Underneath

Don’t look up.

Dec 12, 2025

I’m hiding again.

The springs creaked a little while ago. The blankets rustled. Now something is moving up there, slow and heavy, as if the bed has always belonged to it.

I pressed down into the floorboards when I heard it climb on. I haven’t moved since.

It makes noises. A droning, broken and tuneless. Sinister laughs that don’t sound right, muffled as if it’s talking into the pillow. Sometimes it whispers, and though I can’t make out the words, I know they aren’t meant for me.

I stay quiet.

Everyone knows the story: the thing under the bed is the one you should be afraid of. That’s what they tell each other, what they whisper when the lights go out. But no one warns you about what happens when it makes it into the bed, tossing and turning, breathing and gurgling in the dark.

It shifts again, restless. One limb kicks free of the covers, thin and jointed wrong, pale as grubs turned up from the soil. Another drapes over the edge, twitching, its many little tips flexing open and closed as if searching for something in the dust.

Sometimes its whole head tips over the side, upside-down, hair dangling in knots, eyes round and glowing wet in the night-light.

“Stay down there,” it whispers.

And I do because I’ve heard it stir the house. How objects clatter against each other though no one touches them. How footsteps scuff in the hallway long after everyone else is asleep.

Mommy and Daddy never notice. They tuck it in. They smooth its hair. They kiss its forehead and close the door.

Everyone believes I am the danger, the shadow below.

But the truth breathes above me, humming, gurgling, smiling in its sleep.

I am what belongs underneath.

And the child in the bed above is what I fear.

THE END