I had a secret as a kid. I drew black, jagged lines that slowly formed monsters on paper.
“Ugly. What a waste of paper,” my teacher would say, slamming it on my desk. Other kids drew the right kind of things—sunsets, flowers, happy houses—that got pinned on classroom walls or magnetized to fridge doors at home. I drew monsters. Ugly monsters.
One day, when I was hiding on the terrace, away from the screeching of my mother’s pain, I unfolded my paper and began to draw again. This time, I moved slowly, unafraid of getting caught. My mother couldn’t climb the stairs anymore, and my father wouldn’t be home until dinner.
The air smelled musty, and clouds roared like an omen. A small but deadly monster took shape, alive on the page. It looked like a goblin, with dragon wings sprouting unevenly, like poorly stitched patches on my clothes. Its skin was cracked—cracked like my mother’s feet and palms.
I froze, surprised by what I had made. It looked like something pulled from the shadow of my own fear. My legs cramped as I sat staring at the ledge, too afraid to move, hoping it might go away. It didn’t. Every time I drew, my hands moved on their own, recreating the same monster over and over. Even when I didn’t draw, I could feel it. Lurking. Whispering. Letting me know it was here to stay.
It wasn’t playfulness. It wasn’t joy. In all seriousness, I started to prepare for how to defeat the monster. It was flourishing—growing fat on the smell of antiseptics and medicine. My father always said I had to be brave. I had to look after myself and my mother, who was becoming thinner every day. At night, when she coughed, I’d tiptoe to her room with a glass of water she rarely finished. Her eyes would flicker open, and for a moment, she’d look at me like she used to—before the illness stole her warmth. “Go to bed,” she’d whisper, her voice as thin as her arms. I would, but only after checking the monster hadn’t followed me up the stairs.
A kid at school told me never to look a monster in the eye. “Cut off its head,” he said. “That’s how you kill it.”
I didn’t know then that monsters have histories of their own—families, even. I would stare at the creature on my paper and watch it feed on my dreams, chewing its way through the edges until nothing remained but a smudged stain of ink. Sometimes, I’d scare myself stiff imagining it sneaking up behind me in the mirror, or crawling from under my bed.
Once, I fell down the stairs because I imagined it following me. No one noticed the bruises. My secret stayed safe.
As I grew half an inch taller, the monster disappeared. So did my mother.
All that remained was silence. A loud, unbroken silence that filled every room of the house.
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Garima Chhikara is a writer and poet based in Bangalore, India. After working as a product manager for over five years, she now dedicates her time to storytelling and poetry. Her poetry was previously featured in the anthology When Cupid Struck Its Arrow (2017). She enjoys exploring themes of grief, resilience, and the complexities of human emotions in her writing.
© 2025, Garima Chhikara
Halfway Down the Stairs 