It isn’t that I don’t believe in monsters, but rather, I haven’t thought of them since I was a child. There is a point in a lot of people’s lives where we stop looking under the bed or checking the closet; perhaps you remember it, but I certainly don’t. One day I just stopped looking. Maybe one night I was too tired to check, and that’s all it took to break the routine; perhaps the next day I thought to myself, “I didn’t look under the bed and nothing happened, so I guess I don’t need to do that anymore,” and suddenly it was unimportant to me.
But something in my stomach tells me I’m wrong. There is a vivid memory stored somewhere in the back of my head, of the night I stopped checking and why. Though no matter how hard I try to remember, the memory is out of reach, as if something were preventing me from seeing it. As if something didn’t want me to know.
For years I tried to remember the night when it all changed; after all, anyone who’s known me since I was a child would say how terrified I was at the thought of not looking under. Though anyone I knew from those years is long gone now.
I know I’m taking my final breaths as I write this. I know I am on the brink of death, but I have lived a long life, one I have enjoyed greatly. Though I say this, I can’t help but fear closing my eyes, since I may never open them again. This is a moment we experience only once in our lives, perhaps more if we’re unlucky, so it is important to me that I savor it, and write it, so someone else knows how I felt. If I am to be forgotten, I would at least hope someone remembers what I’ve written.
Oh.
It is here.
If my sight were not so fuzzy, I might be able to better describe it. Nonetheless I will try.
It is large, and dark, but looking at it is not unpleasant. Its form seems to be changing like a reflection on a puddle after running over it. Though it is dark, there is a lightness to it, a sort of lightness you shouldn’t be afraid of, but you are, at least a little.
As it grows close to me I am sorry, but my eyes close. I cannot dare look at it. Not because I am afraid, but it feels invasive to do so. The way it slowly approaches me must mean it feels the same way. We are both wary of meeting the other, but we will anyway.
Oh.
I remember it now.
As though the memory were locked away in a chest, and the sight of this thing has unlocked it. In fact, there are many other memories that I’d long forgotten but immediately come to mind, but this one intrigues me the most.
Ah yes.
I remember it now.
I did check under the bed, and I saw something. I had never seen anything before, but that night I did, and I thanked myself for looking. I jumped onto the bed and threw the covers over me, frozen still almost as I am now. I was sick then, and I knew my limbs were not strong enough to fight the monster under my bed if it decided to eat me, and the mere thought made my heart pound so loud I felt it in my ears. I shut my eyes and thought rapidly, wondering what to do until I felt its presence above me. I lay still. I took one quick breath. Two. And I awaited my fate.
I knew it was staring down from above me, its mouth wide open, but I did not feel fear. Instead I wondered why its drool hadn’t yet hit my face. And though my body was trembling and insisting I shoot my hands out to choke it or slide out of bed and run, I did not consider the strange being above me an enemy, as I have any time I thought of creatures under my bed. This beast is no different than I am when offered a hearty meal for breakfast after a night without dinner, I thought, and so I gave up.
And then it spoke. It spoke in a voice that did not belong to a man or a woman, or even a beast. It spoke in the voice of a thing, a thing I could never quite place.
“I will come back later.”
I don’t know why, but I figured later meant years in the future, so I no longer felt the need to check under my bed, not when the only threat I had found there had decided to leave.
But it is here now. I can recognize it. I may not have seen it, but I remember the sensation of its mouth hanging open above me.
“It’s good to see you again,” was all I had to say, and it consumed me whole.
Copyright © 2022 Ilhy Gómez Del Campo Rojas. All rights reserved.
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