Gremlins Under My Bed

Awake

I lie in bed. Awake. The vestiges of sleep swirl around the room, restless; eluding my grasp like leaves on the wind. Sleep's tendrils aren't the only thing swirling, my thoughts swirl with them, mingling and intertwining, but never touching. "How did it get like this?" I wonder. Where I'm afraid to shut my eyes, and afraid to keep them open. Gremlins. It all came back to the gremlins.

The gremlins had shown up about a month ago, though I didn't know it was them. They did just simple things at first, moving things around my room once I fell asleep, or things disappearing for a day or two. Things that can be easily explained away. I began to catch on though. I would leave things in very deliberate or unusual places. My watch on my bedside lamp would appear on my dresser in the morning. My unsolved rubick's cube by the door would appear by my bed, partially solved.

I tried convincing my parents that something was awry, but they didn't listen. "It's just a phase kid's go through," my dad told my mom, when he thought I wasn't listening. Then, once the gremlins gained a foothold in my room, things began to get worse.

One morning, after months (or so it seemed) of having my morning routine disrupted by having to hunt for everything, I woke up to a sulfurous stench in my bedroom. I quickly found the culprit - a rotten egg in my dresser drawer. Thankfully a handful of my clothes weren't ruined by the smell, so at least I had something to wear that day. A new rotten egg appeared every morning in a different location for the next week.

Soon I began to hear skittering noises as I fell asleep, and different items began to appear. Once a dead rat appeared my parents called the exterminators, but they couldn't find anything. Then I started to see them.

I was broken out of my reverie by more skittering noises, not in my head. I could hear them, running across the floor, their feet scraping against the carpet. Suddenly, I felt movement on my bed. I froze in terror, as I felt a tiny thing move towards me. It stopped and I looked down into enormous yellow eyes which stared back into mine.