“Sarah! It’s time for bed!” My mother calls out from the house. My heart almost sinks immediately at the mention of the bed. Most people can’t wait to get into their beds, surround themselves with a soft blanket on top of a warm bed, and drift off to another world. I, on the other hand, couldn’t possibly hate anything more than bedtime. 

I wipe my mud-encrusted hands off on my blue overalls and slowly pull myself up off the ground. I pause before opening the back door, hoping that maybe, just maybe I can sleep tonight. I begin to open the door and lift my foot to step inside,

“You wouldn’t be stepping into my house with those muddy boots you’ve been playing in all day, would you?” My mother asks, not even turning to look at me as she washes the dishes from dinner. 

“No, of course not ma”, I reply, kicking my boots off outside before coming in. 

“Mhm, I thought not”, she says back with a smile on her face. “Go take a shower before getting into bed, I’m not washing your sheets 2x this week.”

“Okay, I will”, I reply, trying to hold back a sigh of relief. I would do anything to avoid going to bed. 

Once I get out of the shower I change into my PJs and walk out to the living room. I sit next to my mom on our grey fuzzy couch. She’s watching her show about doctors in Seattle. I say watching but really, she's on her phone scrolling through Facebook. 

“Hey Mom, could I sleep with you tonight?” I ask, hoping she’ll take advantage of the offer most 9-year-olds wouldn’t make to their mom. 

“I think you should sleep in your room honey, It’s good for you to have your own space”, she replies. I can’t help but frown, she doesn’t understand that sleeping in her room is like heaven for me.

“Okay, goodnight. Love you”, I say defeated. 

“Goodnight honey, I love you”, she replies back

I slowly trudge myself towards my room, and it’s not because I don’t want to go to sleep but, because It won’t let me sleep. I push my door open, it makes sure to creek along the way. I take two steps into my room before hopping into my bed and diving below my blankets as if I were a soldier preparing for incoming fire. I close my eyes and try to fall asleep as fast as my mind will let me. I can hear my mom's footsteps down the hall and I know what’s coming. She stops in the doorway and I can hear the door slowly and creakily close.

Thump…Thump… Thump

The eerily familiar call made against the wall, a call that comes from underneath my bed.  

“Saraaah”, he hisses. I try to ignore him, maybe he’ll think I’m already asleep and leave me alone for once. I close my eyes and dream as fast as I can. 

My dream takes me to Christmas morning, my mom’s sitting on the couch with a cup of warm coffee in her hand while sitting crisscrossed next to the brightly lit Christmas tree covered with tinsel and handmade ornaments with my face on them. I’m surrounded by torn-up rapping paper with another present in my hands. I eagerly tear off the wrapping paper to reveal a red box. I slowly pull the lid off of the red box, and to my surprise, the inside is pitch black. I’m confused as I think the box is empty. For a moment, I stare into the abyss-like box before looking at Mom who is no longer where she is. She’s nowhere in sight, she’s gone. Before I have time to panic about my missing mother, the once-empty box explodes with hundreds of wasps. They begin to swarm around me, their buzzing muffling my cries for help. I swat at them to no avail, they continue to swarm me. Forcing me to curl into a ball on the floor and sob for my mom to come back and for the wasps to leave me alone.

I burst up in my bed with tears rolling down my face, gasping as if what happened was real. My breathing begins to slow down when I realize that those feelings of terror are over. Even more than that, they weren’t real to begin with. 

“Ahh, now that you’re awake. You wouldn’t mind grabbing the box of puzzles, would you?” He asks me, his voice sending chills down my spine. 

“Was that nightmare because of you? Did you make me wake up in terror just to do some puzzle?” I ask him, my voice shaking with anger. 

“You know the rules, we must complete a puzzle before bed”, he replies as if every kid has a monster who deprives them of sleep to complete some stupid puzzle. 

All I want to do is sleep so, I give in. I get up and walk to my pretty white bookshelf, the same pretty white shelf my mom had in her room, that also holds our puzzle box. I grab the 100 counts, the smallest I have. I slink down to the ground before spilling the pieces onto the floor. I start flipping them upright to distract myself from looking at him while he slithers from underneath my bed and sits across from me. Even sitting down he towers over me. I start putting together the pieces. He decides to help as his long gray, withered arms reach over the pieces, his even longer, greyer fingers picking up pieces and placing them together. We begin to reach the end of the puzzle, and then there's only one piece left. Except, there are no more available pieces. 

“Nice try, finish the puzzle”, he says accusingly. Confused and upset by his comment I respond, “I don’t have it” I can feel his eyes beaming on me for a moment before he abruptly stands up and begins searching the room. I look up and realize that he’s too tall to even stand in my room and has to significantly hunch over. 

I would help him search but my eyelids feel so heavy I think I may fall asleep just sitting here. I stare under my bed, where my vent is. He continues feeling under my dresser and my bed, searching for the piece. 

“It has to be here”, he says a bit stressed. Suddenly he throws my bed upright, now desperately trying to find it. The change of urgency jolts me awake and I begin to scan my room for the piece before he ruins my room and I get in trouble for it because “monsters are fake and fake monsters can’t make real messes”, as mom’s told me before, the last time we had to look for a missing puzzle piece. 

Something glints in the corner of my eye and it pulls my attention to my floor vent. The puzzle piece is lodged between the slits in the cover. It must have shot over there when I first unboxed the puzzle. 

“Why does it matter so much? Why do we have to finish the puzzle?” I ask, annoyed with the mess and dreading the desperation to sleep. 

“We need to find it before sunrise. If we don’t the-then I’ll be taken away. AND YOU DON’T WANT THAT!” He suddenly shouts at me. 

“You don’t want me to be taken away or you’ll get a monster much worse than me, and you don’t want that”, he says, trying to scare me into not being rid of him. He turns back to continue the search and I decide to take my chances with another monster.

Light begins to join the sky as he completely loses it, tearing my books from the shelves and even begins to assemble a new puzzle, desperately trying to force pieces together. 

“Look at the vent”, I say as the morning sun finally takes its place and light fills the room just in time for him to realize where the puzzle piece has been the whole time. 

He leaps from the ground, clawing frantically at the vent but it’s too late, his grey skin flakes away before finally all that is left is a pile of grey dust.

He’s gone, he’s gone. I’ve won, I can’t help but smile at the realization that I can finally close my eyes without having nightmares. I look at the mess that he kindly bestowed on my room and decide that any trouble I get for this will be nothing compared to the torture of not being able to sleep.

I crawl into my now sun-warmed bed and fall asleep as soon as my head hits the pillow. I promised myself to never complete another puzzle and always prioritize my sleep, which I was never deprived of again.