Monster Under the Bed

Trigger Warning: Implied molestation

Sheila knelt beside the bed, lifted the comforter, shone her phone light below until the shadows resolved and she could rest easily knowing that there wasn’t a monster under the bed. Shaking her head, she stood and wondered why she persisted in this ritual at her age. She had a husband and kids. And a master’s degree, for goodness’s sake. Sighing, she shut the phone light off before Trev came in and teased her about her monster obsession again.

Too late. He saw the light. “Check under the bed?” Trev said with a chuckle.

She waved a hand, to indicate that she dismissed his question as silly.

Trev got into bed beside her and kissed her. His eyes softened as he looked at her. “You are safe, Sheila. The kids are safe. I doubled checked the locks. Even the dog is fine. You don’t need to check under the bed.”

Sheila nodded but knew she’d do the same the next night. What she could never figure out was why.

In the morning, with Trev sorting recyclables and the kids enjoying Saturday playing in the backyard, Sheila met her friend Gabby at the furniture store. Her twins needed new beds and Gabby agreed to come along for an errand hang. They walked along the bed aisle, past the Kings and Queens to the Singles. She looked at metal frames and wooden ones. The captain’s bed was appealing with its storage underneath, until she looked at the price tag. One was expensive enough and she needed to buy two.

“Hey, how about bunk beds?” Gabby said.

Sheila stopped. “No.”

Gabby looked a bit taken aback by the flat statement. “Why not? Seems like they’d be great for twins.”

Sheila stared at the beds. The store displayed three styles, and all had railings and ladders. She couldn’t claim they were unsafe. But something felt unsafe about them. Some long-repressed memory tried to crawl up into her waking mind. “My sister Fran and I had bunk beds. I had the top bunk and—” She could not finish the sentence.

Gabby’s puzzled expression morphed into concern. “Oh, no. Did you fall from the top bunk?” She patted the frame of the nearest bunk. “All of these have safety rails.”

“Monster.”

Looking from the bunk beds to her friend, Gabby tried to make sense of the single word. “What?”

Sheila stuttered but finally managed to say, “I still check under the bed for monsters. Isn’t that weird for my age?”

Her friend glanced at the beds again, then back to her and said, “Let’s go get coffee. We can come back later, or maybe another day.”

She pushed the surfacing memory down and forced the remainder of the day to be ordinary, just another Saturday of coffee with Gabby then home to Trev and the kids. They played together as a family. They built a snowman and the twins cheered when she let them have a real carrot for the nose. A snow fort didn’t grow any larger than a short wall but plenty of snowballs were exchanged. Snow angels decorated their yard. Once back inside, Sheila managed to get a couple of loads of laundry done. Trev loaded up the dishwasher. They cooked a good meal together and then watched a Disney movie. Before she knew it, bedtime finally arrived.

While Trev was in the bathroom, Sheila performed her little ritual again. She shone the light under the bed. No monster.

Trev didn’t say anything this time, just kissed her good night and turned over to go to sleep. Sheila lay there, in the dark, waiting for sleep that she was sure wouldn’t come. She thought about the furniture store and the bunk beds. In the quiet of the night, her thoughts loosened enough that the memory tried to come back, unbidden. Between waking and sleeping, in her mind’s eye, her child-self climbed into the top bunk, her older sister Fran below. Darkness closed around them. A doorknob clicked. A creak echoed in her mind, the kind that came from someone shifting their weight, though she couldn’t remember who had moved or why it had frightened her so deeply. Sheila froze, but after a long while she leaned over the edge of the bed and saw Fran below, moonlight glinting off a tear as it rolled from the corner of her eye. The memory dissolved as Sheila woke with a start, but the echo of it lingered, leaving her with the unsettling sense that something long buried was beginning to stir.

The next day, while sorting through a box of old linens in the basement, Sheila pulled out a faded set of children’s sheets patterned with cartoon moons and stars. She felt the fabric soft and worn beneath her fingers, a scent of dust and something faintly sweet rising from it. She remembered Fran insisting on those sheets, how she used to smooth them carefully over the thin mattress of the lower bunk. A dull ache bloomed in Sheila’s chest, sharp enough to make her sit back on her heels. She couldn’t recall why the sight of them unsettled her so deeply, only that the memory of Fran’s hands tucking the corners tight stirred something dark and familiar, something she had spent years training herself not to see.

Sheila washed the moon and star sheets then put them in the dryer. When they were done, she took the hot sheets out of the machine and folded them. She would not, could not, put them on the twins’ beds, but neither could she bear to put them back in the basement. Sheila carried the still warm sheets to the guest room. She sat on the double bed, wondering what to do with the set of sheets that were meant for two singles. Their dog, Duchess, bounded into the room and dropped her tennis ball. The slimy toy rolled under the bed. Duchess crouched and barked once, urging Sheila to play.

