The Monsters Were Never Under Our Beds

TW: Death of a child, emotional and physical torture, storing of bodies

“How many blessings did we count today?” Mother asked, placing her napkin nimbly in her lap, all of the children copying her. If they didn’t, they would have to go hunting with Father in the morning. Nobody, no matter their pain tolerance or bravery, ever wanted to go hunting with Father.

“I counted ten blessings, Mother,” said Millie, Lucille’s oldest, but still younger, sibling. Lucille, nicknamed Lucy, had twelve siblings. She was the oldest, and was set to follow in her father’s footsteps, along with her younger brother, Abel, and a few of the other children Mother and Father had deemed worthy of the hunt. But Lucille never wanted to follow in Father’s footsteps. Abel did, but she didn’t.

“I counted fifteen blessings, Mother,” said Abel. The other ten children seated at the wide oak table quietly called out their blessing count, going in age order. They had been trained that way. They had been trained to keep their heads down and keep their mouths shut. Besides, nobody had dared to utter a word of disrespect to Mother after their thirteenth sibling.

Her name was Tara. She was the actual oldest, and always looked after the rest of them. All Mother did was boss them around. Tara couldn’t take it. One day, she had enough, and she told off Mother when Mother asked Tara to clean up the breakfast table, covered in bowls and plates. But there wasn’t a single crumb. The children had been trained that way. For the amount of crumbs left on the table, that was the amount of days they had to go hunting with Father. And remember, nobody ever wanted to go hunting with Father.

Mother had taken Tara by the elbow, and marched her outside. All the rest of her siblings, including Lucille, who was holding two-month-old Paul, watched her die. Nobody has ever stepped out of line ever since. And nobody will till the day they all die.

Mother’s smile still haunted Lucille. She had been smiling when she came back into the house after killing Tara. After killing her own offspring. Mother’s teeth, all yellowed in awkward places, had shone brightly that day. Her lips were chapped, and she was wiping her bloody hands on her handkerchief. The children immediately straightened their backs and began doing their daily chores. Instead of being looked up to, Mother was feared. Instead of children running to her when they had a nightmare, Mother was the cause of the nightmares. So the children ran to Lucille instead.

When they weep, they don’t make a sound. They were trained not to make a sound. When they weep, they just keep going, no matter how much pain they are in.

“Let us have a brief moment of reminiscence for today’s blessings. Lucille, would you care to start for us tonight?” Mother asked, her voice dripping with cold. Her voice didn’t have the edge of hunger that her children’s did.

“Yes, ma’am, Mother,” Lucille replied, placing her fork down.

“My moment of reminiscence for my various blessings today was from earlier this morning. Do you remember, Mother, when you asked me to do the laundry?” Lucille said, beckoning to Mother. Mother nodded her head solemnly.

“Well, after I escorted myself out of your room, I went and washed the clothes that needed to be washed. While I was doing so, I did not conceive of any cuts or bruises while washing. And we all know that I am one prone to such things. Anyways, I thought of that as a blessing from the Lord, watching over me, and making sure I was safe,”

Mother simply pursed her lips at Lucille’s remarks. “Very well,” she said, “now you may lead us in a prayer. Remember, Millie, it will be your turn tomorrow.”

Millie nodded her head, “Yes, ma’am, Mother,” she replied.

Mother smiled sweetly at all her children, and then bowed her head and closed her eyes, clasping her hands together. Her children immediately did the same, making sure to silence their heartbeats while Lucille was speaking to the Lord for the family.

“Our dear Father, our God in heaven, thank you for our many blessings provided today, and thank you for our gracious Mother and brave Father. We pray that you assist Father in his next hunt for the Winter time, and that you keep him and any of us safe. We pray that Mother finds peace this winter, and that she shall keep warm, along with the rest of us. In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.” Lucille recited, remembering the words she had practiced last night.

