(no)sleep

i had this really strange idea one night when i dropped something under my bed, bended down to pick it up, and suddenly fealt really vulnerable

The city

The monsters under the bed. Everyone seems to know about them. Were they mentioned in a certain movie? An old story perhaps? Doesn’t seem like it. But yet we know. We just know. Connor knew, he knew about the monsters hiding under his bed, or at least he thought he did. His dad didn’t know about them, and if he did he was certainly good at hiding it. “How many times will I have to tell you this?” he asked, almost every single night, “Connor, you’re a big boy, you should know better”. But Connor didn’t know better. Most people forget about the monster under the bed when they grow up, or, some would say, the monster leaves the tiny space under the bed and shape shifts. Sometimes it changes into your mother’s heart attack, or your abusive boyfriend or your dads drinking habits or you parents’ divorce or the economy crashing…. Well, you see the point. Now, Connor didn’t forget about the monster under his bed. And he wasn’t crazy, it’s just, every time he turned off the light in his bedroom he suddenly felt, well, not alone anymore. His parents were sure something was off about Connor. Surely, a 12 year old shouldn’t be afraid of sleeping because of some imaginary monster. This was shocking to his parents, as condor was a perfectly mature and intelligent child, not some weird head-in-the-clouds daydreamer. But Connor wasn’t pranking them, as they sometimes suspected. To him it was all very serious. Someone was watching him every night. He didn’t have an explanation as to how exactly he knew, but he just did. Connor never looked under the bed though.  Again, he wasn’t exactly sure why. The short explanation was that he was scared. But what was he more scared of? Looking under there and finding an actual monster, or bending down to see nothing at all, and be left questioning his sanity? Even if the answer was unknown, both scenarios seemed awful. No, he told himself. Nothing good will ever come out from looking under there.  But Connor was a curious boy. It seemed like only a matter of time. Will he ever look under the bed? No. wrong  question. When will he look? At some point, certainly.

A cave so far away it gets no sunlight

“Well, how is that haunt going?” asked a big creature who strongly resembled a rock.  A voice answered from what seemed to be a dark void, “not bad, boss. I mean, he didn’t look down yet, but I can tell the moment is near. I can feel it”. The second creature stepped into the middle of the cave, where the warm light of the fire made him visible. This one looked slimier than the other one. But they both had very similar eyes. They were red, maybe just because of the fires light, but the color didn’t change how evil these eyes looked. They say the eyes are a window to the soul. Well in this case those two didn’t have a soul. Despite the fact they had evil eyes, they weren’t really successful monsters. It’s been a while since they were able to catch a human. Almost ten years since the last one actually. But they tried to look past it and focus on their current mission. This time it will be different, they thought. They finally had the perfect plan, a brilliant scheme that just has got to work.  For some strange reason, humans think there are monsters under their beds. Such a silly idea. But what if we could take advantage of it, thought Mr. rocky and Mr. slimy one day. And at that moment the plan seemed obvious. The will watch a selected human. Track him, every single night. When the subject inevitably looks under the bed, not only will he not expect bring attack from behind, he will also be extremely vulnerable. If this wasn’t perfect, they thought, perfection doesn’t exist. So the plan was great, truly, an amazing idea. But so far, it hasn’t, well, worked. They were observing this human for a long time now he hasn’t looked under his bed even once. “I just don’t get it,” said the rock-looking one “if he is so convinced there’s something under his bed, why won’t he just check?” he was angry, tired, and frustrated. It seemed to him like all his life’s work is being single- handedly destroyed by this fearful human. “well maybe he’s is just too sure about something being under his bed he doesn’t feel the need to check” said the slimy one,

“If he is so convinced something is lurking, he isn’t curious,  he is just afraid”

“Well that’s just dumb”

The rocky monster did, in fact see the logic in what his friend was saying, but he wasn’t in the mood for a rational discussion. Little did they know that soon enough their plan will work. Not exactly the way they had hoped, but still better than nothing, one would say.

The city

Connor was losing it. By it I mean sleep, and maybe is sanity. He was convinced someone was watching him. His room smelled weird. And it wasn’t the nice warm feeling you get when your parents or friends watch you sleep, it was as if an ominous dark figure was watching you sleep, waiting for the right moment to attack. But Connor tried to push these thoughts away. He would do anything to get his mind of it. Even his maths homework. He even thought about that cute girl that sat in front of him in history. What did they do in history last time? He vaguely remembered discussing ww1. What a dumb thing to do, he thought. Start a pointless war over nothing. A pointless war over nothing that changed the course of human history, probably not for the better. But the people fighting it didn’t think it was a pointless war over nothing. Surely no one would sacrifice their life for nothing. Even though this thought process was somewhat grim it was a lot less stressful than thinking about evil monsters lurking in the dark. And with that mental image of a meaningless battlefield, he fell asleep. It’s kind of funny isn’t it? How arguably imaginary monsters are scarier than millions of people dying. How we can very properly visualize and imagine in great detail some supernatural monster but we’ll never be able to grasp the huge numbers of dead soldiers.

The next months were similar. Connor tried endlessly to think about anything real before going to sleep. Whether its public transport or genocide, as long as it’s not monsters, he was okay with it. But one night, his heartfelt attempts to expel the monsters from his mind went to hell.  It’s almost like he has been repressing these thoughts and feelings, maybe it was exactly like that. So that night, his well of real normal things to think about before falling asleep that aren’t evil monsters seemed to have dried out. He felt like he couldn’t breathe, suffocated by the idea of being observed by an unknown entity. And out of nowhere he started crying, hyperventilating, a full on panic attack out of the blue. He ran out of the room into his parents’ bedroom. “Dad! You have to look under my bed , please I can’t do this anymore just look down there and tell me it’s just the darkness so I can go back to sleep, please” his father looked at him, half confused and half relieved. No burglars, no house fire, just his son with the over-active imagination. “sure thing Connor”, he said while getting up and pacing slowly and still half asleep towards his sons dark bedroom. This is where it ends, he thought to himself. Finally he will put an end to his son’s obsession with monsters. He entered the room. Connor was standing outside the door waiting door his father to come back out and tell his he was imagining everything. But that didn’t happen. Instead, he heard a scream. For a moment he froze, unsure of how to deal with the situation. But then his brain turned back on, and he turned on the light and entered the room. All he could see was his father’s hand disappearing onto the void and leaving him there, in the dimly lit room, alone and more terrified than ever.

Author's Note

I'm not the best at stories so any critisism is welcomed