Monsters Only Come Out at Night

The First Sighting

"You are nothing without me..."

It was the same dream Elise had every night. The same whispers of her mother coming to haunt her. But, this time, something was different.

"You took away the man I love..."

She felt bursts of air in her ear, like a person was whispering with their warm breath. Why did her ear feel warm in a dream?

"...You owe me your life..." Elise turned quickly in her plush bed. She'd never fallen asleep.

She stared up at the shadowy figure above her face. The dark didn't allow her to see much, but she managed to make out a mouth with two red lips, just like mom's.

"Who are you?" Elise asked as she continued to squint at the seemingly featureless face. Its skin was dark and wriggly, like an inky black slime struggling to keep its shape.

"...You understand?" Elise recognized that as the last line in her dream. As soon as the words were out in the air the creature dissipated. The terror it left, on the other hand, did not.

The creature was something dark, something cruel. Something that didn't deserve a name, didn't deserve to be humanized as it had been mere seconds before. Something you could only find in nightmares, or should only be found in them anyway. A monster.

How did it know about that conversation? Elise had never told anyone after it happened, her mother had even smacked her the few times she'd brought it up.

Elise glanced at the bed adjacent to hers, where Ashna lay. The only indicator of her in their dark room was the sound of her snoring, muffled, thankfully, by thick bed sheets covering her head.

"It's gone," she whispered to herself, pulling her stuffed fox, Lu-Lu, into her chest. "It's gone," she whispered again into its soft ears.

It's gone.