We don’t talk about The Imp enough.
I’m not sure when I first noticed The Imp. I was living in my mom’s basement, after graduating college and failing at finding a job. Every day, I’d scroll through job listings, write a cover letter and send my resume. And every day, read rejection after rejection.
Each rejection stung and my heart sank every time I checked my email. After a few days of this, I saw it sitting there. It sat curled up in a corner, its legs pushed up against its chest. It was hiding its face behind its knees. And it stared at me. The Imp’s hair was long and stringy. It grew out of its head in patches. It was probably only three feet high but its arms and legs were freakishly long. Its fingers were spidery, tipped with claws. Its skin was a sickly bluish-grey and I could see black veins just underneath.
And it wouldn’t stop staring at me.
I tried to ignore it. Instead, I just focused on sending out my applications. I was not going to let whatever that thing was distract me. But I started waking up later, and later. It must have been just after noon. I remember Vin called me during his lunch break to ask how my applications were going. He was an A-student, unlike me, and had jobs lined up after college.
“Dude, relax! I got this. You’re more uptight than my mom and I’m living with her!”
I forced a fake laugh to reassure him.
As if in response, The Imp laughed a real laugh. It was a deep and slow guffawing punctuated with long intakes of breath.
“Haw. Haw. Haaawww.” Wheeze. “Haw.”
I glared at the stupid thing.
“Shut. Up.”
But it kept up its slow laughter.
And then it was seven o’clock. My mom came home from work and asked if I’d eaten dinner. She asked how my applications went and told me to keep my head up. I remember thinking, “wasn’t it just noon? Hadn’t I just gotten off the phone with Vin?” I lied to her and said applications were going great while the Imp stared at me from the corner of the kitchen.
“Haw. Haw.” Wheeze.
It seemed a bit bigger.
I decided to wake up early the next day and catch up on my applications.
But I slept through my alarm and ended up getting out of bed at one in the afternoon. I chided myself, “you idiot. Slept through half the day again.” And in the corner of the room, The Imp continued its piercing stare.
“The fuck are you looking at?” I got so angry at the thing, I doubled my efforts to ignore it the whole day.
But no matter where I looked, The Imp was there. It always sat in a corner. No matter what I did, it would appear. I’d look out the window and just beneath where the walls met the floor sat The Imp. I turned to face the other side of my room and there it was again, this time sitting where the two walls met.
The Imp was always in my line of sight. I don’t know if I ever saw it get up and move, but everywhere I looked, it was there.
It sat.
It laughed.
It stared.
“It can’t be everywhere I look, can it?”
I looked up at the ceiling.
“Oh for crying out loud!”
And there it was sitting upside down as if glued to the ceiling. It “sat” in the same fetal position but its stringy hair dangled downwards. It slowly moved one of its hands and waved at me, laughing that wheezing laugh.
“Haw. Haw. Haw.” Wheeze.
And then it was four o’clock. Had I eaten? Showered? Another day wasted.
I got it after a while, of course. The more I stared at it, the more my day slipped away, as if time worked differently when I gave it attention. One day, I managed to never look directly at it. I sat at my desk typing away at an application and in the corner of my eye was the blurry vision of the huddled Imp in a corner.
It was so hard. The more I focused on not looking at it, the harder it was to ignore it. It was draining. I was lucky to send in even one application but of course, any application I sent in was rejected.
It got worse.
The rejections piled up. My resolve broke. And on some days, I just let myself go.
I stared at The Imp in the corner and let time melt away. I felt like shit and I know I looked and smelled like it too. But oddly, when I stared back at The Imp, I also felt kind of good.
One late afternoon, I checked my mail and read another rejection. At this point, I’ve already read dozens of them. This was nothing special, a canned response, but it was enough to break me.
“No, no, no. I can’t do this today. No. I can’t. I can’t. I can’t. I can’t do this today.”
I whispered those words to myself, a frantic mantra. As I did, I turned towards The Imp.
“I can’t.”
“Haw. Haw. Haw. Hawwwww” Wheeze.
It smiled and I could hear its ragged breath pick up speed. Slowly, it raised one hand but instead of waving at me as it usually did, it pointed a long claw tipped index finger at me. Then it turned its hand and made a “come here” gesture.
I knew it was dangerous even as I stepped closer to the corner of the room where it sat. I didn’t even flinch as it reached out with the same extended finger toward the side of my neck. I felt the burning pain as it dug its single pointed claw under my ear and made a gash on my neck towards my adam’s apple. It wasn’t deep enough to puncture, but it drew blood. It pulled its hand back.
“Haw. Hawwwww.”
