Shelly Lyons comes out of screenwriting. It’s a specific, draconian, and hard-to-develop skillset that can sometimes hamper writers trying their hand at fiction. Shelly has no such issue. She takes the scenemaking skills and the eyes of a screenwriter and brings that to fiction. Shelly is an impressive voice, and I’m happy to share her work with you.
The Game Closet by Shelly Lyons
Today Mom and Aunt Cyndy cashed Grandma’s social security check, so tonight we’re gonna eat pizza and play a game. Mom and Aunt Cyndy voted in solidarity for Boggle, which bores me. Don’t get me wrong, my vocabulary is superlative, prodigious, sick. I will crush them. And I will also eat eighty percent of the pizza.
We pick straws to see who fetches Boggle from the game closet. I always “lose,” and every time I do, I make a sad face so they think it’s as hard for me as it would be for them. Mom and Aunt Cyndy won’t go in there willingly. So Denny sets off. Every breathless step I take as I tiptoe down the hall brings me closer to my reason for living: a visit with my secret doll.
My feet stop by the floor heater vent, which I give a wide berth. Denny doesn’t trust the vent. Strange noises down there.
Now it’s not the hallway no more. Now it’s the game closet door. It’s me pressing against it, anticipating my entrance. I open the door, and here come the smells. My nostrils sting. My eyes water. The car air fresheners dangle from crisscrossed strings above my head. Mom likes Pina Colada; Aunt Cyndy prefers Fresh Pine.
I flip on the light, but don’t meet her gaze yet. Better to prolong the suspense, make it as delicious as a double cheese meat-lovers pizza. The bulb is weak and yellow. Still, my shadow cascades across the games: Clue, Password, Yahtzee, Monopoly, Parcheesi.
I find Boggle sandwiched between Checkers and Sorry. Asset located, I turn to the big cylindrical thing propped in the corner.
“Behold. I am the monster,” I say to her. “It’s my signature line.”
No response. Not even a grunt.
Through a gap in the Turkish rug, she shows me her eye. Used to be brown. Now it’s a pale blue behind restless clouds. Does her eye go wide when I gently touch the plastic? Am I the satin-shirted disco deejay who’s gonna ruin her tonight?
“Denny is a good boy,” I tell her. “Denny is a handsome boy.”
Fat. They say. Mom and Cyndy.
Lumpy. Dumpy. Frumpy. Filthy.
But those witches will never beat Denny in Boggle. They are three-letter morons who don’t read above the eighth-grade level. I do. Denny is a smart boy. He’ll use bonus letters and five-letter words, while the ladies will take turns losing, all drunk and wheezy behind their Virginia Slims.
People dislike him. Except her. No sir. Those filmy eye sees the real Denny.
I circle around the massive rug rolled taut inside the plastic, searching for the hole.
“Hurry up!” Mom screams from the living room. Cyndy blows her rape whistle.
Find the hole you made. Now push is through, I pep talk myself. And I’m in! The rug’s edges tickle. One-two-one-two-one-two, and on and on I go.
Stupid Aunt Cyndy keeps her lips on that dang whistle. So I’ve gotta finish fast.
“B-B-B-Boggle!”
Done! I turn and grab the Boggle, when behind me comes a sharp pop-pop. Bits of plastic and viscous chunks spray my back.
Denny cringes and whimpers. Such a naughty little boy. When finally he works up the courage to turn back to the rug, it’s loose and empty. Abandoned.
My skin icicles.
“They made me do it,” I say, straining through dim light to peer into shadowy corners. “I was fine just watching you go slow. Aunt Cyndy told me I was a young strapping lad, and I had the strength to hold the pillow good and firm. She and Mom said it was time. Your medication cost too much. Your home healthcare worker made more than Mom did working at the Family Dollar. And you were acting up, getting out of your room and roaming the neighborhood. Turning off the circuit breakers. Playing jokes on us. Remember when we’d come home and you’d be lying on the floor and we’d all go, ‘Oh no, she fell’ and then you’d laugh and cough and spit into your hand and wipe it on your skirt and laugh some more?”
Thinking about her skirt melts my ice.
Another whistle. Another holler. I better go.
But a squeak roots me to the spot. A breeze on my head. I look up beyond the dangly air fresheners and there she is, peeking down at me. Two pale blue peepers behind feathery clouds. Skin sink-holing between bones. Her arms seem too long as they reach for me. Her hands, half bone and half rotted flesh, rip off my sweatpants and tee. I grunt like a piglet as she rends fabric from flesh.
She cackles and drools, and I’m helpless, and then the attic access door slams closed.
Now I fill the closet with screams, and I know I’m gonna have bad dreams. Tomorrow I’ll lure her out with a grilled cheese sandwich. Denny’s a good cook.
When I enter the living room, I realize I’m naked. My weenus still a fistful of hard salami, where about halfway down the shaft, a group of maggots dance, coated in slivers of old papery skin that goes windborne like dandelion fuzz.
Aunt Cyndy says, “Ooh! Yuck!”
Mom says, “Jesus Christ, do you have to fuck up every single one of your birthdays?”
I’d burst into tears, but on the dining nook table sit two gigantic pizzas. Over the table, they’ve hung a banner. In sparkling, burgundy letters it reads: Happy 40th Denny!
Mom and Aunt Cyndy love Denny after all. They forgive Denny.
My heart is full. I gift them each with a big smile before my mouth flattens. Don’t wanna give the bad news.
“Grandma got out. She’s up there.”
I point to the ceiling, and everyone stares. None of us will realize until later that Grandma is actually in the floor heater vent staring up as her family walks into the kitchen for Pepsi and paper plates.
Shelly is a Los Angeles townie who loves dark fiction and 1970s-1990 horror and thriller made-for-TV movies. Several of her stories have been published in anthologies, and another appeared at the end of Brian Asman’s novella, Return of the Living Elves. Her debut novel, a sci-fi body horror rom-com called “Like Real,” entered the world in February 2023, courtesy of Ghoulish Books. Nightmare Press will release her novella, Behold, He Scatters His Lightning in 2026. She works in two libraries: one benevolent and one haunted. She has no strong opinions on pizza but tires of Los Angeles transplants bitching about it.
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