This is my entry for TheCRYPTIC_'s Quest #4: Monsters Need Love Too. I used the third picture. 

This is also the darkest thing I have ever written. You have been warned. 

..........................

I love the Gatekeeper. 

He's always there for me. 

I first met him when I was seven, on the day my mother slit her wrists. He walked up to me backwards as I stood crying over her coffin, and touched my cheek with the back of his cold, bony hand, instantly taking away the pain. 

He always walks backwards. He tells me it's because he doesn't like it when people see his face. 

Maybe he's just self-conscious. 

I definitely get that. 

The Gatekeeper is odd, in an amusingly queer sort of way. He always wears a long, tattered robe with the hood pulled tightly over his head, and his hands glow, like he's holding an invisible lantern. 

I tried to introduce him to my friends, but they'd always laugh and say that he wasn't real. 

"I'm only real for you, Rosa," he'd say softly, in response to their jeers. 

His voice is rough, gravelly, and distant, and it reminds me of a cheese grater. 

But of course, I wouldn't say that. It could hurt his feelings. 

My friends thought I was crazy, and they began to leave me as I got older. By the time I was in the seventh grade, I had none left. 

I didn't mind, though. I had the Gatekeeper, and he was worth a thousand friends. 

He was with me when my father and brother jumped into the Grand Canyon. 

I still remember how he laughed at their screams. 

Now, he's putting poison in my aunt's coffee. I watch him quietly as he works, stirring the drink methodically. 

She's going to kill herself, just like my mother, father, and brother did. 

"I love you so much, Rosa," the Gatekeeper says softly in his strange, distant voice. 

I smile. "I love you, too." 

I do not love him romantically, of course, but rather how a child loves her parent. After all, that is how I view him, after so many years under his loving care. 

He turns around, and I wrap my arms around his thin abdomen, hugging him tightly. He smells like ashes, and his protruding ribs dig into the soft skin of my cheek. 

He bends over to kiss the top of my head, and I make the mistake of looking up. 

Finally, after seven years, I am given a chance to snag a glimpse of his features. I wonder what they are like. Is his face round and young, or gaunt and old?

The truth is different from anything I could've ever imagined. 

He doesn't have one. 

Suddenly, as I stare at the skull that hovers inches from my forehead, the Gatekeeper's spell breaks. I see him murdering my family. I see him driving away my friends. I see his fingers running across my arms, leaving long scratches in their wake. 

A fear-filled cry lodges in my throat as his long nails dig into my back, reaching through my ribcage and tearing into my heart. 

He releases me, and I fall, helpless, to the floor just as my younger sister enters the room. 

She screams at the sight of me in my dying moments, and the Gatekeeper approaches her backwards, touching her cheek with the back of his cold, bony hand, still warm with my blood. 

"I am the Gatekeeper, and I'm only real for you, Ruth."