We Always Check Under Our Beds For Monsters, But What If We Actually Find One?

We all remember that fear in our bedroom when we were younger don’t we? That creeping feeling that something awful was lurking underneath our bed, just waiting for us to fall asleep before it claimed us as it’s own. I personally, used to have my mum check it, then my dad and then I’d give it one last look before I finally settled down to go to sleep.

I always thought, as long as I checked to make sure nothing was there then I’d be okay, but I never considered what would happen if I ever came face to face with what lurks under there.

As a kid, I was too logical for my own good, I was a great problem solver, but I never understood exaggeration or sarcasm; my over thinking brain is what led me to discover what I did that night.

I was fascinated by horror stories, but they sent my brain into overdrive. I always thought about how all of these creations that were common place in popular culture couldn’t just have been the creation of one mind. Ghosts, monsters, aliens, vampires, all that shit. I believed in it all. My mind couldn’t fathom the fact that someone had just created them and the world had taken to it, expanding their own stories with the idea of one man.

That was my problem with it.

After getting my dad to check under my bed I questioned him,

“Dad, where did the stories about monsters hiding under beds come from?”

He looked completely stumped, I mean looking back now it was a ludicrous question to expect him to answer, but he did his best to reassure me.

“Ah I don’t know buddy, they obviously came from a very silly liar because its not true, there isn’t and there never will be a monster under your bed”

God. How I wish he’d been right.

The night passed and I sat up, reading under torchlight. It was a collection of scary stories and the one I was reading was the story of a werewolf. As it hit about 10PM that was when I first heard it. A little shuffle. A tiny rustling under the bed, barely loud enough to hear.

I brushed it off, presumed I’d caught the edge of a page on my book on something and carried on reading.

From there on, it seemed to happen every 15 minutes, by the second or third time, I was aware it wasn’t me. I closed my book and placed it on my bedside table, leaving the torch on and laid as still as humanly possible on the bed. I ignored itches and pins and needles for about 15 minutes, desperate that the noises could have possibly been me. As I finally started to feel okay, I heard it again. A small rustle, like the sound of something fidgeting.

I breathed in all my courage, grabbed my torch and began to move towards the end of the bed. I began the descent, lowering my self down to check under my bed, I twisted the torch and hung myself down. It’d be fine, I did this pretty much every night, I’d get down there, there’d be nothing and I could go to sleep.

I met it’s gaze.

It smiled at me, a wide, ear to ear grin, revealing large rows of razor sharp, pin-like teeth. Its face was gaunt, skeletal, inhumane. Its eyes sunk grotesquely into its pale skinny face and pierced mine. The creature under my bed didn’t move, it simply remained still, staring at me, fucking smiling at me.

I yanked myself up, darted across to the other side of the bed and hung down, hoping the night was playing tricks on me.

I was met with the same terrifying gaze.

It’d somehow twisted to face me in that space of time, its awful eyes gazing into mine.

It’s smile seemed to widen somehow, but it couldn’t possibly be any wider.

I didn’t sleep that night, funnily enough. I lay still, in the dark, listening to it shuffle and move under my bed, I think I even heard it sigh at one point.

I only experienced a night like that two or three more times in my childhood, but every single time felt like the most awful imaginable circumstance I could possibly be in.

But don’t worry, the story isn’t going to end awfully.

I moved on, grew up okay, despite those nights, successfully navigated college, met a woman, got married, had a kid.

The creature under my bed had long since slipped my mind as I sat downstairs with my wife, cradling a glass of wine and watching a cheap movie.

“Daddy” I heard my son call from upstairs, “Daddy, you need to check under my bed for me”

“There’s nothing up there buddy, don’t worry”

“But daddy; I can hear some rustling…”

Author: https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/995ayh/we_always_check_under_our_beds_for_monsters_but/
Image: https://www.pinterest.ca/pin/299700550174462201/