I’m not proud to admit that I approached The Imp on more than one occasion. It cut me, sometimes with one finger. Other times it dug all five of its fingers into my thigh making deep scratch marks. Sometimes, it even slapped my face hard enough to leave me with stars. I don’t know how long this went for, but I also stopped caring. If it wasn’t for Vin, I think The Imp would have eventually killed me.
I woke up to the smell of coffee, oatmeal and scrambled eggs. Vin was sitting in a chair by my bed and a breakfast tray waited for me on my bedside table.
“Sup. You look like shit.”
“Vin? What are you doing here? What time is it?”
I looked at the breakfast tray pointedly and back at him with a raised brow.
“Nope. Your mom made that for you. Actually, that’s why I’m here. She’s worried about you.”
I sighed and sat up.
“Oh. Look, I’m okay alright?”
“Is that right?” Vin made an exaggerated gesture towards the bandages on my arms and continued.
“She called me to ask you about those. What’s going on man?”
I slouched a bit at that. How could he understand? How could any of them?
“I told her already, Vin. I fell when I was walking down the hill and the gravel cut me up as I slipped down.”
“You… fell?”
He didn’t say anything after that. He just nodded then looked around at the state of my room. I followed his gaze as he glanced past my clothes, strewn about everywhere. A stack of used dishes made a tiny tower at the end of my desk. His head continued to turn and paused at the garbage bin in the corner of the room, overflowing with bandages, papers and food scraps. The look of disgust plastered his face as he inspected the garbage bin in the corner.
The garbage bin in the corner of the room.
The corner.
Wheeze.
The corner, where The Imp sat staring at me.
“Hawwww.”
It was definitely bigger. Sitting in a corner as it always did, its head almost reached the ceiling.
I stared back thinking. Who would ever believe that an Imp haunted me? That it appeared at every literal corner? That it abused me? No wonder my mom was “worried”. She probably thought I was hurting myself. No wonder she asked Vin to check on me. No wonder—
“Hey!”
Vin shook my shoulder and made me look at him.
“Oh, Vin s-sorry. I must have zoned out a bit-“
“No. No you didn’t.”
Vin glanced at the corner where the Imp sat then back at me.
Wheeze.
“When your mom called me, I had my suspicions. She told me about how she’d catch you staring into a corner once in a while, cradling that cut on your arm. I didn’t want to believe it so I had to make sure.”
I swallowed hard, feeling the shame bubble up from my gut, like I was caught stealing.
“You were staring for a good five minutes.”
“Vin, I-“
“You were staring at The Imp, weren’t you?”
I felt a cold shiver make its way up my neck followed by a heat from my blushing face. How had he known? I clenched my eyes shut as I felt the blush continue.
“Vin, what the hell should I do?”
That’s all I said to him. It was enough.
Vin got up from his seat by my bed and threw me a pair of jogging pants and a sweater laying next to him.“Put that on, we gotta get out of here, man.”
He turned around and crossed his arms, expectantly.
“Uh Vin? A bit more privacy than that, maybe?”
“No way. I’m gonna count to a hundred. If I don’t hear you putting that on, I’m going to assume you started looking at The Imp again. And then, I’ll slap you. Hard.”
I stood there, amazed. How did he know so much about The Imp? I heard rumours about it but like a lot of people, I just assumed it wasn’t serious. I assumed The Imp was more metaphorical than-
“One. Two. Three-”
Right. I stripped out of my pajamas and slipped on my clothes while pointedly ignoring the huge creature in the corner. I could feel The Imp glaring at me.
“Thirty. Thirty-one.”
“Ok ok, I’m done. That was kinda’ weird.”
Vin turned around and gave me an appraising look.
“You still look like shit, but we gotta go.”
He led me up the stairs and out the side door.
“Grrr.”
The Imp’s wheezing was replaced by a low bass growl.
The sun was… well the sun hurt. I’m not sure how long I’d been in mom’s basement, but it was clear I haven’t been outside in a while. It took a moment to get used to the heat and how bright it was. So, I took my time. To just feel.
“Feels good right?” Vin asked me after a while.
I nodded.
“Come on. Let’s go for a walk. Maybe the park? Ain’t no corners there.”
Vin started walking and I followed, determined to get some answers.
“Alright, so you got questions.” Vin started the conversation immediately.
“Yeah, like, how’d you know I was seeing it? How come it’s real?”
He took a deep breath, preparing himself.
“We don’t talk about The Imp enough,” he sighed. “Everyone knows about it. Hell, I bet you did, right?” He looked over to me while we continued our walk to the park.
“Yeah. Well, I mean I heard rumours about it. Plenty of people claimed they’ve seen The Imp but it’s hard to believe, right?”
