with kittens.

Meticulously, she tilted Lee’s head upward.

He groaned.

Trying not to breathe too hard, she coaxed the boy’s head through her homemade collar. Let his head rest on his dirty pillow. She watched him sleep. Energy vibrant through his relaxed body.

She pulled down the Ziplock and the boy opened his eyes and grabbed her. The girl in the cupboard slapped him once, twice, while his eyes turned red. Lee tried to grip the plastic stranglehold, broke his nails.

As he struggled, the girl in the cupboard stepped backward and felt bad for him, although she stood mere feet away, although she could have helped, although she was responsible.

Time passed and the boy’s movements grew slower. Once, he tried to get off his bed, which was a couch really, and he fell back, his effort oh-so-slow. This observation was, she knew, likely her perception of his agony.

The boy remained ugly when all was done. The girl in the cupboard bit her lips, went to the kitchen to grab garbage bags and brown Scotch tape from a drawer, turned the body into a Halloween decoration.

Someone saw the girl in the cupboard disposing of the roommate’s corpse in the trash container by the boy’s building, yet paid no mind.

***

The inside of the cupboard was damp and moldy. Every time she opened her eyes, the cupboard seemed more grey. Yet the girl felt at ease within its maw.

Through the semi-opened doors of the cupboard, she enjoyed both boys’ nakedness. Both lied about the size of their apparatus, she knew, and she sometimes wondered: What would they think if they caught a glimpse of her toothy smile, smiling madly from the darkest recess beneath the sink?

When such a thought occurred, she preferred to abandon ship and let it sail for whatever beach it was destined to go.

***

The boys seemed not to know she was there, yet the girl in the cupboard began to think they had finally accepted her. Most nights, she would sing herself to sleep with those sweet, sweet delusions. Dissociating, really. The boys sold Lee’s stuff. His band tried to get answers. In the end, Sid got his own room.

And then came the girlfriend.

At first, the girl in the cupboard smiled upon Charlotte’s presence. In her manic state, she could picture the magnificent double dates the four could one day share.

That was until she noticed Charlotte was unemployed.

Through golden foggy days, the girl in the cupboard began stalking the newcomer until Charlotte no longer felt safe.

There’s this distinct feeling you get late at night, this eerie knowledge that someone’s hiding in your flat, the tremors that grab you every time you go to open a door, the bittersweet certainty that someone is standing on the other dark, dark side. Smiling and waiting just for you.

The girl in the cupboard bitch-trained Charlotte until the newcomer shed tears before attempting to open anything, even on the brightest of days.

Flowers now survived the harsh environment of the flat, for Charlotte could not bear the darkness and threw open the curtains at the break of dawn. The girl in the cupboard suspected that Charlotte knew a woman was stalking her. Sometimes, the girl saw the newcomer catch her arachnid thinness out of the corner of her eye.

Charlotte dared not sleep alone, for she knew someone was there, waiting for her to close her eyes just long enough. Let her guard down.

Sid soon took notice of the changes in his newfound girlfriend—although they both disliked the position, the assignment—and became agitated. Being in his early twenties, he didn’t know what to do. Unbeknownst to him, the girl in the cupboard stole the life right out of Charlotte. She became a castaway, drowning slowly in a tar-like sea.

Picture the flat, in its normal state of eternal clutter. Picture the sunlight piercing through every window. Picture yourself waking up from a nap.

The sheets smell of him, and this you like. You grip them tightly while inhaling their scent, although they feel harsh beneath your fingertips. You think of washing them.

Outside, the rush of the streets is somehow subdued by the happy roar of a lonesome child. Deep within, although you’d never admit it, you miss not being a part of this busy world.

You look at the mess of the bedroom and it appeases you, reminds you Sid exists.

You grab the sheet, still naked—you feel good this way and who can see you anyway? There are no surrounding buildings.

You decide you are useful, agreeable, and take the sheet off the mattress. You are going to do some laundry.

The thin woman stands behind the bedroom door. You drown in her drunk eyes and agape mouth. Her figure is so thin and distorted you hear her joints crack as she moves forward.

It’s not the first hit you register. Sure, your vision trembles, but for an instant. Yet you do not understand. Even when liquid pours down your head, you do not comprehend.

You turn around and blood sprays outward from the tips of your hair.

The second hit you feel. Slightly above your neck.

Stupidly, you think of your mom’s adoration of Jesus. You picture the paintings, the idols of a bloodied Messiah that once adorned your childhood home.

