The demons are out of the closet. They wiggled through the keyhole and crept under the door. Now they are loose in the house. God knows I tried to keep them in. I locked the door and propped a chair under the knob. I should have thought of stuffing wet newspaper into the cracks around the edges. But I didn't and now they are on the loose again. They are running free. Blue and green and red and yellow they are. All wild and jumping and jibbery they are. Waving arms and legs, hollering in a whisper things I don't want to hear. Telling me knobby fingered secret stories, crawling across the ceiling and dropping down into my hair in webby clumps. Clinging stories. They dance, you know, a rainbow dance of gloom. A multicolored dance, a fearful whisper dance of smashing sounds. Across the chairs and wallpaper, wiggling fingers, grasping at you, just on the edge of vision. You can't look directly at them; they are always slipping sideways when you try to grab them straight on with a piercing stare. If you could stare them down they disappear. They swing on chandeliers, pendulums that hum like thunder. And scamper and cavort. All afternoon, they cavort in front of the closet door mocking the lock I put on it. Mock the lock, mock the lock, mock the lock. They circle in on me and throw things, paperweights and popcorn. They pull down books from the case and take careful aim. They know how to hit, just where to make a bruise that will not show. They draw blood in secret places. A thousand cuts from tiny wounds. They sticky across the ceiling and down the walls, crabwise, wisecracking, cracking their knuckles, knuckleballing the paperweights, weighing out insults to the last degree. They smash plates on their heads and use the shards to crave the table legs into gargoyles. And the gargoyles come to life and dance about mocking me. They dance splayed toed atop the dancing tables and jibber at me. They croon weird songs that invoke dark places you'd never want to go but are pulled to nonetheless. But I ignore it all. I sit on my sofa and sew furiously, piecing a quilt. Little triangles, little squares, paired together, joined and seamed, built block to block to bigger squares, rectangles, rows and strips. Create a pattern, a design. From disparate pieces, a whole created. My mind keyed to the needle while the demons gather. They pluck the flowers patterned on the drapes and weave them into a daisy chain. With fanfare they crown me as I sit with needle clenched. They dance around me singing horrid songs. They whisper low, insinuating; they thunder loud, until the room vibrates. They stomp their multi-jointed toes until their nails rattle loose the light bulbs. But I don't look up. I stitch the squares of blue and green and red and yellow side by side by side in parquet blocks. The more the demons stomp the more they shrink; they are compacting themselves, tighter and tighter, with every stomp, whomp, whomp, whomp, into little marbles of nastiness, little spherical balls of energy; they roll away, under the sofa, under the chair, into the corner, away from me, gone for while. Driven away by ignoring them, taking the chaos with them. I get out the dustpan and broom and sweeping up the little dried up bits to lock up again. More secure this time. A big iron strongbox; brown paper, layers and layers; strapping tape; nubby twine, in complicated knots I get out of a Boy Scout Handbook; and red sealing wax imprinted with arcane symbols. Then I shove it in the back of the closet, under old winter coats and photo albums and sports equipment I never use. Then I dust off my hands and turn back to my quilt. I need to finish it.