29 August 2012
I know it's quite long, but please read it through, it's not that long.
"The monster showed up just after midnight. As they do." ~Patrick Ness- A Monster Calls
Ha, it's so cliche. A monster under the bed, in the wardrobe, creeping creepily like a creep in the night. As if it's real, as if monsters even exist. Will said he saw one last night, said it was kicking the bottom of his bed and woke him up. As if. If anything woke him up, it will have been his little bro Dylan tryna be funny. Will is such a wimp.
Well, that's what I used to think, anyway.
I'm Alya. I like to record things, so I'll probably get way too specific here, but this is what happened to me.
It was Saturday the 14th of March. The day was your normal 16°c cloudy with lots of drizzle English weather. Not much happened, boredom set in, and I did nothing. I was so bored, infact, that I went to bed at 6 o'clock. That was a bad idea. My mother and brother were out camping, dad was at work still. I was alone, and it was already dark. Monster time. Ha, I laughed at myself. As if.
Just as I was settling down to go to sleep, I heard a gurgling below my bed. I was instantly scared, as I'd been thinking about monsters. I crept out of my bed, and looked under. Nope. Nothing there except that dumb cat. I rolled my eyes. I was so gullible. Smiling I climbed back into bed.
I remember waking an hour later to the sound of footsteps on gravel. "DAD!" I yelled, jumping out of my bed, still in my sesame street pajamas, and pounding down the stairs two at a time. I flung open the curtains in the front room, and was instantly greeted by... nothing... My dad wasn't there. Why wasn't he there? He was meant to get here half an hour ago. I decided that he must be stuck in traffic. Why did he have to work the Saturday shift?
Deflated, I huffed back up the stairs and snuggled myself back into bed. I didn't go straight back to sleep. I was tired, but something was niggling at the back of my brain. Something was trying to register. I made myself alert, tried to figure it out. That's when I heard it, a slow, gentle knock coming from the inside of my wardrobe. How the hell did anything get in my wardrobe. My brother was in the middle of a campsite in Glamorgan, Wales, so it wasn't him.
I didn't dare check, I just laid in bed, terrified out of my wits, my heart pumping so loud that my brother might have heard it from Wales, and trying to convince myself that if I ignored it it would go away.
It didn't.
The knocking became gradually louder, and I just couldn't take it any more. I crept quickly into my brothers room, taking his bb gun and wooden sword. It felt kinda good, and I was confident I could take whatever this weird creature was on.
As I entered my room, I realised the knocking had stopped. I instinctively looked around, trying to see where it had gone. Bad idea. It was behind me.
The creature was scaly in texture, its dark black scales contrasted its pure white eyes that contained no pupils. Its long tail was swishing from side to side, dragon-like. Those creepy white eyes where staring at me, and, upon seeing that I saw it, the monster's lips curled back into what could be called a smile. Its teeth where in the same arrangement as a human's, but the gaps between them where wider, and each teeth had a razor point, clearly visible as the teeth glistened in the glow of the night lamp. I was mesmerised by the unorthodox beauty of this creature. I was so enraptured, that I was not prepared for its pounce.
Midnight • Opuss № I