There’s a crack in my wall. It’s the length of a sewing needle and the width of a string; a very slight and unnoticeable thing. Except for the fact that something in there keeps talking to me. I used to talk to it happily. I’d feed it crumbs. I would stick little stirrer straws inside and pour tea. I fed the thing living in my walls.

Then one day I watched something disturbing happen. My door had been left open when I got home and I heard a buzzing inside my room. As I leaned my head in the doorway I saw the greenest little arm snatching a fly. It thrashed about, but the tiny arm in the crack was too strong. It was a small hand, tinier than the fly, although obviously as strong as an ant. The hand forced the giant insect inside piece by piece. I watched the tiniest bit of blood smear onto my pale purple walls.

When I finally came inside the room, the voice stopped its loud eating.

“Sorry, I was so starved. You only ever feed me on the weekends during tea parties.”

“I understand,” I nodded along shyly.

The voice doesn’t speak.

I put down my backpack and walk over to the wall. I pressed my thumb along the crack, wiping away the blood. A sharp, stabbing pain pressed into my thumb. I flinch back to find my thumb raw at the center. A large chunk was missing from my finger. I stepped back to find more blood oozing from the crack as the voice gnashed away happily on my flesh.

A tiny little spirit lives in my wall. A slimy little thing is what I imagine in there now as opposed to the ideal forest pixie.

Although the voice says they’re a pixie, I don’t believe it for a second.

When I tell my mom she laughs, then goes on to mention pixies are mischievous little creatures.

I search the Internet for them and find hundreds of typical pixie images. Some however tell of pixies that eat children or steal them away.

I keep a nightlight plugged in underneath the crack in the wall.

“Are you scared of me?” the voice asks.

I nod in response.

“There’s no need for that. I’m too big to fit through this crack. I won’t come out.”

That night I go to bed more afraid. Not once did they tell me they wouldn’t hurt me, but rather they couldn't hurt me.

I don’t say anything as the voice starts to hum in my walls.

When I come home from school one day, the crack is plastered over.

I don’t say anything; just let my mother continue with her redesigning of my room.

Her efforts don’t last long. Within the night the crack is back, just through a fresh coating of blue paint.

“You’re mother tried to block me out. You want to know why?”

I stay silent, facing away from the new crack in the wall.

“She told your father it scares you. Are you really scared of something so tiny?”

I hear the mockery in the little whispering of the voice.

Why don’t you look over here? Hey. Listen to me.”

My head feels heavy like lead and my neck feels stiff. I keep myself locked in place, staring at a wall without a single crack in it.

Then I hear it. The scraping and carving sounds of plaster being shaved away.

I whip my head around just as the smallest of hands slips back inside the crack.

“Now you look at me? Only when I’m trying to escape huh?”

I shake in my seat as the pixie goes quiet. Then I hear it again, only this time to my left. I turn in my seat to find a new crack in the wall.

“Guess I’ll just have to make some new places to talk.”

I can hear the smile in its voice.

Cracks pop up everywhere in my house. My parents plaster them only for them to come back within the night.

They wonder over and over again how they’re popping up. I stay quiet as the tiny voice flutters throughout the house laughing at my insanity.

As I’m sleeping, I hear it. The faint scrapping of the walls and it’s painful. I sit up to find the crack across my bed has crawled from floor to ceiling in length with a huge gap in the center as if something wedged it open and emerged.

Something wet drips from my ear and down to my chin. I put my hand against the liquid, pulling back to find blood.

“Now we can be together forever.”

The voice echoes inside my ear.