The Monster Under the Bed
“Daddy!”
Ariah’s father quietly pushed open the cracked door into his daughter’s room. “What is it, Ari?”
Ariah curled herself up tight, clutching the blanket her mom made her the day she was born. “There’s a monster under my bed.”
“Little Ari, there’s no such thing as monsters.”
“Yes, there is. I can hear it when the lights go out.”
Ariah’s father sighed. “Okay, Ari. I’ll get rid of the monster. But I want you to watch me very closely. Can you do that for me?” Ariah nodded and her father crept toward her bed with a goofy look on his face, making her smile. He slowly grabbed the blanket hanging over the edge of the bed and flipped it up with a “Fwaa!” Ariah chuckled as her father checked under the bed like a hunch-back looking for a lost penny. Then he pulled his head up with a smile. “You see? The monsters are as afraid of you as you are of them. They can’t bear the thought of people looking at their horrendous faces. So, all you need to do is catch them in their favorite hiding places and they’ll scurry off before you even catch a glimpse of them. Can you do that from now on?”
“Yes, daddy. Thank you.”
“Get some shuteye, kiddo.” Ariah’s father kissed her on the forehead and cracked the bedroom door on his way out.
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Later in the night, Ariah could hear the monster under her bed again. The rough breathing of the beast was terrible to listen to. Ariah thought it must’ve been really ugly judging by the sound of its’ voice. She imagined it with three arms and seven disjointed legs, crawling at her with tremendous speed and a huge gaping maw eager to swallow her up. Ariah got out of bed, hesitantly touching the carpet with her bare feet, and flipped the blanket up to look under her bed. She did everything exactly as her father showed her, even adding in the “Fwaa!” for good measure. But the monster did not scurry off like her father said. Instead, it stared back at her with a subtle grin. Ariah didn’t find the monster to be as ugly as she expected. In fact, it wasn’t a monster at all. It was a human that looked like it was put in the oven for too long. His skin was charred black and had small horns growing out of his head. Cracks in his skin glowed like his soul was set ablaze and his eyes were a deep, ember red. “You’re not that scary,” Ariah said. The monster tilted his head with genuine surprise and reached his hand out from under the bed. Ariah wrapped her hand around one of his fingers and gave it a light tug. “Do you want to come out from under there?”
“You can see him,” a voice from the window said. Ariah jumped as she turned to the window and saw a beautiful woman just outside her window. Feathered wings kept the woman steady as she fixed her eyes on Ariah through the second-story window. Her pale skin shined so bright it was almost fluorescent and long hair in perfect curls rested on her shoulders. “You can see me.”
“What are you,” Ariah said, getting as far away from the window as possible.
The woman gave a friendly smile and rested her head on the glass. “Sweet girl, I’m an angel. You have nothing to fear from me.”
“I don’t want you here. Go away.”
“Why don’t you trust me?”
“Daddy told me not to trust strangers.”
The angel looked confused, “You trusted the demon.”
“Demon?”
“The one under your bed. I saw you take his hand.”
“He’s not a stranger. He’s hurt. He needs my help. Mommy told me to always help people who are hurt.”
“What do you do if the person who is hurt is a stranger?” The angel kept trying to rationalize the situation to Ariah
Ariah thought really hard, struggling to understand the sentence she just heard. “She’s a child,” the demon’s deep voice grumbled at the angel. “There is no point trying to explain it to her.”
“It is my job to protect her from you. The fact that she can see us complicates things a bit.”
“I think it makes things easier.”
Ariah closed her eyes and covered her ears, backing herself into the corner of the room. “You’re scaring her,” the angel said. “Come, child. Open the window and let me in. I will help you fall asleep.”
“Daddy told me not to trust strangers,” Ariah repeated.
“Okay, my name is Cerviel. I’m not a stranger anymore. Please let me in. I just want to help you.” Ariah thought for a moment, then nodded and walked over to the window to unlock it. “You see, that wasn’t so hard. Hop into bed now.”
“What about the monster,” Ariah asked. “We need to help him.” Ariah ran to her bed and knelt. “Can you tell me your name? Then I’ll be allowed to help you.”
“Bornath,” the demon grumbled.
“Leave it alone,” Cerviel said. “You are not supposed to help him.”
“But he’s hurt.”
“Not everyone deserves to be helped.”
“That’s not true. Mommy told me everyone needs help every once in a while, even adults.”
“I told you to go to bed.”
Ariah stomped her foot. “Not until we help him.”
“Tell you what, why don’t we make a deal?”
“What does that mean?”
“It means I’ll do what you say if you do what I say. I promise to help him if you promise to go to sleep first.”
“I can’t go to sleep,” Ariah said despite her eyes being heavy.
“I’ll help you. Jump into bed and I’ll tell you a story to help you drift off to sleep.” Ariah got into bed and Cerviel sat on the corner. “This is a story about a prince. This prince had everything he would ever need, but he demanded from his father that he needed more and more. He was a very greedy prince.”
“Greedy isn’t the word I would use,” Bornath said.
“Quiet.”
“Why are you so mean to him,” Ariah asked.
“He likes to tell a different version of the story.”
“I want to hear his version too.”
Bornath crawled out from under the bed and rested his head on the side of the mattress. “Well, in my version of the story the prince isn’t greedy. The prince only wants one thing, his father’s love. But his father did not love him. His father loved everyone else more than his own son.”
“The prince became infuriated by this. His pride couldn’t accept it. One day, he confronted his father and claimed that his heart was stronger than everyone else’s.”
“The prince’s father did not believe him,” Bornath spoke as if he was retelling a story that he once listened to. “The king was so enraged by this act that he banished the prince from the castle. But the prince was a person loved by the people. He was known far and wide as the greatest prince to ever live and they believed he would make a better king.”
“So, the people sieged the castle with the prince leading the charge, but they failed. The king, being a truly just ruler, promised not to kill them because they had been fooled. He explained that the prince had deceived them into loving him just so they would help him.” Cerviel recalled the memories of these events quite vividly as she spoke of them. “And to prove it, the king asked the prince to name all the people that helped him siege the castle.”
“Understandably, the prince could not name everyone. There were a great many people involved and it would be impossible to remember all their names. The prince explained this but was still judged and thrown in a cell for it. When the prince was alone with the king, he claimed to still love his father even though the king didn’t love him back.” Bornath’s voice grew soft. “He said he would prove to the king that the people did not truly love the king.”
“The king, being a fair ruler, gave the prince the chance to prove it by letting him go. The king promised that if the prince could turn the people against him, the king would step down as ruler and let the prince rule instead.”
“What happened next,” Ariah asked.
“We don’t know.”
“It hasn’t happened yet.”
“The prince has gathered many followers, and they do everything in their power to get more followers.”
“But the king is a cheater.” Bornath snapped for a moment. “He’s sent his own trusted soldiers to watch the people and make sure they don’t turn against him.”
“Now we wait and pray that the soldiers can keep the people from turning on the king.”
Ariah gave a groggy smile as she yawned. “You two are good at telling stories together.”
“Go to sleep now, little one.”
“You promise to help him?”
“I promise.” Ariah closed her eyes and drifted off to sleep.