Setting the sheets aside almost reverently, Sheila crouched down and looked under the bed, her breath catching as a sudden, vivid memory flashed through her mind: Fran’s voice, thin and trembling, whispering her name from the lower bunk. Sheila felt the echo of that whisper now, as real as if her sister were calling to her across the years. She reached out a hand toward the shadows, then drew it back quickly, her pulse hammering as the truth pressed harder against the edges of her mind, no longer willing to stay buried. She reached out again, snatched the ball, then threw it as if trying to throw the memory far away.

That night, Sheila woke suddenly, her heart pounding as if she had been running. The room was dark, but not the kind of darkness that frightened her. The darkness inside her own mind pressed hardest now. Not a nightmare, but a memory rose with a startling realization: Fran’s whisper, not quiet this time but urgent, pleading, her hand reaching up toward the top bunk. Sheila remembered lying frozen, staring at the ceiling while a figure hovered over Fran. Once again, she felt the helplessness of that moment, the instinct to hide beneath her blanket and pretend she saw and heard nothing at all. And then, with lucidity that stole her breath, she understood what the shadows had been holding all these years. The monster under the bed had been real, and it had lived in their house long before she ever learned to fear the dark.

Sheila sat on the edge of the bed, her hands clasped so tightly in her lap that her knuckles ached. The room felt smaller now, as if the walls had drawn closer in recognition of what she had finally allowed herself to remember. She didn’t cry at first; the shock was too deep, too old, settling into her like a stone dropped into still water. She thought of Fran’s quietness, the way she had curled inward, the way she had flinched at sudden noises, and the times Sheila woke up to Fran crying in the dark. A hollow ache opened in her chest as she realized the truth was no longer a shadow at the edge of her mind but was here, solid and undeniable, and it left her feeling both shattered and strangely relieved, as if naming it had finally given shape to the fear that had haunted her for decades.

The next day, Sheila texted her sister. She typed a few words—I remembered something last night—then deleted them, her chest tightening at how stark they looked. After a moment, she tried again, softer this time: Thinking about you today. It wasn’t much, but it felt like a thread thrown across a widening distance, something small and real she could offer without breaking open too quickly. She hit send before she could second‑guess herself, then set the phone down and exhaled, feeling the faintest shift inside her, as the rising sun slowly illuminated a dark room.

A few minutes later, her phone buzzed on the table, the sound startling in the stillness of the room. She hesitated before picking it up, her pulse quickening as she saw Fran’s name on the screen. The message was short—You okay? Been thinking about you too—but something in those words, in the careful way Fran had phrased them, made Sheila’s breath catch. It wasn’t just concern; it was recognition, a quiet acknowledgment of a shared past neither of them had ever spoken aloud. Sheila traced the edge of the phone with her thumb, feeling the familiar ache rise in her chest. Fran knew.

In the afternoon, Sheila stepped outside for some air, the winter light thin and silvery across the yard. She wrapped her coat tighter around herself, feeling the cold settle into her lungs in a way that steadied her. The truth she had uncovered still ached, but it no longer felt like a shadow waiting to swallow her whole; it felt like something she could finally look at without turning away. Fran’s message replayed in her mind along with the quiet invitation in it, and she realized she didn’t have to say everything at once. She only had to take the next small step. Standing there beneath the bare branches, she felt a fragile sense of resolve take shape as subtle, but real. She wasn’t ready to make the call yet, but she knew she would be soon, and for the first time in years, that thought didn’t fill her with dread. It felt like the beginning of something tender, a way back to her sister and to herself.

That evening, as the sun slipped behind the trees and the house settled into its familiar hush, Sheila sat by the window with her phone resting warm in her palm. She didn’t call Fran, not yet, but she held the phone the way she used to hold her sister’s hand in the dark, protectively, as if something fragile depended on her steadiness. The shadows in the room no longer felt like threats; they felt like witnesses, quiet and patient, waiting for her to take the next step when she was ready.

Trev sat down beside her and placed his hand on hers. Earlier in the day, Sheila told him about what she remembered. “Irrational fears are trying to tell us something,” she said. “Every fear has a memory attached, something deep down, that won’t go away until you name the monster.”

She breathed in the fading light and let it fill the hollow places inside her, softening them. Healing wouldn’t come all at once, she knew, but tonight she felt a small shift toward it, a promise rather than a demand. For the first time in a long while, she didn’t look under the bed before turning out the light.