Is There A Monster Underneath Your Bed?

 

Mommy kisses you on the forehead. She pulls a blanket under your chin and then turns on a nightlight. The wooden floorboards squeal underneath her feet while you pull the cover underneath your quivering eyes. Mommy stands in the doorway—a black shadow creeps across the floor as she waves a hand.

“Good night. Sleep tight. Don’t let those bedbugs bite.”

The door shuts.

Crickets orchestrate outside the window above your head, while a tree branch taps against its glassy surface. As your eyelids shut…floorboards cry.

You peek over the top of the blanket…Freddy Teddy sits on a rocking chair…Goldie the Goldfish swims inside a bulbous bowl…Mercenary Mac keeps watch under the nightlight’s golden luminescence…plastic hands gripping a very BIG plastic machine gun.

The dream tide soon pulls you away.

Floorboards cry out your name.

Your bones shake.

Crickets no longer orchestrate. A pocket of darkness hides underneath your bed. The shadowy threshold grips the blanket’s dangling threads—an unknown realm that can never be crossed.

 

Here Be Dragons…Under Your Bed.

 

Why do imaginable unmentionables live underneath beds?

Every kid knows something lives underneath their bed. The Boogeyman takes up residence in the closet…and other things thrive beneath where we sleep.

They say people fear what they don’t know or understand.

Monsters inhabit the dimension of our ignorance. Ancient cartographers depicted images of fantastical water beasts on their maps. Map monsters patrolled unknown sections of the world—places that were yet to be explored or defined.

Just like the dark realm underneath a kid’s bed, the map of their reality is not yet complete. As kids mature, they set sail underneath their bed and discover not monsters, but lost artifacts of their childhood. Perhaps some dust. Or a missing sock. And Mercenary Mac…still gripping that plastic machine gun.

 

Set A Course Into The Unknown

 

The map of the world was eventually pieced together, just like the map of every kid’s room was eventually pieced together. The fantastical water beasts described by ancient cartographers dove under the water of our collective knowledge, and were replaced by newly discovered islands or continents, which invoked their own unique fears.

The dark realm underneath our bed seeps out into the world around us. We may no longer fear what’s under our bed, but that doesn’t mean there’s nothing to be scared of. That doesn’t mean there aren’t pockets of darkness we’re not willing to explore.

So…

The question is:

What’s Living Underneath Your Bed?

 

Article Written by FlyTrapMan

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