When she was three and in the dark she heard a noise,
and it came from under her bed.
She screamed until her mother came
and until the lights were on.
And even though nothing was there,
she was still scared.
She didn't want to sleep alone,
but her dad had work in the morning
and her mom said, "Not now. It's late."
So she cowered under the blankets,
and waited until morning.
When she was five,
she pushed a small dresser in front of her closet every night.
Because her mother told her there were no mosters under her bed,
and her father didn't want her to have a lock.
Her brother told her she was being silly,
and her parents said she couldn't do that once the baby came.
When she was six her little brother was born,
and he cried every night.
She knew he was scared of the monsters too.
But her mom said he just had a messy diaper,
and her dad said that all babies cried.
Her older brother laughed.
She started checking behind the shower curtain when she was eight,
because if the monsters weren't under her bed or hiding in her closet then surely they were in the tub.
Her brother laughed,
and called her a baby.
Her parents said there was no such thing as monsters.
But she knew when people lied to her.
She got sent home early from school when she was nine,
because the other kids lauhed at the stories she told.
Stories about shadows and claws,
dreams and nightmares.
Monsters and death.
Her teacher told her mom that she disrupted the peace.
But all she knew was that they weren't stories.
She was twelve when she got left home alone for the first time.
She thought it would be cool,
but the air was filled with their whispers
and her closet door was somehow open.
She called her parents, but her dad was at work
and her mom said, "Not now. I'm busy."
Her older brother was at basketball practice
and her younger brother was at daycare.
So she cowered undre the blankets with a knife in her hand,
and waited until they got home.
When she fifteen she learned how to drive.
She thought that maybe, she could drive away from the monsters.
But she crashed the car and broke her dad's arm,
and they told her she couldn't drive anymore.
And the monsters laughed at her,
because they knew she was stuck with them.
When she was sixteen the kids at school called her a freak,
and said only babies were scared of monsters.
She went home and asked her little brother if he ever heard them,
and he told her that monsters didn't exist.
So she cowered under her blankets and cried,
because she could hear them in her head,
and under her bed,
in her closet,
behind the shower.
She could hear them everywhere,
but no one else did.
So she closed her eyes and gave up
and let the monsters consume her.
And that was the first time she saw
that it was not the monsters outside to be scared of,
but the monsters inside.
The ones you cannot escape,
no matter what.
The ones that killed her.
Iron