It’s dark. I’m not scared of the dark, but apprehensive of what it could hide. I can’t see in the dark, and the world only looks friendly when you can see it look friendly. The digital clock next to me glows one past midnight.
I’m cold and damp. Not to mention scared. I had narrowly escaped to reality from another nightmare, hoof-beats still rattling in my head. Where are my parents? Dad! Mom! Help!
They do. I see him standing in the doorway, a bear of a silhouette casting back the shadows. He looks like them now, the shadows under my bed, but he isn’t. He’s my dad, he’s my savior. Save me, please come hold me and make them go away.
He does. He sits on the bed, strokes my hair and tells me it’s all okay. My throat hurts from the screaming, and like a wish he returns with a clear glass in hand. Cool tap water from the bathroom sink soothes my throat like his hands soothe my soul.
I’ve calmed down now, become sleepy again. I tell him thank you for the water, thank you for keeping the monsters away, thank you for holding me. I tell him I love him, because I do. He tells me he loves me, because he does.
“Goodnight dad. I’ll see you tomorrow” comes from me as he walks back into the light, leaving me alone in my room, to fend off the monsters myself. Why did the words turn him around? It doesn’t matter, he is already back with me on the bed, his mass making me roll over towards the left, his side, his crater in my sheets.
“Hey champ, you know I love you, right?” he asks me. I don’t even need to answer him; it’s so obvious I do. It goes on, “Because I do. And your sister too. But not your mother. I have to leave now, and when you wake up, I don’t think you will see me tomorrow.” He leaves on that. Why is he leaving? He becomes a shadow again, and before the door closes I see my mother. She looks like she had a nightmare too.
It’s dark. I’m alone, not asleep, and the monsters are coming back, creeping up on me. I can see them moving in the darkness, shapes of blacker-than-black. I hear my mom’s sobs coming from the hallway, like they already got her.
The garage door closes, a roaring above which I faintly hear a car drive away. One of the monsters just stole my dad’s truck.