The monster under your bed

It's funny how what we think and talk about during the day can play on/in/with our minds at night...

The Write on Wednesday Spark:  The monsters under your bed
Think back to when you were very young. Try to recall one of your first fears. A shadow on the wall, a ghost in the closet, a person, a scene from a movie or book. Write about that fear. Try to remember the feeling it gave you, what that fear would make you do and how you were comforted. 

Cloud Creatures

‘Mummy, Mummy, the rabbit is coming to get me’ Janna screeched. Her mummy was becoming accustomed to knocking her hip on the bed post and stubbing her toes on some abandoned toy as she dragged herself into Janna’s bedroom, once again. It seemed like clockwork that Janna would wake, screaming that something was coming to get her. Mummy would crawl into bed beside Janna’s shaking body and wait for the formalities of the conversation to start. Mummy understood that she had to follow the format of story telling, in order to get Janna back to sleep. What Mummy didn’t understand was why Janna kept having these bizarre encounters with various creatures coming to get her. ‘Mummy, the rabbit is coming to get me’ Janna would initiate through breathy sobs. ‘Really? What makes you think that a rabbit is coming to get you?’ Mummy would reply, with gritted interest. ‘I saw it!’ Janna said with marked exclamation, as if to challenge her mother into believing otherwise. ‘Really? What did it look like?’ Mummy would ask, accepting her daughters challenge. ‘It was big and white and fluffy, it had a huge blue eye and pointy ears’ Janna explained, drawing the figure above her head in the dark. “I can’t see it here, anywhere’ Mummy said as she lifted the pillow in mock search. ‘Well, of course not, it is night time!’ Janna said, annoyed that her mum could be so stupid. This was the part that always puzzled Mummy. Janna would roll over and drift back to sleep, leaving Mummy to stumble back to bed or dose off right where she was.

Janna, and Mummy, had been woken by various versions of this reoccurring dream for weeks. She was genuinely afraid of various creatures coming to get her, so much so, she had begun naming the characters that were waking her each night. There was Ralfy the rabbit (a common visitor), Pooh the poodle, Bubbles the polar bear and Fiona the dancing dove. While Mummy was impressed with her distinctive interest in fauna, Mummy was also getting quite concerned at the disruption in her sleep and the subconscious reasoning of a three and half year old mind. The dreams had roughly coincided with Mummy’s return to part-time work, but there were no other outward signs that this was a problem for Janna.

One afternoon, through the haze of many broken nights sleep, Mummy returned home early from work, calling out to Janna and Grammy. Mummy found them lying on their backs in the lush green grass of the backyard. Mummy stopped to admire the gentleness of her own mother with her precious child and smiled to herself as she listened to their interaction. ‘Oh look Grammy, there is Ralfy again, he is leaping though the air to play with bubbles the polar bear’. Mummy looked to the sky to see the fluffy white clouds forming an elaborate menagerie and felt her haze lift.