Young Writers Society

--Another one found in the annals of one of my many USB drives. I'm told it's disturbing, but tell me what you think.

The Monster is back. But I’ve always been here

It hasn’t been here in years, not since I turned fourteen, and finally dismissed it as a childhood delusion, after they diagnosed me. Ha. You only wish it was a delusion. It has been seven years, seven long years, since the Monster has made so much of a peep. Maybe it had found another child to torment. Maybe I started to believe in the Monster again, and it had come back to harass me. Maybe it was bored. Maybe, maybe, maybe.

I stare up at the ceiling of my dorm room and ignore the noises coming from under the bed. The Monster makes clamors all the time—sucking and squishing sounds, nails-on-chalkboard; little screams and shouts of agony. I shudder underneath the covers and turn on my side to face the wall. I wonder where my roommate is. Not that she could save you. I knew there was more than one reason I didn’t want to go to college. Mother shouldn’t have made me. This isn’t helping me; it’s making me lose it.

Maybe I should turn the light on. But that meant I would have to get up and run to the light switch, and my feet would touch the cold hardwood floor and the Monster could grab me and drag me underneath the bed, where it would proceed to devour me.

Christ. I’m being such a goddamn child. There is no Monster. But of course there is. I was never sane enough to fully convince myself the Monster wasn’t real, or was real. But it wasn’t. People were always telling me that the Monster wasn’t real, that I imagined it. The Monster was in my head. No, I’m right here. Right here. All you have to do is look. I don't look. It might see me, and grab me and pull me under the bed.

The Monster makes a particularly gruesome moaning noise, or maybe it's laughing, eliciting a small shriek from me. I scramble up through the covers and cower into the corner my bed is shoved into. The only illumination in the room is the cracks of moonlight showing through the Venetian blinds on the window, and Casey’s night light, but even that is far too bright. Something bangs outside the door and I groan, covering my oversensitive ears. A laughing sound follows the banging, and I flinch.

The Monster is angry that I have forgotten, no matter how briefly, that it is there. It roars, loud and oh-so angry. I shrink further into the corner. More laughing from outside. They are banding together to harass me, make sure I can’t sleep, make sure I can’t think. Maybe the Monster has recruited them to do so, just to make sure I’m awake while the Monster tortures me.

I think I see a light blinking from the corner. It’s red and glaring at me like I was an enemy. A video recorder. Of course. The Monster and its helpers would want a record of this, so they could remember. They’d sneak into my room later, after the Monster was done with me, and take the tape out, and then they’d watch it and laugh at me, and watch me scream and try to run away and they would laugh and laugh and laugh and they wouldn’t stop laughing, they’d just laugh, laugh, laugh, laugh, laugh.

And then I’m just so angry. More mad than the Monster could ever me. Mad as a goddamn hatter. I fling myself at the wall and hit it again and again and again, because I don’t want them to laugh at me. They can’t laugh, I won’t let them. I scream at the wall, at the recorder, and hope they hear it. I scream and scream and scream because I won’t let them laugh and if I can’t hear them laughing over the screaming, then they aren’t laughing.

There’s a high, frightened voice saying, “No, no, no, no, no” over and over again. I feel my mouth moving and realize it’s me. The door flies open and hits the wall so hard my eardrums burst and blood leaks all over my hands. I’ve curled up into a ball against the wall. The light turns on, and the Monster can’t get me. The Monster hates light.

Casey runs in, shoving the other girls out of the way. I can hear them laughing, though their mouths aren’t moving, not like mine is still. The light that chases the Monster away is too bright for me. I close my eyes. Casey will take care of it, won’t she? She wouldn’t want a Monster in her room.

I slit my eyes just a little, and see Casey crouched down next to me. Where was she? Where had she been? She must have been in on the plot to turn me over to the Monster, and that’s why she had been gone. Casey was trying to kill me. She was all in colors that were too bright, so all I could see of her face was lipstick and black hair.

I shrieked and tears rolled down my face. Casey turns, and she’s yelling at the girls in the doorway. “She has schizophrenia! She forgot to take her meds! All of you get out of here.”

A blonde girl, a hazy outline, says, “That girl is fucking crazy. She oughtta be in a mental hospital, not a fucking college.”

I scream at her. “I’m not crazy I’m not crazy I’m not crazy.” I’m crying too hard, then, and my throat chokes up. I’m not crazy. I’m the only rational one here. Do they see that they’ll be in trouble if they stay? Do they realize that the Monster will get them if they don’t leave? No, they don’t realize, and I have to make them leave, even the one that called me crazy because the Monster will get them and I can’t let the Monster get them.

I see the Monster as it creeps out from underneath the bed. It is long like a snake, but has legs and a whip like tail. It’s all sorts of colors—brown and yellow and green, and it turns to look at me. Its eyes are set like a fish’s, on either side of its head, and they are red, with slit pupils. It smiles, or maybe it snarls, but either way I get a good look at long faded-ivory fangs. There’s so many of them that the mouth doesn’t close all the way. Its tail is scaly and flies around, like a rat’s, and it is the cleanest thing on the Monster. The Monster looks like something formed from gutter slime and all the bad thoughts in the world. Someone has taken all the leftover pieces and cobbled them together to make a nightmare. I scream.

Casey gets up and goes to my dresser drawer, where my little white saviors will be, waiting for me to call on them to rescue me. I wonder why I didn’t think of it earlier. But what if someone poisoned the little capsules in the bottle? What if they’re trying to kill me that way? So I don’t have any options…I get eaten alive by the Monster or poisoned by my own medicine. I hear the cap twist off and Casey shakes two tiny white pills into her hand. She comes back, and I’m sobbing so hard I can’t breath.

She’s talking to me like trying to coax a jumper off a ledge. I’m not crazy. She holds out her hand with the medication. I know I have to take them. I have to I have to I have to. Besides, it doesn’t really matter if I die or not. No one will miss me. I take the pills and pop them into my mouth, swallowing. The small white capsules slithered down the back of my throat and the Monster hissed. I'll come back,[/i it spits, [i]You remember, I'll always come back. Again and again and again and again and again...

I think I see the monster look at me with red eyes, but I can’t be sure. I close my eyes. I sleep and sleep and sleep and wonder if I will wake up. Don't forget.

--12/27 Edited w/ more description.