The Monster under my bed

12:05 AEST, Sydney

The first thing that I realised when I woke was how wet my palms were. The sweat dripped
down until it formed a little pool on my bedsheets, a stark unnatural grey against white.
Glancing to my alarm clock, it read twelve-06 – what the hell was I doing awake at
midnight?

Something was not right. Maybe it was the accelerated thudding of my heart against my
ribcage, maybe it was how claustrophobic the room made me feel, or it could’ve just
been the activation of ancient senses in the presence of danger...

And then it began.

At first a faint scratching sound, barely audible even in the cold, quiet night. A sound
which very quickly morphed into loud clutter. The rough contact between wood and
bone, a noise not unlike nails down a chalkboard. It took me a wild second to take
everything in before panic seized me in its deadly grasp.

There was a thing under my bed.

A scream choked in my throat. This was almost a reincarnation of my childhood terrors, of

the monster that hid under my bed, the bearded man in the closet.

Telling myself that this was just a dream, I slowly crept over to the edge of the bed and
extended my head down to the worn carpet. Pitch black invaded my eyes. No one in my
place could’ve predicted what exactly what I was looking at. Then, all of a sudden,

Slash

I felt the blood running down my face before I had time to register what had occurred.
My body recoiled in terror, back to the safety of the bed, before my senses began to
numb. The blood pumping in my ears contrasted dangerously with the immense pain that
my face was now flooded in.

Slowly, everything faded to black.

The next morning