There are all kinds of dangerous creatures in this world. I was just reading yesterday about gigantic pythons in the Amazon. Someone photographed one in the water. From the air, it looked like a long, silent shadow of death; a wraith-like shape lurking in the murky brown river.

There are monsters closer to home as well. Some people have vicious dogs, alligators in their sewer system, or skeletons in the closet.

We keep an iron.

If it weren’t for gravity and the inevitable cord, this iron would be much less of a menace. As it is, the thing may kill one of us some day.

Not so long ago, Dad made Mom a stand for her ironing board. The board pulls out on aluminum tracks, where it can be unfolded and used, then stowed back upright against the wall. A nifty system—but where do you keep the iron?

The nasty beast found its new home on the closet shelf, above the heads of unsuspecting closet-diggers.

The place suited its monster heart just fine. One day in May I was innocently pulling the vacuum sweeper (another menace whose dangers have not been fully told) out of the closet. One of the vacuum’s limbs caught on the iron’s cord.

The iron hit my head. It hit with unholy glee. Stunned, I gasped and stood there stupidly while blood trickled through my hair and onto my forehead.

The iron lay on the floor, the picture of innocence. If it had a thumb to put in its nose, it would have.

I howled, laughed, and went to clean up my head. I ended up washing caked blood out of my hair for days. Mom acted a little shocked at my story, as if she couldn’t believe the iron would play such a trick. After all, so far it had been such a darling little iron.

No one moved the creature from its baleful perch. I stepped with greatest care around the closet after that, but Mom forgot.

Just the other day, I noticed a thick black bruise on her toe. “That iron fell on my foot!” she said. “The cord caught when I was…”

Yes, Mother, I know.

The iron still resides on the closet shelf, in exactly the same position. Now I know why some people keep dangerous dogs even after they have bitten visitors repeatedly.

Maybe there’s nowhere else to put them.

Savanna Unruh