The detective laid a piece of paper on the table, face down.

I dragged the paper to my end of the table with the tip of my finger. "Is this the original?" I said, before flipping it over.

The cafe was a lot quieter than yesterday. All my comforting sunlight was swallowed by grey skies. Only cloudiness. Sullenness. Emptiness.

Eeriness.

"No no, it's only a photocopy. So don't worry about spilling anything on it—"

"You can't be serious." I gripped the paper like steel. "This is ludicrous." I looked up at the officer. "What... What even are they? What is this?"

Detective Chapman rubbed the back of his neck. " I don't know. None of us did. Part of the reason the news didn't get it. But it was all... Eerie."

I set the paper down, uneasy. "What could I have possibly have meant by that?" I sat there, collecting my thoughts. "What did I say, again?"

"If you must know, a lot of what you said was indecipherable babble, which was expected for someone of your age. But we did get a couple coherent words from you that you consistently said..." Detective Chapman pulled out a little notebook from his breast pocket. He flipped through it, searching. "I wrote it down somewhere... Ah, here it is."

Detective Chapman pointed to the green circular drawing on the paper. "Ok, so for this one, you kept saying 'Mike Wazowski,' Actually, now that I think about it, we did see this name as possibly significant. We searched for anyone with the name in our data base hoping to find a suspect. We didn't, unfortunately."

"And what about the blue one?" I pointed.

"Ok, that one made a lot less sense than the green one. You apparently kept calling it..." Chapman looked at his notebook. "Kitty."

I laughed, holding the drawing up. "Kitty?"

"Yes. And I'm sure you've already guessed why we could not find any suspects in the data base under that name." He deeply chucked.

I ignored his horrible joke, engrossed by the drawing. "It doesn't even remotely look like a cat!"

"But Mary, that's not even the weirdest part. After you showed us your drawings, you said Kitty again, you pointed at..."

"What? What did I point at?!"

"Well, you pointed at your closet."

I blinked.

"My closet?" I gawked, my breath taken from me. "How... How incredibly random. Is there a possibility I had just been hiding in there the entire time?"

"Not a chance. That was the first place your mother searched when she saw you were missing, and we checked there twice when we arrived to your house."

I fell back in my chair. "This is madness. No wonder the media couldn't know about this. No matter you didn't want to tell me..."

"Mary, there's one more thing."

"What?" I sat up. "What? What is it?"

Detective Chapman leaned in to the center of the table. I did the same.

He said in a hushed voice: "There was a single hair on your bed sheets that we were unable to identify."

"Wait, but the article I read said you guys didn't find any trace evidence."

"Again, we couldn't release it to the public."

"Why? Because you couldn't find the person it belonged to?"

"No." Detective Chapman said. "Because we couldn't find a species that matched to it."

My pupils dilated.

"What?"

"And Mary, this is what was the most extraordinary thing about your case."

I said nothing.

"It was blue."

* * *

I knew that old cork board would come in handy. I thought, as I hung it up on my wall.

I pinned up everything I had. Everything. The articles, the photo of me, the drawing, the names, and a note about the single unidentified hair. I fought myself on not putting up the closet connection. But nothing could be left out. Finally, I connected the evidence together with some left over yarn from a crocheting project in crafts and jewelry making class.

I took a step back and admired my work.

Now what did I have?

My eager grin flipped upside down. I sighed.

I had the perfect makings of a nutcase.

There is no way this means anything. This is a wild goose chase. This... This is insanity. Really? Really Mary? Your life is not an episode of Sherlock.

I began to fume, and stumbled backward, my back hitting the wall. I slid to the floor.

I took a deep breath, and began stretching. I needed to put some yoga in before bed.

* * *

I woke up in the middle of the night to laughter. My forehead banged the bottom of the bunk bead above me.

"Urgh!" I seethed through my teeth. I listened to the voice. The giggling was like a pounding on my wall.

It wasn't the first time I had been awakened late at night.

Jackson.

* * *

At breakfast the next morning, I was in enough of a sour mood to confront Jackson.

"Hey Jackson, bub, why were you laughing in the middle of the night last night? You kinda woke me up. I was having THE BEST dream about Benedict Cumberbatch..."

"Oh." Jackson paused his spoon's journey midway to his mouth. "Sorry."

I cut into my slightly burnt omelet. "Why on Earth would you be laughing like that? It was like, three in the morning. Were you and Alex laughing at my magazines again? Look, don't judge me, I need a little dose of teen gossip garbage every now and then to make myself feel better about my own problems—"

"No no, we weren't looking through your magazines again. Alex didn't sneak out of his room last night."

I look a sip of my milk, probably a little too close to its expiration date."Then for Pete's sake, why were you laughing?" I wiped the white mustache atop my upper lip.

"Well, it's just that, well ah, a monster came last night, and he made me laugh."

"Yeah yeah. You've been using that same excuse for as long as I can remember." I crossed my arms and scowled, turning my head away.

But then I stopped.

I swallowed.

"Wait." I turned my head back at Jackson. "Please. Please, say that again."

"Ee shad, ughy mon--" he said through a mouth full of milk and cereal.

"Don't talk with your mouth full." I immediately regretted snapping at him.

What had I become?

He swallowed. "Sorry." He continued. "I said, a funny monster came to me last night."

I eyed him. "And... This happens... Often?"

"Oh, sometimes. Not always. But last night was especially funny. A good ol' time!"

I pulled at my hair. "And what... What do these funny monsters look like?"

Jackson lifted his index finger. He gulped down the remainder of his cereal and ran from the table. Moments later he came back with a single sheet of paper between his fingers.

On it was drawn an odd creature. It was midnight purple, stalky, and sported three heads with purple manes, like lions. The head in the center was maybe one and a half larger than the rest. Each head had one sapphire blue eye, almost spanning the entire area of the head. Its hands and feet were like the branches of trees.

"Jackson?" I gawked, feeling my bagging skin as I pulled at my eyes. "Where did the monster come from?"

"The closet, why? You wanna laugh too?"

No. I felt like I was about to throw up.

And it wasn't just the milk.

No, no. It can't be.

There aren't monsters in your closet.