On A Bed Of Roses

Chapter 1 - On His Own

He could feel it staring at him from inside the closet. He was too afraid to move. He wanted to scream, call for mom and dad, but he knew they were too occupied with his little sister. Before she was born, they would always come and check the closet for him, now they were too tired to come and check or Marina took all of their attention.

He just sat there, frozen in his bed, afraid the closet monster would finally jump out of the closet and eat him. He thought that he saw something moving in the dark and didn't dare move or he thought that the monster would see him. He felt his eyes getting heavy, but he knew that if he closed them, the monster would have free reign. No, he wasn't going to close his eyes, not even for a second.

After a long night nothing had happened and he was okay, the monster hadn't come to eat him. Maybe there was no monster after all and if he didn't need mom and dad this time, maybe he didn't need them at all. Feeling proud of himself, he stepped out of bed to tell his parents, only to find them sound asleep after a night of dealing with a crying Marina.

"Mom, dad, wake up!" He called out, receiving no reaction from either of his parents.

"Mom, dad, I'm not afraid of the monster anymore!" He said louder this time. His mother opened her eyes, still looking sleepy.

"What? Oh that's great Alastair, now go back to bed it's way too early darling."

His mother was right, it was early, the sun had just risen above the horizon, but he couldn't go back to sleep. He had so much more to tell her about. When he looked over at her again, she had dozed off already.

"I know it's early mom, but I can't sleep now."

"Well you're going to have to give it a try Alastair."

"But I don't want to." He saw his mother getting agitated by his whining.

"Go to bed Alastair." She said in a stern voice and reluctantly he went back his room. Because he had been up almost all night trying not to get eaten by the closet monster, he almost immediately fell asleep as soon as he laid down. He was awoken by the sound of his crying sister. Of course his parents attention would be on her all day, so he decided that he could do things on his own.

When he went to sixth grade his sister went to third grade. He had learnt how to fend for himself by now, due to his sister always taking up the attention of his parents. She was doing extraordinarily well in school and had a chance to skip ahead to fourth grade already. This required a lot of testing and had his parents attention taken up by Marina again, leaving less time to look after him.

He wanted to do so well in school as well. He had good grades and was one of the best of his class, but he needed to be the best. If he could be as good or even better than his sister then maybe his parents would spend more time with him as well.

At his next test, he was as prepared as he could be and got the highest grade of the class.

"Look dad, I got the highest grade of the class today!"

"That's great Alastair."

"Will you go play a game with me now?"

"I'd love to kid, but I've got to drive your sister to her piano lessons." Of course his dad was excited about Marina's musical interests. He had played the guitar himself.

"Oh, okay"

"Don't you want to play an instrument, your sister is getting really good at it. You could play together."

"No thanks dad."

"Alright then, see you later Alastair."

"See you later."

Even being the best of his class wasn't enough to get his dad's attention. What more could he do? Maybe one test wasn't enough, he needed to be the best at every test. Yes, that would get their attention, Marina managed it that way too right?

After that he studied as much as he could and got the best grades of the whole class. His teacher noticed that he was doing well, but asked him when he hung out with friends. He didn't understand why she looked so weird at him when he said that he didn't have time for friends. He needed his time to study, friends only took up time that could be spend on school and getting better than his sister. Of course he didn't tell her that, she would want him to spend less time on school and he couldn't permit himself to spend less time on studying if he wanted to get better than Marina.

When he did have some time to spare however, he tended to the garden at home. Since his parents had well paid jobs, that also kept them away from him more than he liked, they had a pretty sizeable garden. Enough space to plant the most beautiful flowers and make it a really nice place to relax. His parents had however neglected the garden for so long that most of the flowers had died, but he managed to get many of them back to their blooming state.

He loved taking care of the plants. He cared for the flowers as is they were his most prized possession, and to him they were. The flowers loved him, they had to. Without him they would certainly wither and die. His parents saw that he was spending more time in their garden and were kind of glad that he did. At least their garden looked presentable now and it fit the perfectly styled interior of their home much better.

So they decided to buy a rose bush for his twelfth birthday and he was so excited to plant it with the rest of the flowers. They would look great in the garden and caring for a rose bush would be so rewarding when he got to see the beautiful roses bloom. And indeed the next year his roses bloomed, they were the most beautiful dark red he had ever seen. It reminded him of the colour of blood.