Monster Under The Bed

I was sitting in my chair for 3 hours on that day; assigning the various cases to the monsters I thought suited best. One thing to remember when assigning cases is that all younger children aren’t frightened so easily. I could not simply give the rookie monsters the cases of younger children.  For example, take the case of Alison Hopper. This peculiar girl has proven to be rather remarkable. Being of such a young age of 6 years old, Alison has been able to drive every last monster that got her assignment to quit the job. Most came back running in a fit of tears. Her first monster; an alligator with two heads, managed to scare her for about 2 years. After that, she learnt to ignore the monsters and it got tougher to scare her. She has been assigned different common, uncommon and rare monsters, but none of them seemed to do the trick. Few months ago, she was assigned one the scariest monsters- a demonic fire breather to her, but even he lasted for about 3 weeks before he quit as well. This supposed award winning, record breaking prodigy stated his reason for quitting as ‘having conflicts with time arrangements’, although he has no other tasks to accomplish and instead just sits at home all day, polishing his trophies.

As I sat there in my office, filing the newly assigned cases, my head manager, a respectable monster who retired after 30 years of scaring, came to my room with some surprising news. He asked me if I had heard about Alison Hopper. I told him I had, as it was a very common topic of conversation among the managers. My head manager was in charge of her case, and he told me that he wanted to assign it to me. I was at the top of my class and have all the qualifications to be on field. But after getting employed, I realized that field work is not my cup of tea. But desperate times call for desperate measures. I agreed to take the case because my head manager looked like he was on the verge of tears for being assigned to handle the case. So, at 8:30 pm, I went to the residence of the Hoppers and slithered under the bed of the adamant child. She was an only child, so I had no troubles of coming across another child or monster.

On the bed above me, Alison was still awake and seemed quite precautious.  I reached up over the bed and tugged her leg a little. I got no response so I tugged again. The little girl said that if I wanted to scare her, I’d have to try a little harder. She showed no signs of being afraid. I was baffled. Downstairs, there was the sound of the door slamming, and muffled shouts. The shouts gradually became louder, and it sounded like Mr. Hopper was yelling at his wife. Then I heard the sound of footsteps climbing up the stairs. This caused a sudden reaction from Alison, who made a very absurd decision. Alison climbed off her bed and crawled under the bed. As I was under the bed too, she asked me to make space for her. She had a tone of urgency in her voice so I obeyed. Also, I’ll admit that it was a very unsuspecting series of events and the little girl had me surprised. She was unafraid of the fact that she was lying next to a curled up, 9 foot tall, 4 eyed monster. Instead, she seemed afraid of something else.

The door slammed open and I could smell the stench of alcohol, beer and dirt before the man even stepped inside. He was a staggering mess, with wrinkled clothes and a beer can in his hand. I understood why Alison was never afraid of any of the monsters we assigned to her. She had her own monsters to deal with. The little girl’s father reached under the bed and in my rage of fury I thrusted my own wrist out, so he pulled me out from under the bed instead. The look of surprise and fear on the man’s face is a look I’ll remember. I unfolded to my full height of 9 feet. I loomed over the drunken man and held him up close by pulling his shirt.

“From now on I will be here every night and if I find you, at any time, harming this girl in any way, I will harm you as well” I threatened.  As I let go, the man ran from the room, screaming. Alison got out from under the bed and looked at me in awe. “None of them have ever done that before” she said. I simply smiled and crawled back under the bed. As the little girl fell asleep, she murmured something that sounded to me like “Good night Mr. Monster”.

Alison Hopper is my child and I am the monster under her bed.

 

Note: The characters in the story were heavily inspired by the movie Monsters Inc. No credits taken for the characters in the story.