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The Monster Under the Bed had been doing this for a very long time, and it had its methods down to a science after so many centuries.
Honestly, whether it was 2023 or 1523, there wasn't too much that could go wrong with the classic 'hide under the bed or in the closet until the parents aren't paying attention and then scare the shit out of the kid.' Of course, the modern practice of putting children in separate rooms, away from their parents, certainly helped, but it wasn't necessary.
In general, the Monster would wait until the parents had tucked the child into bed, assured the child that there was no monsters in the closet, and left with a wish for the child to 'sleep tight, don't let the bed bugs bite' or whatever the regional variation might be. But this night... this night was different. It was the first night the Monster had come to this particular home.
(And the Monster, for what it was worth, wasn't so much the Monster Under the Bed but rather a Monster Under the Bed. There were numerous Monsters Under the Bed in the world, and they generally stuck with a child from the age of three or four or five until the child grew old enough to no longer fear the dark. The Monster's former child was ten now and had recently decided that he was too grown up to be afraid of monsters in the dark that only babies believed were real. He also thought he was too old to play with his little sister's Barbies anymore, which was probably related in the grand scheme of things but of less relevance to the Monster.)
And so the Monster had moved on to its new child. This one was a four year old girl named Amanda, and the Monster could see a princess-themed night light in one corner of the room, which boded well for how easily it would be able to scare her. The Monster, after all, was an amorphous mass of darkness and too many glowing eyes. It was, to borrow the expression, child's play to block out the light coming from a small night light and plunge the room into complete darkness. That was a somewhat newer trick, born in the last century or so, but it was very effective.
The Monster just had to wait for bed time to pass, and then it could learn just what Amanda was most afraid of. Except, when the child came into the room, she came in alone. She climbed up into her bed, turned off the lamp on her bedside table, and curled up in a ball with her stuffed mermaid doll. The lamp's outlet must be tied to the switch at the front of the room, the Monster noted absently. That was how the little girl could turn it on and off herself when she went to bed, because at no point that night did either of her parents poke their heads in to make sure she was actually in bed.
The Monster waited. It waited all night for an adult of some kind to arrive. Even a babysitter. It would take a babysitter checking in on the child. But no. The only thing that happened was the girl telling herself a bed time story until she eventually nodded off in the middle of a story about Batman and Princess Leia having a tea party with Cinderella.
It was the same thing the next night and the next, except that the stories changed. Amanda had quite the imagination on her. The fourth night, when the parents still hadn't put their daughter to bed and the Monster still hadn't tried to scare her, it decided to do some investigating. It would understand, to some extent, if the parents had to work or something similar and weren't able to tuck Amanda in. But that wasn't the case. What was the case, apparently, was that instead of tucking their daughter in and reading her a bedtime story, these two losers were watching TV in the living room. Some kind of game show. And now the Monster Under the Bed's whole deal might be terrifying children, but it did have standards.
The next night, the Monster pulled itself together into a shape vaguely resembling a human being, closed all of its eyes except for two that were vaguely where they were supposed to be on its 'head,' and slunk out from under the bed. The room was mostly dark, which would help the Monster look slightly more natural. Like a silhouette, it hoped.
Amanda was asleep by then. Or at least mostly asleep. She'd managed to kick her comforter halfway onto the floor, and the Monster gently grabbed hold of it and pulled it back up to her shoulders. When she was tucked in, she wriggled slightly, snuggling into the warm of the covers. It hesitantly reached out with its hand—a few too many fingers, perhaps, but not a bad first attempt—and stroked the top of her head the way it had watched mothers do for hundreds of years. And as Amanda settled, taking comfort from the Monsters actions, it realized that there was no way that it was ever going to purposefully scare this child, no matter what its nature might be. And that it was going to stay here anyway, just in case any other Monsters got the idea to take its place.