A Non-Canonical Short Story: The Monster Under the Bed

The warm night's breeze passed through the window of Billy's room, startling him for the third time that night. Moonlight bathed him in an incandescent glow, further paling his ashy face. Billy would have truly feared for the slightest noises and sense that evil was in the air, except he was too self-aware of his neurotic behavior to even feel emotionally connected to his phobic psyche. His parents were higher on the corporate ladder than most of his schoolmates and his mother gave birth to him in her mid-thirties, yet young Billy knew that they were just as insensitive as the unplanned parents in the sub-division of his affluent neighborhood. Still, he tried his hardest to be the best student in the fourth grade, he was in Little League baseball, he had his assigned friends. Teachers, and mostly every other sort of adult accepted him as the quiet boy who did his homework. His schoolmates and chosen friends accepted him as the necessary friend, the one who would always bring the most expensive birthday present. Billy felt comfortable knowing his friends would never betray him, so he pretended to fear the made-up monsters inside his control. They had long fangs and scaly skin covering their broad body, so he wouldn't fear a particular animal, he thought. Or perhaps they could be slinky, furry creatures who had horns all over their body and beady reptilian eyes. Billy shuddered at the thought merely to brainwash himself to feel like a normal child, one who had doting, monster-slaying parents. A perfect pair who wished him sweet dreams with a kiss on the head at night, they would have named him something other than Billy, he thought resentfully in his linen-sheeted bed.

Billy sighed, and made his decision. "Tonight", he decided rebelliously, "It would be important to test them and see whether or not they can really be my rightful parents. If not, I'll run away." Billy stepped off from his soft bed and sneered at the trophy-adorned room his parents crafted. "It's only ever about them, anyways." he decided. Billy grabbed a fistful of his expensive sheets that his parents paid egregiously for and brought himself to throw them across the room. His face, now embalmed in his newfound power and once nervous sweat took on a different glow in the moonlight. He confidently left the mussed sheets on the freshly waxed floor and nearly punched the door open. Billy took galloping strides through the long hallway, suppressing any childlike urges to giggle. He stopped before his parents' room, not hesitating to knock for more than a second of his life.

"What is it now?" he heard his father boom impatiently, rushing to the door. Billy felt a surge of glee for being acknowledged by his authority figure, his misguided idol. His father opened the door too soon but it was too late for him to realize that he didn't have his mask on. Billy gaped at the monster of his carefully censored dreams, and started to scream, but it was too late. The monster that was his father had used his strong teeth on his son's small body and crushed Billy's spine on the way down his strong esophagus.