Under The Bed
He remembered every detail of that night when the devil came knocking.
He was sleeping on the bottom bunkbed. This usually meant sharing the bed with his half-brother Joe. His oldest brother David slept on the top bunk which was reserved for the "cream of the crop" or so he was told. Something had awakened him late that night. For a brief moment he thought Joe had tiptoed to the bathroom but there lay his half-brother curled up on a makeshift bed on the floor fast asleep. David was in deep sleep oblivious to the crafty stealthy movement that had resonated through his mind like fine tuning forks.
He caught furtive movement just beyond his peripheral vision.
Tommy peered wide-eyed into the darkest part of the room. Something shapeless slithered through the blackness. He willed himself to move yet nothing, paralyzed. He could faintly hear the thing ragged breathing. The entity whispered hauntingly, “A prize for me is he.”
Then the nightmare moved under his bed!
Suddenly, the middle section of the bunk bed began to slowly rise as something huge and monstrous tried to break through. With each push the center section rose higher and higher. He screamed but nothing came out. The thing pushed higher as the bed seemed ready to explode. As the bed was about to give way to let through the deformity underneath he blanked out. He remembered waking up the next morning hoping that the night had been just a dream. Slowly he turned down the bed sheets. There, in the middle of the bed was a hole viciously ripped away. Yet no one seemed to notice or thought it odd.
He understood. He knew.
