Summary: Seven minutes past midnight, a monster comes walking. Walking right up to my window and destroying my house then eating me alive. But I'm not scared of some mock-monster, because I've faced worse. Now why is this self-righteous monster telling me that I have to tell it the truth? What truth? I just know that I hate my life.

Disclaimer: I really just took the story, 'A Monster Calls' from Patrick Ness and just added my own twists to it. Plus these characters belong to Hidekaz Himaruya.

A Monster Calls

The monster showed up just after midnight. As they do.

I was awake when it came. I doubt that makes it any more real, because it's a monster- which is obviously a figment of my imagination.

I was awake because of a nightmare. Well, not a nightmare. The nightmare. The one I've been having a lot lately. The one with the darkness and the wind and the screaming. The one with the hands slipping from his grasp, no matter how hard he tried to hold on. The one that always ended with– "Go away," I whispered into the darkness of his bedroom, trying to push the nightmare back, not letting it follow me into the world of waking. "Go away now."

I glanced over at the clock my mum had put on my bedside table. 12.07. Seven minutes past midnight. Which was late for a school night, late for a Sunday, certainly.

I hadn't told anyone about the nightmares I've been having. Not my mum, obviously, but no one else either, not my dad in our fortnightly (or so) phone call, definitely not my grandpa, and no one at school. Absolutely not.

What happened in the nightmare was something no one else ever needed to know.

I blinked groggily at my room, then frowned. There was something… off. I sat up in bed, waking a bit more. The nightmare was slipping from me, but there was something I couldn't put my finger on, something different, something– I listened, straining against the silence, but all I could hear was the quiet house around me, the occasional tick from the empty downstairs or a rustle of bedding from my mum's room next door.

Nothing.

And then something. It was the thing that had woken me.

Someone was calling my name.

Lovino.

I felt a rush of panic, my insides twisting in anticipation. Had it followed me? Had it somehow stepped out of the nightmare and taken form here?

"Don't be stupid," I berated myself. "You're too old for monsters."

And I was. I'd turned thirteen last month. Monsters were for babies. Monsters were for bed-wetters. Monsters were for– Lovino.

There it was again. I swallowed. It had been an unusually warm October, and my window was still open. Maybe the curtains shushing each other in the small breeze could have sounded like– Lovino.

It wasn't the wind, definitely a voice, but not one I recognized. It wasn't my mother's, that was for sure. It wasn't a woman's voice at all, and I wondered for a crazy moment if my dad had somehow made a surprise trip from America and arrived too late to phone and– Lovino.

No, not my dad. This voice had a monstrous quality, wild and untamed. It exuded the ferociousness of a beast, something that was even larger than life.

Then I heard a heavy creak of wood outside, as if something gigantic was stepping across a timber floor, something so massive that even the thick wooden flooring couldn't hold.

I didn't want to go and look. I just wanted to curl in my covers and will my memories of the nightmare away, but at the same time, a part of me wanted to look more than anything.

Wide awake now, I pushed back the comfortably warm and toasty blanket, got out of bed, and went over to the window. A light breeze sent goosebumps down my skin but it was nothing to my inflamed curiosity. I felt drawn to the presence outside.

In the pale half-light of the moon, I could clearly see the church tower up on the small hill behind his house, the one with the train tracks curving beside it, two hard steel lines glowing dully in the night. The moon shone, too, on the graveyard attached to the church, filled with tombstones worn down to illegibility.

I could also see the great yew tree that rose from the centre of the graveyard, a tree so ancient it almost seemed to be made of the same stone as the church. I only knew it was a yew because Mum told me, first when I was little to make sure I didn't eat the poisonous berries, and again this whole of the past year, when she had started staring out of their kitchen window with a funny look on her face and saying, "That's a yew tree, you know."

And then I heard my name again. Lovino, like it was being whispered into both my ears.

"What?" I said, my heart thumping, suddenly impatient for whatever was going to happen.

A cloud moved in front of the moon, drowning the whole landscape in darkness, and an incomparably large gust of wind rushed down the hill and into my room, billowing the curtains and sending my blank worksheets and papers flying off my desk. I heard the creaking and cracking of wood again, groaning like a living thing, like the hungry stomach of the world growling for a meal.

Then the cloud passed, and the moon shone again, on the yew tree, which now stood firmly in the middle of the back garden. And here was the monster.

As I watched in a daze, the uppermost branches of the tree gathered themselves into a great and terrible face, shimmering into a mouth and nose and even eyes, peering back at me. Other branches twisted around one another, always creaking and groaning, until they formed two long arms and a second leg to set down beside the main trunk. The rest of the tree gathered itself into a spine and then a torso, the thin, needle-like leaves weaving together to make a green, furry skin that moved and breathed as if there were muscles and lungs underneath.

Already taller than the window, the monster grew wider as it brought itself together, filling out to a powerful shape, one that looked somehow strong, somehow mighty. It trained its gaze on me the whole time, and I could hear the loud, windy breathing from its mouth. It set its giant hands on either side of his window, lowering its head until its huge eyes filled the frame, holding me paralysed with its glare. I could feel the house gave a little moan under its weight.

And then the monster spoke.

Lovino Vargas, it said, a huge gust of warm, compost-smelling breath rushing through the window, blowing my hair back. Its voice rumbled low and loud, with a vibration so deep it shuddered in my chest.

I have come to get you, Lovino Vargas, the monster said, pushing against the house, sending books and electronic gadgets and an old stuffed tomato toy tumbling to the floor.

A monster, I thought. A real, honest-to-goodness monster. In real, waking life. Not in a dream, but here, at my window, staring right at me. Coming to get me.

But I didn't run. In fact, I wasn't even frightened. All I could feel, all I had felt since the monster revealed itself, was a growing disappointment.

Because this wasn't the monster I was expecting.

"So come and get me then."

– • –

A strange quiet fell.

What did you say? the monster asked.

I crossed my arms. "I said, come and get me then."

The monster paused for a moment, and then with a roar it pounded two fists against the house. The ceiling buckled under the blows and huge cracks appeared in the walls. Wind filled the room, the air thundering with the monster's angry bellows.

"Shout all you want," I shrugged, barely raising my voice. "I've seen worse."

The monster roared even louder and smashed an arm through the window, shattering glass and wood and brick. A huge, twisted, branch-wound hand grabbed me around the middle and lifted me off the floor. Even the sudden loss of ground failed to send anything other than deep disappointment through me. I was swung out of my room and into the night, high above the back garden, holding me up against the circle of the moon, its fingers clenching so hard against my ribs I could barely breathe. I could see raggedy teeth made of hard, knotted wood in the monster's open mouth, and there was warm breath rushing up towards me. It smelt of dirt and mud, and that faint scent of yew wood.

Then the monster paused again.

You really aren't afraid, are you?

"No," I uttered, saying the truth. "Not of you, anyway."

The monster narrowed its eyes.

You will be, it said. Before the end.

And the last thing I remembered was the monster's mouth roaring open to eat me alive.

AN This fic will have ten chapters, excluding this prologue and the epilogue.