Before you can scream, the hell-bent apparition wraps a dirty hand over your mouth. The world smells of mold and forgotten cities.

The third hit strikes your liver and it’s not the pain you take in—it’s the sensation of a pocket rupturing inside of you.

Pain is death.

***

The girl in the cupboard hadn’t thought this far ahead. It would take her time to dispose of the body and to wash away the blood splatters.

But the girl in the cupboard had time.

A vast treasury of it.

***

After Charlotte’s disappearance, depression settled upon the flat. Even more so for Sid. He began to invite more and more people over. At first, the visitors tended to stay in his new bedroom, but as time went by they spread through the apartment.

It was funny—the louder his companions got, the quieter Sid became. After two months, Redouane and Sid no longer spoke.

None of them noticed.

No one had searched the cupboard. This recess under the sink? It held a cardboard case and some toothpaste, hardly a thought. The surviving tenants never thought of opening it. Neither did Sid’s new parasitic friends. They muffled the silence with the guttural white noise of their voices. Each waiting, yet unknowing, for adulthood to end their declining teenage lives, whether the end came in the form of a spouse, a child, or a job…

From the dark vantage point of the slightly ajar cupboard, this was obvious to the girl. Redouane’s growing depression was also hard to ignore. The boy would cry in the shower, hard enough to kneel, devoid of strength. In due time, he forgot his dreams.

This displeased the girl in the cupboard, for she had taken a liking to Redouane. In her dark cocoon, she could not picture that she was the one responsible.

There existed an itch between her moldy, chitinous legs.

***

They were three—Jo, Sid and Samir—when the girl in the cupboard decided to act. Redouane lay sleeping in his room, and Sid was watching TV with Samir in his room on the other side of the kitchen.

Jo did not flinch when, behind his back and not discreetly, the girl took a knife out of a kitchen drawer.

“Oh, you awake?” Jo asked, his back turned to her, probably thinking it was Redouane.

In Jo’s right hand, he held a living crab, debating whether or not to microwave the crustacean. The knife went through his throat as he felt the legs of the girl in the cupboard close on his tummy. Screeching venus flytrap.

Before they both hit the linoleum, the girl in the cupboard had slit Jo’s throat. Under the blaring TV, no one heard the faint thump of bleeding flesh slapping the floor.

She waited, though. Jo’s movement became slower, deprived of oxygen, of blood underneath her grasp. Overturned beetle.

When the girl in the cupboard felt certain no one was coming, she got to her feet and pushed the knife deeper into Jo’s trachea. The blade shattered, and the veins, and the cells and the tiles beneath it. She extracted the weapon. Unnatural appendage. Years of wandering the flat told her Sid’s friends were seated on the right, behind the door leading into his room.

She would open it and there would be the couch which served as a bed. To her left would be the cupboard she had scrubbed free of the girlfriend’s blood. Further left, obscuring the window, sat the always-on TV set. Room enough to put this entire matter to rest.

Only, when she finally entered, armed, Sid sat on the bed-couch, facing the door.

He looked up at the girl in the cupboard. The blunt in his hand fell on the linoleum. She looked at it then looked at him. Deep in his eyes, arcane understanding bloomed. Sid stood up and she struck him through the cheekbone. Hazed, the boy did not cry.

Blade came out of his flesh with a disgusting sound as Samir, who was seated closer to the screen, stood up.

“Shit,” he cried.

Sid grabbed the girl in the cupboard, resented the moody touch. Knife hit his right shoulder. Blade ripped over his bone and messily bit his flesh. Sid lost his grip.

Samir crashed into the girl, propelling her backwards towards the wall. The knife cut through, bisected even more muscles as it was expelled. Blood splatter everywhere.

Everyone yelling.

Getting up, she stuck the fleeing Samir in his stomach, pushed him into the bedroom. His legs kicked against the couch as he fell on his ass. Girl in the cupboard turned to Sid, made him take two steps backwards by manically waving her knife left to right. He was getting paler by the minute.

Samir got hold of her arm, attempted an armlock before she headbutted him. The girl in the cupboard felt blood in her teeth as she and Samir stumbled, intertwined, to the floor.

He was still choking her.

No oxygen, as Sid had caught up to them and was now kneeling on her throat. She stabbed the overhead shadow four times, two times in the neck, two in the armpit, as he tried to protect himself.