Her siblings and Mother repeated, in a chorus of amen. Mother seemed pleased, to say the very least, at Lucille’s prayer, so Lucille hoped that maybe she could get a few more pieces of bread in the morning than she usually did. Maybe she could even ask to assist her youngest sibling, Oscar, who was merely five, by fetching the groceries. What she really knew was that Oscar had gotten that job because the grocers know of Father and Mother and always give the children who come an extra loaf of bread or a few more berries to eat. Maybe, if they are extremely lucky, they could even get some leftover ham from the previous day’s cuttings. The children could take as much as they could these days.

Mother and her children finished their supper of vegetable soup and a slim piece of bread. Lucille had finished all of it rather quickly, to her Mother’s dislike. But Lucille knew that this meal had to keep her going until next lunchtime, and even then she would only get whatever berries Father had found in mild reach, and some leftover scraps from the previous dinner. Sometimes, if she got hungry in the morning, she would have to bargain with her siblings who had sneaked some bread into their handkerchiefs while Mother wasn’t looking at dinner. She would offer them duty reliefs for bread. Anything to calm the always-raging monster in her stomach.

When it was nearing the wintertime, and Father had to go out to hunt most of the day, the children had to make up their own games for when it was too cold to go outside in the minimal garments that they had, or if it was raining. Who knows what Mother would do if their clothes ever became wet. Only Lucille actually knows that Tara’s clothes had become a tad bit damp before she stood up to Mother. Only Lucille knows. At least the little ones can’t remember when Tara died, but Lucille, Abel, Millie, Alfred, and Gabrielle can all. So whenever one of the little ones slacks slightly on their work, or complains of pains, or is in need of a nap or a piece of bread, the eldest children hush them and continue their work for them. Nobody wants a repeat of Tara.

Once Mother excused all of them from the table, their suppertime chores started. Gabrielle had to clear the table, Abel had to sweep the floors, Alfred had to get all the little ones bathed, Millie had to get them to sleep, and Lucille had to clean the dishes. It wasn’t as hard as getting the little ones to sleep, but Millie had always had a specialty for getting the little ones to sleep quickly. And also, the little ones were usually beat by the time they had finished dinner. But that didn’t mean rest for any of the eldest. That never meant rest.

Father returned home earlier than expected that night. There were some bloodstains on his red flannel. “Beasts are really out tonight, children. Beware. Don’t venture out in the morning unless you’re with an eldest child. You still have to do your chores, though. But I just wanted to warn you.” He said. Some of the little ones whimpered just a little bit, but nearly any emotion showed on their pale little faces. They were skinny, long faces. Not everybody had the strength to bargain, or the access to Oscar’s trips. Not everybody survived the winter with enough to eat.

Tara wanted to die. She’d whispered that in Lucille’s ear the day before she got her clothes wet. Lucille and Tara slept in the same bed, being the two eldest girls in the family. Lucille wore a pale pink nightgown for all of her thirteenth year, and Tara wore a pale yellow one for her fifteenth year, when she died. Everybody believed that Tara was in a better place. Everybody believed that the Good Lord was looking after her. But nobody counted her being dead, her being in a good place, as a blessing.

Father always warned the children of these beasts. They lurked in the forest in which Father hunted for most of the day, and the stories he told the little ones made them have nightmares for at least a week. The stories he told the elder children made their blood run cold. You can’t help a scared child if you are scared too. But the elders, including Lucille, had found a way.

Father said that he protected the children and Mother. But Lucille was a passionate thinker. Why does he protect all the children, she thought, but he can’t protect Tara? He can’t provide for all of his children in the winter, why is that? He and Mother always feast on the best meats and vegetables.

Lucille always prodded at the thoughts, but wore a tight smile on her face. Mother didn’t need to know these thoughts. Nobody wanted to end up like Tara.

At the end of all the nightly chores, just after all the little ones were asleep, Alfred, Abel, Lucille, and Gabrielle would all head downstairs to the living area. Father and Mother were seated there.

“I protect the family from all the beasts.” Father would say.

“Father protects the family from all the beasts.” The elder children would say.

