Nightmare Fuel - Day the Eight: Creating Monsters

A quick touch of horror for today's Nightmare Fuel stories.

Remember that the only monsters are the ones we create.

This one starts with an image, but the monster wasn't the part of the image which I found most frightening; to me the horror is on the whiteboard in the background.

Enjoy.


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"The Bad Lady"



Every night as I sit in my empty bed, I have the same thought:The stories are always about women.

Have you noticed that? It's a witch who threatens to murder and eat the young walkers in the wood.
A witch who freezes a young beauty in time, behind walls of briar.
A stepmother and stepsisters who keep the little ash-girl in rags.
A woman to tempt, a woman to trick, a woman to imprison.

I read too many of those stories to him, still read them to him. I really thought I was doing the right thing; they say reading to your children is important.

They say folklore is our heritage.

It's true.

My mother read the same stories to me, when I was a girl.

Is that why I blame her and not him? Is that why I told another story, one not penned by the Germanic brothers or the Dutchman? A story told through misheard snippets of conversation, not  intended for too-young ears?

No, that's not fair. He heard perfectly well what I my mother taught me, what I taught him. He heard what I believe.

I've come to expect his scream at night, almost to long  for its arrival just as sleep begins to take me. Every night I pray that this night I might sleep, but every night I know I won't.

It is, in its a way, my penance.

I find him always, in his bed, bolt upright, clutching the worn teddy bear his father had given him. Little heart pounding, eyes focuses on a shadow, a dark corner, an irregular pile of blankets.

"BAD LADY! The BAD LADY is coming to take me!"

Image source:
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/ghost-story

After all, he overheard time and again that the bad lady had taken his father.

So every night I sit awake in my empty bed, every night I listen for his scream, knowing that I'll come to his room to hold small boy and teddy-bear, guarding the darkness against a monster I birthed.

My throat is dry and my heart pounds, fearful of the stories he'll tell his children someday, the monsters he'll create for them.