The remaining victim was gasping for air, mere feet from his dying friend.

“What the fuck!?” Samir yelled.

“You,” said the bleeding Sid while gripping the girl’s dirty thigh. Blind accusation.

And the girl in the cupboard struck him. First in his open mouth. Twice in his left eye socket.

Samir took hold of the blade with his right hand, bleeding profusely through the ordeal. He swiped right and sharp bones broke.

Baby chick within a compactor.

McDonald’s.

The girl in the cupboard fell awkwardly upon him with a growl. She would stab his penis, would stab his bowels, his heart. But then she didn’t have time nor strength.

She needed to clean all of this before Redouane awoke.

Eventually both boys stopped breathing.

On the TV, the soccer players moved no more than Sid and his friend.

In the kitchen, a crab walked aimlessly.

***

No one would ask the girl in the cupboard, but she did all of this to appease Redouane. In her manic episodes, she dreamt the boy would one day wake up and feel freed from this world’s weight.

Redouane did not.

If the shadows of pain had overburdened him to the point he no longer left his room, the girl in the cupboard denying him his friends did not help one bit.

Maybe it was the twenty-two-year-old thinking he’d fucked up his entire life. Maybe it was the depression settling in now that he was completely alone.

That Redouane could not pay the rent on his own, or that bad events could’ve happened outside of the confines of the flat, never crossed the girl in the cupboard’s mind.

What she knew was that Redouane now ate shit. That the squalor brought insects which came out once the lights were off. She sometimes fed on them.

Imagine her surprise when a girl arrived to coax Redouane outside. The newcomer seemed unfazed by the mess, and the girl in the cupboard immediately hated her for it.

When the door closed on the laughing pair, she strained her arachnid parts and ventured out. Her escapade was cut short by keys rattling at the entry door.

They were three. Two boys, one girl. One of the boys, she had already seen in the flat. The others she did not know.

For the whole day, they tidied, scrubbed the flat clean. Sometimes mocking the messy state of things. There existed a distress behind their jokes and within their guts. They’d wash everything until night fell.

With it came more visitors. One, two… soon there were maybe fifteen twenty-somethings lying in wait within the cleaned-up flat. From their whispers, she understood that today was Redouane’s birthday.

***

Girl in the cupboard hadn’t agreed to a party. Girl in the cupboard did not like this change of pace.

For the last year and a half, she had been the one to have Redouane’s back. This strong, muscular back she’d seen him wash time and time again.

Deep down, in the pit of her crotch, she angered that someone, anyone, from the world outside the flat could even pretend to care as much as her about the boy’s well-being.

By the time she’d swallowed her bile, night had become as deep as carcass guts. Redouane came home to Usher’s classic song, Yeah!, crushed by the applause the unseen audience had prepared just for him.

Stuck beneath the sink, the girl in the cupboard witnessed a dressed-in-red teenager puke for almost half an hour. The stench of her excretions permeated the bathroom. The girl in the cupboard knew some guests had already left, sensed it from the sparser voices outside the bathroom. Overwhelmed by hate for the crying kid over the toilet bowl and the laughters outside the bathroom walls, girl in the cupboard turned berserker.

She crept out silently. With enraged focus and hate-fueled precision, her skinny fingers prevented the cupboard door from hitting the tiled wall.

The puking kid was still gagging when her killer’s shadow covered her. The way the blaring music would cover her screams.

Girl from the cupboard stomped on the girl’s neck, crushing it onto the soiled porcelain. Before the kid could react, the girl from the cupboard used the bathtub as a ramp to propel her body up and stomp a second time onto the kid’s spine.

Bones snapped in one singular swoop as the kid’s head connected to her own back before being swept across the porcelain bowl covered in blood and vomit.

The girl from the cupboard rested, strangely, upon the naked back of the deceased. The corpse’s eyes wide open over an ocean of pain and intestinal debris. Her last vision, her attacker’s crotch.

Girl from the cupboard stepped outside the bathroom.

***

Music assaulted her ears when she stepped into the dark hallway. A conscious predator, she headed first for the kitchen, where a bald Black man was trying to seduce a slim brunette. The pair stood next to an open window as the woman smoked a Lucky Strike.

When the girl from the cupboard emerged from the darkness into the dim light of the kitchen, the women shrieked.

The girl from the cupboard grabbed the bachelor by the ankle—as she’d done playing rugby in a long-forgotten youth—and hurled him through the open window.