“I protect the family from any other dangers they might encounter.” Mother would say.

“Mother protects the family from any other dangers we might encounter.” The elder children would say.

And repeat until it was nearly Father’s time to go and hunt again. He slept for about three hours, while the nighttime chores were being completed, and then for about thirty minutes, he and Mother listed their accomplishments and the elder children repeated. The whole thing started for each child at age ten, or when they proved themselves in their actions. At eighteen, the children were sent out to be wed, and then were allowed to live with their husband or wife. If they did not find a partner, they would go back home until another child turned eighteen, and then they would venture out with the unwed child. In that house, you were not deemed worthy of anything until you wed.

Lucille was turning seventeen in three months, and she was scared. She knew that the seventeenth year was the worst. Tara had been taught by Mother what to expect. She whispered everything to Lucille in the dead of night. Lucille still has nightmares, but she's been trained to never wake up screaming. Tara woke up screaming.

The back cellar was always off-limits. Father said that there was nothing to see down there, and Father told the little ones that the beasts he caught in the forest were in there. That shut them up.

Lucille had finished all of her chores early, and wasn't hungry, but she was hungry for something. Answers.

She didn't tell anybody where she was going, and she slowly crept back to the cellar door.

She held her breath as she opened it, the big wooden door creaking. She had never dared to go beyond Mother and Father's rules, to disobey, but her intrusive thoughts had gotten the better of her. She finally opened the door wide enough to fit her slender frame. She exhaled ever so slightly, careful to not awake Mother, who was sleeping upstairs. Lucille only got about three hours of sleep last night, for she was calming one of the little ones down, and then staring at Millie, who was sleeping with her. Millie seemed so peaceful when she slept. Only when Millie's eyebrows furrowed and a tear ran down the familiar path it had known at night that Lucille knew that Millie didn't want to scream.

Lucille tiptoed down the rotting, mildewed stairs, afraid that every step she took could be her last.

She was halfway down the stairs when the smell hit her first. Her nostrils flared and then she covered her nose with her shirt. It smelled of rotting flesh, a smell that she knew from the singular time she had stepped out of line and gone hunting with Father. She kept going down the stairs, not slowly like in the movies, but quickly, knowing in her mind that if Mother woke, there was a chance she could end up like Tara.

She finished her last steps of stairs, exhaling a little bit, and then trying not to gag as she inhaled once again. She minimized her breaths as she turned on the overhead light. It was running out of life, and it was dimming as she looked around the cellar.

Suddenly, she saw a figure.

She stayed quiet, moving closer to the figure. The smell grew worse and worse as she crept forward.

She saw the shoes first. They looked like Mother's shoes, but more scratched. She looked up, and then saw its face. It was a woman. Why was she in the cellar? Lucille thought.

The woman was certainly dead, based on the smell and the woman's physical state. Lucille covered her mouth with her hands, staring in the wrong kind of awe.

She kept exploring the cellar. There were more people, too. These people whom Father had called beasts. They probably had a family, lives. And now they were here. Lucille fit the puzzle pieces together and thought that it had to be Father and Mother's doing, why these innocent men and women were there. Lucille had seen her Mother kill Tara, and apparently, she was killing other people too.

Lucille looked more closely at the men and women. All of them looked foreign. Lucille and her siblings lived in a rural place, not near any other houses. She had never seen any other people besides Mother, Father, and her siblings. These people were the beasts. Father thought that anybody not like Mother and him were beasts, monsters.

When the little ones still believe in fictional monsters, the elder children have to check under their beds for them. Eventually, they either realize two things. One, that the monsters were never under their beds- they were in their heads. (How Lucille learned. And Millie.) Or two, the monsters were never under our beds, they were living in our house as their Mother and Father. (How they all realized.)

But these people weren't monsters. They were misunderstood. Or Father was the monster.

But the whole moral of the story is- monsters are never under our beds. They lurk in places where we put our trust in most.

And that is the scariest thing of them all.