Oh it’s dark. The sun has gone down. I’m waiting. I hold my breath as Dad reads a bedtime story. My scruffy doglike nose itches but I don’t sneeze. He finishes and the Boy is asleep. He puts the book down, snaps off the light and closes the door quietly behind him.

The room is dark. It’s young dark. The moon is still shining outside, and the boy will probably wake up a few more times before the real darkness comes. The complete darkness, like being blind. The Old Darkness. For now he is asleep though. I try to breath quietly, so not to wake him. I inch out from under the bed. My shadow is huge on the wall. I sneak around to the foot of the bed, where he still can’t see me. I lay there, like a dog curled up, waiting.

Waiting for when the moon moves and the light comes in and wakes him up. It comes in like a white floodlight. Bleached pure light, like salt. He’ll wake up and sit there unable to go to sleep again. Restless boy feet swinging over the side of the bed inches from my foot long claws. He’ll breath on the pane of glass above his head, and it will fog over, big droplets of condensation forming, like time slowing down and liquefying in glass, like bugs in amber, from a million years ago when I was also young.

He’ll breath on the pane and then mark stars in the fog with his finger. He’ll sit there and try to sleep. He’ll toss and turn. A couple of times he’ll go to the bathroom for a drink of water, and I’ll see the golden reflection on the polished wood floor. Then he’ll fall asleep.

I won’t though. This is my time. The moon will go down. It’ll be dark. This is the Old Darkness when I watch. I don’t sleep. I won’t ever sleep. Because I love him.

Prompt by Daily Fix: Write a scene about the monster under the bed. Real, imagined, or somewhere in between - what makes you afraid of the dark?