Before disappearing into the void, the man snagged the smoking girl’s right shoulder, tearing off the top of her dress. Then he, and the garment fragment, were gone.

Flesh and face smacked the cement somewhere below.

The bare-chested girl tried to scream but her attacker stopped her with a hard slap. The dazed woman’s expression went blank. It was a mistake. Before she knew what was happening, the girl from the cupboard grabbed a pan and battered her bewildered victim’s head—once, then twice.

The body hit the kitchen floor with a wet thud. The girl from the cupboard turned her weapon around as if it were an axe and brought it down on the cadaver’s head with enough strength to bash the skull in half. Brittle bones over dying brain. Fall and fracture could barely be heard because of the music.

Brain matter squished between the girl from the cupboard’s toes. As she raised the pan over her head, a scream came from behind her back, preventing another blow to the body. A shriek, so loud that she knew it had sounded an alarm to the rest of the partygoers. The slasher wheeled around and threw the frying pan at the howling woman. Closing the distance, she grabbed a dirty butter knife from the counter and buried it in the other woman’s throat. Twice.

Somebody with immense strength crashed onto the girl from the cupboard. Hard enough, she had no time to stab her new opponent.

Dude punched her once, twice. Both times her head hit the kitchen floor with a hollow sound. Dying whale.

She grabbed the guy’s chin as he lifted her in a stranglehold. With the butter knife, she pierced his left cheek and two times in his armpit.

The girl from the cupboard’s feet came back to the ground. She screamed. Propelling herself at the hesitant man, she stabbed him two more times beneath the mouth, before they both hit the floor.

Somebody got hold of her neck from behind. The girl from the cupboard stabbed blindly at her back as some red-haired guy came into the kitchen from the hall.

Whatever clung to her back fell and moaned. Started to cry.

Red-haired guy then slapped her weapon aside.

She did not feel her index finger being ripped open, knife stopping against bone, shearing through flesh and fat. The serrated blade clattered to the floor. She yelled at the man standing before her, at the slaughtered lambs trying to escape the enclosed flat.

Foaming at the mouth, the girl from the cupboard grabbed the ancient microwave to her right, raised the antique equipment high above her. The guy’s slight surprise was all she needed. She slammed the microwave down onto his head. Then let it drop onto the bashed nose that was trying to breathe.

Girl from the cupboard lurched through the bloody apartment to deliver her final victims. Still stuck in her scalp was a bit of shattered plastic from the microwave door that had clipped her during her assault.

She crashed into the living room, stabbing the first woman she saw. Right beneath her tits. The girl’s second prey gripped her sparse hair while a third yelled and began to punch their attacker in the face.

First lamb fell to the floor, visibly shocked. Through the beatdown, the girl from the cupboard managed to bite off some fingers. She bit until she felt blood in her mouth. Spit a nail.

The first woman grabbed her injured hand, seemingly unable to comprehend that shit. The girl from the cupboard propelled herself and her victim towards the door, thrusting her into the frame. The cracking noise seemed louder than the girl from the cupboard expected, the prey slumped to the floor.

She spun around before the second woman could recover and stabbed her eight times in the face. Red streaked the victim’s cheeks. Bone splinters everywhere. Teeth in red puddles.

The bleeding woman started to cry. The dying woman in the doorway finally stopped crying. Someone clenched a fistful of the girl from the cupboard’s hair. Third woman. The killer turned around and stabbed, stabbed while she and her attacker’s body went through the glass door that led into Redouane’s bedroom.

The girl from the cupboard threw her soon-to-be dead acquaintance aside while she stumbled backward onto the bed.

She noticed some woman’s tits dangling above her head. She had just interrupted Redouane’s doggy-style.

Both lovers stared at her, wide-eyed.

The girl from the cupboard, she simply plucked the plastic shard from her skull and pressed it into the naked woman’s neck. Hard enough only a tiny bit of it stuck out. Blood rained on her, splattered on Redouane, on the walls as the dying slut tried to force her finger into her own neck to rip the piece out. Nails sliding across the wet surface.

The girl from the cupboard smiled through dry lips as the other woman fell headfirst, blood first, death first onto the pillow. She imagined Redouane’s dick still embedded in some dead cunt.

The way it should be.

The girl from the cupboard stood up. She cleared her ratty throat:

“I’ll clean the mess tomorrow. Promise,” she said before kissing him on his right cheek and leaving to enter the bathroom.

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