Lullabye

There's something evil crawling under my bed. Silent and unmoving, it tries hard not to be heard. There's something sinister creeping in the darkness. There's something here. There's something wicked. There is something wicked......

I quickly leap from my thick blankets, clad in my pajamas, I lift the sheets to see underneath my mattress. The silence again, again the darkness, the soundlessness. There's nothing here.

There's nothing evil lurking beneath me. This must all be a dream and it will soon be over.
Shaking my head and smiling to myself. I return to my slumber. The feathers of my mattress overwhelm me. Heavenly, wonderful, peaceful. I'm surrounded in the warmth of my thick soft cotten covers. The constant and gentle hum of the ceiling fan fills me with a sense of belonging.
There are no such things as monsters, I remember my mother telling me. There is nothing to fear, they are more afraid of you than you are of them, she said.

The police found her hanging her clothes out on the line outside. She strangled herself in the lines, next to a pair of my dirty worn blue jeans. They would later tell my father that he was a suspect. They would later tell me that I had to go away. My father was a monster, so I was lead to believe. My mother is dead, so I was informed, but was the monster more afraid than she?

My eyes fall heavy and I drift off. The sounds outside my window grow loud. The crickets screaming their musical chime. The toads croak while an owl hoots a long solemn and lonely hoot.

I can't sleep. I can't get over myself. There feels like something is watching me. I try and ignore it. I try to think of good things. Happy things. I can't get my mind off of a new sound in the world around me.

The sound of scratching, like a begging dog wanting back into the warmth of the house on a cold december evening. The scratching. Louder and louder in my head. It must be a bad dream. I'm so tired - I don't need this.

A coyote howls in the night, the sound of birds fluttering out in fright. The crickets stop stringing their violens and the toads croak heavier and louder, more painful and sinister.

I turn about in the warmth of my bed. I grab a pillow and wrap it around my ears. The sounds of scratching wood, louder now, under me, I feel the scratching. I sense it under my bed again. I don't want to look again.

This is the third time tonight, I've lost count actually. There is something hidden here, there is something creeping, watching, stalking, staring at me. Evil thickens like a humid day in spring. I can barely breathe. Sweat running down my brow.

I hear a giggle and I rouse my heavy eyes open. I peer from behind a nearly transparent sheet. There before me, I see a tall dark figure, standing before me, staring at me!

I quickly remove the blankets from my head and leap backwards. I fall to the floor, the sound of the wooden planks under me creek. The scurrying of tiny mice tickle the planks.

The scratching dog claws stop as I hit the ground.

I inch backwards, I fear peering over the bed. I do not want to meet the monster opposite of my mattress. I look down, that monster under my bed. I see nothing. I see no feet from the dark figure.

There is something here, something wants me. Something wants me to be in fear. Something wants me to commit terrible things. Things that my father did, things I didn't understand then, and things I am beginning to figure out.

I don't know what I'm saying anymore. It's one of those nights, I'm overstressed at work. I know all of this is in my head... but it's still there. I hear it, I can feel what it wants.
What I fear most is that what it wants is what I want even more.