Since the very first bedtime, all around the world, children have known that once their mothers and fathers tuck them in and shut off the light, that there are monsters hiding in their closets, waiting to emerge...
Moonlight streamed through the bedroom window, making spooky shadows on the bed. Tucked beneath the covers, a little girl was sound asleep.
Creeeeak.
The girl's closet door slowly opened. The sound startled the girl awake. She sat up and glanced nervously around. But the room was empty. The girl laid back down and snuggled into her pillow.
Creeeeak.
The floorboards groaned as something moved across the floor. The girl peered into the darkness. Suddenly her eyes grew round with fright.
She thought she saw an inhuman shadow on the wall.
Wide awake now, the girl timidly looked around her room. A dark, hulking form blocked the moonlight as it loomed over the small child. Raising two ghastly arms, the monster opened its mouth. And as soon as the girl turned around,
"AAAAAAAAAAAH!"
The child burst out of her room, screaming all the way to her parents' bedroom and hopped on her mother.
"MOMMY! MOMMY! MOMMY!" the girl wailed.
"Huh?! What?!" Her mother saw it was only her daughter. She groaned and rubbed her temple. "Honey, what is it?"
"There's a monster in my closet!" the girl squealed. "He was big and mean and scary looking!"
"Honey. We already talked about this. There's no such thing as monsters." she said sleepily.
But she didn't listen. She pulled her mother by the wrist and took her to her room. But the monster was nowhere to be seen.
Sighing, the mother said, "You see. There's no monster." She crossed over to the closet and opened the door. The little girl squealed, expecting to see a monster.
"No monster in here." she told her confidently.
"But...I really did see a monster..." said the girl.
"You just had a bad dream, that's all. Dreams tend to be real. But their just stories that your brain makes up when you sleep."
The child looked up to her mother with hope in her heart. "So...monsters aren't real?"
"Of course not, dear. They only exist in your imagination."
The girl felt much better, but the image of that nightmarish monster still lingered in her mind. "Mommy, can I sleep with you tonight?"
"Sure you can, sweetie." The mother picked up her daughter and carried her to her bedroom.
And ever since that night, the girl slept in her mother's bed and still had nightmares about the monster that scared her. It's been like that for a couple of months until she finally had the courage to go back to sleep in her own room.
When she did, the monster never came back. Remembering her mother's advice, she was convinced that monsters were never real and she just had a bad dream.
But she was wrong...
