Celeste felt like she was caught in time, one arm being held in the bruising grip of the past, her stomach aching with the anxiety and bubbling meanness of the present.
Was something wrong with her?
She stood before a culmination of the pain she’d suppressed and pushed away, a spitting, hissing, roaring tower of toxicity complete with windmilling arms. Large hands always coming too close to her, thin fingers mere millimeters away from digging into her too soft body, accusing and angry at her refusal to return the same fire and simultaneously at her audacity to continue to not prostrate herself in deference and apology. She had the worst taste in men.
“Do you have any idea how hard I work?! No! You don’t because you sit around here with your stupid fucking books like you’re better than me, like this dumb shit is gonna bring any food to the table that I BOUGHT—”
A sudden swoop of his brimstone eyes and deep, rumbling scorn towards her made Celeste flinch back, and like a child, her hands crept up near her ears as if blocking the sound would break the reality before her. She could see a spark of vicious glee in his eyes that made her suddenly, terribly heartbroken— a heartbreak that demanded a return to old self-soothing methods. Without pause, Celeste wheels around and almost jogs to her (their) bedroom, giving in to the urge to cover her ears. But he’s right behind her, furious at her refusal to swallow his baseless rage and unfounded recriminations, a thunderous pace of stomped feet following her angel soft quick patter. She tried to shoulder check the door closed but his longer arms catch it and slam it against the wall.
A hand reaches out and snatches at her wrist, tearing her hand away from her ear. “You’re so fucking childish, you— you are so— this is exactly the problem I have with you, you always run!”
Celeste gave a wordless snarl that pitched up to a shriek, the sound so shocking to hear from a woman who usually goes mute during his tantrums that she’s able to snatch her hand back from his suddenly slackened grip, and dive towards the bed. A fluff of comforter puffs around her body as she worms underneath the warm layer and the unmade sheets beneath it, wrapping them solidly around her form and holding them in tightly clenched fists, eyes squeezed shut as she prays for the monster over her bed to go away. It’s all she can do. It’s all she ever could do as a child. The lack of progress really does make her feel pathetic, and it brings a sniffle from her that’s audible to the sharp senses of monsters.
Celeste can hear him scoff before she rearranges the fists and layers over her ears, muffling the sound of his reinvigorated cruelty.
Go away go away go away go away goawaygoaway, Celeste thought, curling her body even further until a sudden hand at her ankle jolted her. He had reached underneath the covers and found her foot, grabbing it in a harsh, pincer like grip and ripping it out from underneath the sheets of the bed to dangle over the edge. With another squeeze around the bones that made her whimper, he let go and continued screaming at her. But Celeste was suddenly terrified— the last time she’d let her foot dangle over the bed was when she was 14 and too old, her stepfather had spat, to still believe in monsters and fairytales.
Celeste chose to ignore the gut instinct to pull her foot back in. Instead, she held her breath, heart pounding in her chest. And she waited. And waited. She counted her breaths.
By twenty, she heard a sudden, startled inhale from the monster above her bed. Something had abruptly taken his attention away from his favorite victim. She heard a startled curse and then a scream and a heavy, floor shaking impact of his body hitting the floor. There was more screams, and the bed jerked and shook harshly as he fought whatever it was that had brough him to the floor. But it was never actually a fight. He never stood a chance. She heard the resistant slide of his body against the laminate flooring and his fearful bellow, and she assumed that he’d been taken into the dark underneath the old queen sized mattress. For another forty breaths, she kept her eyes closed and her foot over the edge of the bed.
Slowly, carefully, long, thin, odd textured things crept over her foot. Something sharp but achingly delicate traced from her toes, down the bridge of her foot, around the ball of her heel, and over to clasp around her ankle. In every way, the monster under her bed was the opposite of the monster that had been over it. The hold slid off after a few moments, and Celeste knew to open her eyes. Trembling, she released the covers and waited until she heard stumbling foosteps come from up underneath the bed. The sheets and comforter began to inch down, lightly dragging against her hair, drying the few escaped tears on her cheeks, leaving a tingling brush against her kips, down her neck and over her shoulders.
She looked up.
In much the same way as had happened with her stepfather, her boyfriend now looked as if something fit poorly inside his body. Neck almost angled as if it had been bent fatally, arms almost akimbo and spine curved forward uncomfortably. Though she’d never seen her childhood savior’s true form, she just knew he was something too large and horrible to comprehend. Which is why she never bothered asking why he saved her then, and why she wouldn’t try asking now.
The monster in her boyfriend blinked slowly, like a reptilian, and the full mouth pulled akwardly yet warmly into a fascimile of a smile. “I spent so long looking for you . . .”
Celeste would never again let anyone else tell her she was too old for monsters and fairy tales. She was never too old to live her dreams. With a tremulous but geuine smile, Celeste greeted him. “I missed you.”
Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this and would like to read more stories like this, check out the rest of my work! And please, leave out some cookies for the monster under your bed . . . he eats all the spiders that would normall walk into your mouth.