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The Monster Under the Bed (5) : There’s a faint scratching under your bed. Maybe you’ve heard it in the nights leading up to now, or maybe it’s just started, but the scurrying noise is starting to drive you mad. What is it? A bug? A creature? Your imagination? If you try to ignore the noise, it grows louder and louder and louder, until it’s practically all you can hear. You can try to ignore it but sleep is impossible. If you’re hoping to get any rest, you’re going to have to investigate–but you’re not going to like what you find. A flashlight under the bed yields nothingness–a darkness so deep that it seems to swallow up all light. The noise is worse but you can’t see anything. But you’re already in its trap. If you try to reach into the darkness, something grabs your wrist; if you try to walk away, your ankle. Its grip is icy and sharp, like being grabbed by knives, and it pulls. No matter how hard you fight against it, it’s stronger–and it drags you into the darkness. You fall, for what feels like an eternity–and then you jerk awake, violently. Maybe it was just a bad dream. But it doesn’t explain the fading red marks from where it grabbed you. When you look again, it’s just your bed–but you have the distinct feeling that something is missing.


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Setting: Saturday-ish (stupidly early on Saturday)
Wordcount: 1173


“DADDY!” The little girl’s scream had Nate shooting out of bed and scrambling for his daughter’s room. It was the middle of the night. There was no earthly reason for his nearly two year old little girl to be crying out like that. He wasn’t exactly out of breath by the time he opened her bedroom door but his heart was thudding in his chest.

“Princess, what's wrong?” He asked quietly, quickly approaching the sobbing toddler.

“Daddy! Monster! Monster!” The toddler wailed, her finger pointing to her bed even as she clutched her teddy so tight that Nate absently wondered if they would have to have the bear restuffed.

“Monster? Where?” Ah, a nightmare, His heart rate was slowly calming down as he realized his little girl had just woken up from a nightmare. While there were actual monsters in the city, none would likely be caught in their apartment. Not if he had anything to say about it.

“Dare! Where bunnies live!” The toddler cried, this time slapping the top of the mattress.

It didn’t take very long for him to connect the dots. “Ah, under the bed. A very common place for monsters. Well, let's have daddy look, ok princess?” He suppressed a smile and pulled the little child torch… flashlight… from the bookshelf. “I’m sure the dust bunnies are just being a bit loud tonight. No monsters would want to tangle with the bunnies afterall.” With that Nate laid flat on the floor since the toddler’s bed was fairly low to the ground. There was no space for anything under the bed besides dust and the odd sock or two. Completely too small of a space for anything living. So he wasn’t all that surprised to see nothing when he flicked on the Disney Princess flashlight… What did surprise him was the vast absence of anything.

It was black. Completely and totally black. A void of nothingness was all he saw under the bed. Not the carpet that should be there. Not the sock or errant toy. Not even the dust and dirt that ment they needed to do a deep clean. A nothingness that had him frowning, his frown only getting deeper as the sound of faint scratching could be heard. He could hear it, but couldn’t see it. Keeping his desire to curse underwraps Nate gave the flashlight a good smack, figuring the batteries were just dying. It wasn’t a very strong flashlight anyway. A toy really. Not one of those professional, light up the night sky, type flashlights.

“Well, I see the problem Princess,” He lied as he glanced up at his daughter, who was watching him. “The dust bunnies are having a party. I’ll tell them to quie-” He never did get a chance to finish that sentence as something grabbed his wrist and pulled. His head slammed against the carpet with a dull thump as his arm was yanked violently out from under him. Before he could react in his dazed state he was being physically pulled under the bed. Nate started to weakly fight against the dragging, yanking motion, gaining strength as each second passed. His mouth opened to scream out a name, call out for help, or just yell in pain. Even as he heard the cries of his daughter, her wailing filling his ears, he fought to break free but it was impossible. The grip on his hand was icy and sharp, each ‘finger’ feeling like knives or claws. They were iron like and no matter how much he struggled against it Nate was inevitably dragged into the darkness. Once there he fell… like Alice in Wonderland, Nate fell. And fell. And fell. With no end in sight. It was endless. An eternity of falling.

Until…

With a jerk and a gasp Nate sat up in bed, his heart galloping and sweat glued his shirt to his chest. He felt stuffy and disoriented. The sheets, his sheets, were tangled around him, the clock on the bedside table read three o’clock in its red digital numbers, and the gentle lights from the city outside of the window filtered through the curtains. It was quiet. Nothing out of the ordinary, just the normal sounds from so late in the night. It was a dream… nothing but a bad dream, he surmised as his breathing slowly calmed down. A nightmare.

Feeling shaky and not able to go back to sleep just yet, he climbed out of bed carefully and started to head towards the door when a quiet, sleepy call had him turning back slightly. “Nate?”

“Go back to sleep Dess, I’m just going to get a drink of water,” He smiled weakly at the blonde that was buried in the blankets. It wasn’t until he got a muttered agreement, more of a hum then anything vocalized, acknowledging his statement that Nate headed out the bedroom door, leaving it cracked behind him. It was just a dream. Nothing but a dream.

A mantra he kept in mind as he stopped outside of their daughter’s bedroom door, easing it open enough to poke his head in. Like his own room, nothing was amiss. The toddler was sound asleep, the nightlight casting stars on the ceiling, toys and stuffies scattered about, and most importantly… there was nothing under the bed. No shadows. No voids. No real space at all. It was a dream. Just a dream.

With a sigh he leaned against the door jam, only then noticing the fading red marks around his wrist. “Shi-” He bit off the curse even as he stood upright, his heart rate once again racing. It was just a dream. It had to be just a dream. Swallowing, his mouth was bone dry now, he stepped into the room and surveyed the space with a much more critical eye. Nothing was amiss. Nothing out of its place… but he couldn’t shake the distinct feeling that something was missing.

What was missing he didn’t know. Just that something was.

Unsure, Nate leaned down and gave the sleeping toddler a light kiss on her head before slipping out of her room. She was sound asleep, sleeping normally and comfortably. Nothing else really mattered. As long as she was ok, everything else was irrelevant. No matter how much he felt that something was missing. No matter how much his dream might not have been a dream after all. Still feeling rather wired from his experience, the young man went to get a bottle of water from the kitchen.

It wasn’t until hours later that he was shaken awake by a toddler climbing in his lap, crowing and chattering as only a little child could do. He sleepily rubbed his eyes, surveying his surroundings, and realized he had fallen back asleep in the rocking chair that was in Sarah’s room. Dessie was just leaning against the door jam, cradling a cup, and watched with a smile as father and daughter cuddled in the chair.