Monsters

This is a memoir piece I wrote for my writing class last school year. I won't put it under as a memoir, since I was so young and most of it has faded, making it based upon fact, but inaccurate.

    Awoken by the muffled yells of my parents. I was five then and still believed monsters only existed behind closet doors. I lay in bed watching the moon shine bright through the open windows. A warm, Florida breeze rolled by, whisking up my hair. My sheets were thin, but it felt as if I were suffocating beneath them.
    Glass shattered against the living room wall with a force that shook the whole house. My lip quivered and I desperately called out for mommy, but it seemed no words would come out. Tiny toes to the floorboards, a crack between door and frame, and the scene fell into understanding. Not complete understanding, only enough to know something was wrong. At such a young age, there was never complete understanding, only thoughts that everything would get better.
    Demeaning names flew around: from mommy to daddy, and daddy to mommy, and to another name I didn't know. I crept down the hallway, which seemed abnormally long, and stopped by the bathroom, where I hid to listen and to watch. The scene played on as mommy scooped up broken glass with her hands. For a brief second, her eyes caught my own, and she halted conversation and paced eagerly toward me. She swooped me up in her arms and carried me back to my lilac room, the flowers on the wall that would heal any wound.
    Daddy fell back, and if I recall correctly, left. He was always leaving, but I never knew why, and I never knew where. All I knew was that I had saved my mommy. We lay in my bed and counted the plastic stars on the ceiling, wishing the city was dim enough to count real ones. She lied and said everything was fine, asked me how I felt about taking a trip. Young and ignorant, I agreed, and a few days later we said our goodbyes to our family, packed up and left like daddy did, but we didn't go back.
   It was on that night that I learned monsters don't just hide in closets or under beds; they're not in those dark places at all. They're within people, tucked away in our addictions and mistakes. There's no hiding under sheets, no crawling back to pastel colored walls, no arms to swoop us to safety. These monsters are inevitable; these monsters are real.