From Where The Monsters Came

The Monster Under The Bed and Why I Dont Wear Red Anymore

4:31 pm, 1 week before

I don't sleep for a solid three weeks until Keira notices.

"You have to move out." Is all she says.

Keira gets more and more tired each time I see her – her eye bags get darker, her limbs get heavier, her clothes more haphazard and hair increasingly unwashed. She never sleeps – too many things come out of the cupboard when she does.

"You have to move out," she sighs, rubbing her temples. "You have to move out if you can't sleep."

"I can sleep." Is all I say back, and then I kick her out of the house before she can attempt to do anything more, sending her on her way with a sack of red clothes and this weeks paper, because someone's done the crossword already. The whole meeting leaves me dizzy with exhaustion. I allow myself a moment after the door closes to sit on the sofa and gather myself.

Despite my desperate need to sleep, I know I have to move, I can't face sleeping on the sofa. The last time I tried had been a traumatic night of bending my neck in all the wrong directions and incessant wailing from the bedroom. The next morning, the only thing left stuck to the walls of the bedroom was a piece of paper, worn with age, with an old, old drawing on it, and Keira had told me to move out.

A year later and now I don't put things up on my wall.

-

11:38 pm

"Can you be quiet?"

It whines back, a pathetic noise from the back of its throat.

"Please?"

There's silence for a moment before a small, clawed hand comes out from the gap between the floor and the mattress. I sigh, and give in, reaching down and interlocking fingers with talons.

It warbles in response.

I fall asleep for the first time in weeks.

-

3:10 am

The monster I draw has eight limbs and a mouth full of needle thin teeth. I end up crying in the bathroom for almost half an hour after I wake in a start and scrawl it down on a piece of paper. I throw up until there's nothing left in my stomach, then curl up, bug-like, on the cheap linoleum. Cold sweat gathers at my hair line and in the small of my back, and my head throbs.

A small claw tugs at the hem of my shirt, it hums.

"I'm alright." My throat is raw, voice cracking as I speak, and I am alright, only my favourite jumper was red and after giving it away, I am still here, and the monsters still came. A second hum comes – disbelieving, almost concerned.

"I'm alright."

Forty-eight syringe-like teeth scratched into white paper would beg to differ, but I count each one before dragging myself to the kitchen and downing half a pint of water to try and take the edge of the dryness of my mouth. Before I can talk myself out of it, I seal the drawing in an envelope and address it to Keira, leaving it on the kitchen table to be posted at some point tomorrow. I collapse back into bed.

A moment passes before the edge of the blanket it tugged, and the throw is pulled off and under the bed to a contented chirp. It can have it – I'm not that cold anyway.