“Yeah,” Vin agreed and continued my train of thought. “And the people that do talk about it aren’t taken seriously. ‘Stop looking at it then, idiot!’” he said with a mocking voice. “Or, some people just straight up don’t believe.”
I sighed.
“Yeah. I think I fell into that category.”
“You believe now though, don’t you?”
I nodded. “It just started showing up. And the more I looked at it-”
“The more it seemed like your days were slipping away.” Vin finished my sentence for me.
It felt so good to have someone to talk to about this.
“So Vin,” I asked, “how the hell do I get rid of it?”
He looked at me with sad eyes.
“It’s hard, man. It’s different for everyone.” He stopped walking and turned to me. “Some people don’t get rid of theirs at all. They just manage to live with it.”
My stomach burned with anxiety. I turned away from him, thinking about what to say when I noticed a bus shelter. Inside, where the walls of the shelter met, sat The Imp continuing its glare.
“Grrrrr!”
I met its eyes and felt the sun melt away from me. I didn’t need to go anywhere anymore. I didn’t need to-
“Yo. Not now, man.”
Vin stood in front of me, breaking my line of sight with the shelter and I hung my head in frustration. He patted me on the back with a silent understanding and continued walking. I followed.
We talked some more as we walked. He shared some ways to help me manage the temptation to look at The Imp. He liked to run regularly and asked me to join him. Something about endorphins.
He also told me seeing people helped. Seeing friends and family were good ways to give it less attention. Or, it could have the opposite effect and trigger the stare. It depends.
But talking to Vin about it though, that really helped.
After our walk to the park and back, I agreed to join him on his runs. For the next few weeks, he drove to my place after work and we’d run. Afterwards, we’d stretch and we’d talk about The Imp. Did I look at it today? Some days were good and I’d answer “No”. Sometimes I said yes. He told me not to feel ashamed. That it was okay to fail once in a while. Over time, I’d answer “I didn’t look” and I felt stronger physically and mentally. I slept and woke up early. I ate right. I got those damn job applications in.
I got better.
It was slow. Oh sure, The Imp was there, in the corner of my eye. But instead of a crouched form almost touching the ceiling, I noticed a blurred figure about the height of my baseboards. But I didn’t feel an urge to actually look at it. Gradually, Vin stopped coming over to run with me. I thought maybe it was his way of taking the training wheels off.
Last week, after several job applications and interviews, I finally got an offer and wanted to celebrate. Vin was the first person I thought of when the offer came in. Without his help, I would have been stuck staring at The Imp. But I haven’t seen Vin in over two weeks. I shrugged it off thinking he was busy at work. I didn’t think anything of it until recently. He stopped responding to my texts and ignored my calls.
That worried me so I grabbed an Uber to his apartment.
I stood at the front of his apartment, buzzing him over and over again. Eventually, a security guard named Barry came out to meet me and asked what I wanted. I explained that I was worried for my friend and how he hasn’t been answering any texts or calls. He must have seen the worry on my face because he let me in and escorted me to Vin’s apartment.
We knocked and called his name with no response. I don’t know how I convinced Barry to use his security key to enter his apartment. It must have been the rising panic in my voice. Or, maybe Barry noticed the pungent odour.
We found him in the kitchen, surrounded by bags of garbage and detritus scattered everywhere. It was obvious he hadn’t been cleaning or taking out the trash. He sat there, among the piles of rot and grime.
Vin’s body sat upright, cross legged facing a corner.
I crouched down and shook him thinking he was asleep in that position. When that didn’t work, I forcibly turned him.
His face and arms bore all too familiar scratches. And a deep gash started just under his left ear and ended past his adam’s apple. His neck and shirt were stained and crusted brown. It was obvious how he died.
While I waited for the police and coroner, I sat with him, sobbing. I told him how sorry I was for not noticing. For not understanding just how he knew so much about The Imp when nobody else did. I said I was sorry for not asking him if he was okay or if he ever wanted to talk about The Imp.
The coroner placed his wrapped body on the gurney and I stayed to answer the police’s questions. Their pens stopped writing in their notebooks when I told them The Imp probably got to him. They gave each other a look. The look.
His death was ruled a suicide
Of course, nobody wants to acknowledge The Imp.
Nobody wants to talk about it.
Nobody wants to talk about how out of the blue, you’ll find it sitting in the corner, knees tucked up to its chest and staring at you.
Wheeze.
Nobody talks about how sometimes, when you least expect it, it catches your attention and waves.
Wheeze.
And we don’t talk about what happens when you stare and wave back.
“Haw. Haw. Haw.”
Like I’m doing right now.
We don’t talk about The Imp enough.