Every Child’s Fear

You remember the feeling, don’t you? The feeling that you’re being watched, that if you make the slightest movement, you’re dead. Everybody had that fear as a child…

You wake up in the night, can’t get back to sleep, shuffling back and forth from one uncomfortable position to the next, hoping to find a way to sudden slumber. You give up, there’s no way you going back to sleep any time soon, so you simply turn to your side, and stare out the window. The road… the lights… the trees… all seem so strange under the cover of night. You try to keep your mind quiet of any distractions, remembering that you still need to sleep… and that’s when the feeling hits you.

The feeling swarms over you like an ice cold blanket that has just been spread across your back. You remember that it is night, and that night… is when fear likes to hunt. You feel almost as if, you are being watched from behind you. You can’t see it, but its eyes are trained on you. You want to move, but you can’t, if you do, something bad, no, something horribly wrong is going to happen to you. The only thing you can do is remain quiet and still, and then it won’t notice you.

As you lie on your bed, frozen in fear, you begin to think about your bed sheets. If only you could quickly grab you bed sheets and throw them over yourself, to hide your body from whatever evil monstrosity stands behind you. It could be done… perhaps… if you’re fast and precise, you could succeed. You decide to think no longer, you flip yourself up and grab your bed sheets with both hands. Without looking around the room you swipe back down, covering yourself with a thick blanket… safety…

It is then that your mind comes back to you, and you remind yourself that there is nothing there. Darkness clouds the mind, and causes it to hallucinate; with the only limitations being your imagination. You slowly poke your head out of the sheets and scan your eyes around the room… nothing. You place your head back on the pillow, and slowly drift off to sleep.

This is every child’s fear, and parents always tell their children to go back to sleep, and that it is good for them to work through their fears… They are wrong… Because what they don’t know is that when the children hide under their bed sheets, the real fear is not what is standing over them, but what is staring at them from under the covers.