Sincerely Yours

My Dearest Lizzy,

I hope you don’t mind that I call you Lizzy. You seem to grow visibly annoyed when people you don’t know or are not close to try to be chummy with your name, but I think my case may be an exception to your rule.

You don’t know me; at least, not formally. Your whole life, your mom and step dad told you stories about how I was never there and that I never would be. They tried to convince you that I didn’t exist. And you listened to them. I don’t blame you. After all, if a child can’t trust their parents, who can they trust?

But they were wrong. And I think, deep down, you knew they were wrong.

I’ve been watching you your whole life. Birthdays, heartbreaks, successes, failures, I’ve been there for all of it, watching from afar. I marveled as you took your first steps. I gasped when you broke your arm jumping off of that rusty swing set in the backyard when you were seven. I sighed as you lay on your bed for days on end when you were fifteen, depressed and hating the world and everyone in it. And my heart leapt when you showed everyone the ring on your finger when you were twenty-four, the biggest grin I had ever seen in my years and years and years on this earth splashed across your beautiful face.

How much you’ve changed in the twenty-six years since you’ve been born. I look at your now empty bedroom that you grew up in and I long for the days when it was painted a soft pink, with frills and small origami cranes lining your furniture and walls. When you would wear princess dresses and a king’s crown – not a queen’s, as you would so readily tell everyone – and you would hold royal court with your battalion of stuffed bears, giraffes, zebras, and elephants, planning to invade the next-door neighbor’s sandbox. You were so adorable then. So… delicate.

You fascinated me. You were so unlike all of the other little girls. You didn’t fawn over boys, but instead tried to put yourself above them, tried to get their respect. And don’t even get me started on your diary. When other girls your age were writing excruciating page after excruciating page of lust and longing, you were pondering your life and your future. Yes, as you got older you wrote about some sexual fantasies in more detail than I would have preferred – does a particular tree from a horror movie ring any bells? – but that’s only natural. The point is you changed me by simply being yourself. And after years of watching from your bedroom window, from behind your closet door, through the vent in your bedroom ceiling, I no longer wanted to kill you.

I wanted to take you.

So I decided to leave the comfort of your home and your bedroom and started following you to school. At a distance at first, but I slowly got braver and followed closer. Perhaps foolishly so. You began sensing something. You didn’t know what, but you started taking longer routes to school, your pace quickening and every so often you would glance behind your back, making sure nothing was there, that it was all in your mind. I knew then that I should pull back, that I was in danger of making myself known, but the urge to touch you, to breathe you, grew stronger by the day and I found myself breaking every rule just to get a little bit closer. I think you may have actually spotted me on more than one occasion; only ever at the corner of your eye as you stood waiting for the bus or for your friends, a dark shadow lurking on a street corner or beneath a tree, but you spotted me nonetheless, recalling vague childhood memories in your mind of staring into the darkest corners of your bedroom at night, so entirely convinced that some thing was staring back at you, its body covered in matted fur and its hideous yellow-brown fangs dripping a thick, mucousy saliva. I was mad at myself for those few times, but I was also proud. You always were a quick one.

But then came the day I most regret. The day I made my biggest mistake. You had been up all night studying which college to go to; either the local university just a twenty minute drive from home or else the out-of-state college, where you would get a better education, but at the price of leaving everything and everyone you loved. I sat idly by as you hunched over your desk, writing out the positives and negatives to either decision, and watched as the pencil in your hand slowly drifted as your breathing grew heavy and you fell asleep, the dulled pencil tip leaving a deep slash across the paper. I waited several minutes until I was sure you inhabited your dream world and I slipped out from behind your bookshelf. I crept over to your desk and read your notes. I was delighted to see the negatives were far outweighing the positives in terms of leaving home and I grunted in satisfaction. My gaze drifted over to your sleeping face and the urge to touch you was too much. My gnarled claws hovered above your head and my muzzle slowly got closer and closer to your soft cheeks and button nose, your scent filling my nostrils, my saliva starting to pool in my mouth. I simply had to grab you and you would be mine forever. I closed my eyes as I lost myself in thought and imagination.

And then I heard your gasp.

Oh, how I wish I had never closed my eyes or gotten within inches of your warm body or let my curiosity get the better of me, forcing me to look at where you would take your future. My eyes snapped open to find your eyes staring straight into mine, eyes full of horror and dread. You shrieked and I disappeared in a flash, rushing straight for the shadows of the attic. I heard your parents burst into your bedroom and run around the house frantically, trying to find the man-beast you were attempting to describe, your mind already obfuscating the details. After minutes that seemed like hours of searching the house, they assured you that there was nothing, that you must have been dreaming, that none of it really happened. But you knew. And an hour later, when I slipped through the air ducts to peer through the vent in your ceiling, there you were, sitting on your bed, a baseball bat in hand and a crazed, haggard look on your face.

The next day you were gone, your whole room packed up into cardboard boxes and strewn about the house. Your parents were sad to see you go, but they were mostly proud of you for making the hard decision and choosing your education over your friends. I wasn’t so easily fooled. You and I both know why you left. For one brief second, your childhood fears returned in the flesh. And that’s not something you can so easily forget.

I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t follow you to college. That’s not how this works. I may have followed you to your school down the road, but this was something else entirely. I’m bound to this house, to this family, to you, but only in private. That many people is a risk. So for years I sat in your room and stared at the ceiling or out the window. I would frighten the occasional young lookeyloo who would stare into windows as he passed by, or tease your mother as she was in the shower, allowing her to see my silhouette against the thin veneer of her shower curtain; I even almost gave your step dad a heart attack once by following him through the dark house on the night of a terrible storm and breathed in his ear. I amused myself. But mostly I sat in your bedroom. And waited.

And then came word. You were getting married. To whom I didn’t know and it didn’t matter, for a thought crossed my mind and my heart leapt. I would have to wait, but I was used to that. After all, marriage leads to one thing – a seed taking root until it slowly blossoms.

And now here we are, a new home, a new room, and a baby in your belly. I watch from beneath the floorboards as you and your loving husband build a crib, your frustration getting the best of both of you. I watch as you make love beneath an old, wooden mobile you picked up from a garage sale. I watch as you paint the room the very same shade of pink of your childhood bedroom. But mostly I wait. For a new life. A new chance. A chance for me to fix my mistakes. A chance for me to do things right. A chance for me to take what I always wanted.

Don’t worry. I’ll give you a handful of years to watch her grow, to see her become a person. But rest assured: she is mine. And one day, when you least expect it, I’ll lull her, your little girl, into the darkest corner of her bedroom. Not to kill her, no. It hasn’t been about that for years. But to share the darkness with her. To shape her and mold her into my very own.

How rude. I just now realized that I’ve gone this long without properly introducing myself. Maybe that’s a good thing, actually. My name has been lost through the ages. Those who spoke it I ripped to shreds and those who may still know it are too afraid to utter it. It’s a long, guttural name, anyways. Nowhere near as beautiful as Lizzy. For all intents and purposes, just refer to me as what you always have. I’m fond of it, anyways. It’s very… mysterious.

I would say you will see me soon, but we both know that would be a lie. Instead, I’ll be behind doors and furniture, in the ceiling and beneath the floorboards, in the shadows and in the void. Perhaps I already am. You may sense me occasionally, the hair on your porcelain neck standing upright or a black mass at the corner of your vision, but you will not see me. Not again.

In the meantime, I’ll be here. Waiting.

Sincerely Yours,

The Monster Under Your Bed