For Katie on her birthday.

Reverie



This is a nightmare. As real and horrifying as any you’ve had in your life. The kind that leaves you in a cold sweat, shaking, shivering, and longing for a warm body beside you. This is a nightmare for it shows your greatest fear.

Or it might just be a dream, or merely another grotesque truth.

Who’s to tell?

Miss Parker is four whole years old. That’s nearly five, if you count all the years out, which is nearly six, which is nearly (if you stretch it a little), a big girl.

Miss Parker can’t wait to be a big girl. Everything happens when you’re big. School, friends, vacations – everything.

But right now being big is not her main worry. Her main worry is under her bed. There’s a monster under there and it’s hungry. Very hungry. It likes little girls.

It likes Miss Parker best.

Daddy usually gets rid of monsters; he hunts them out with a torch and a big black stick he keeps for burglars. But Daddy isn’t home tonight. He’s at work; just like he was yesterday, and the day before yesterday.

He missed her piano lesson.

Now he’s not here to get the monster – Henry daddy nicknamed him – out from under her bed and back outside where he belongs.

Mama’s home, but she’s not very good with monsters. Mama’s better with splinters and cuddles.

Daddy's not home so mama tries to use daddy’s stick, and pokes her head underneath to try and spot Henry but she doesn’t understand the game. She doesn’t warn Henry she’s coming like daddy does. She doesn’t tell him off in that grouchy voice daddy uses when Miss Parker’s done something really naughty. Like the time she put the lizard in the fish tank. Mama doesn’t even do a grouchy voice.

Mama tries though. She does everything just like daddy, and Miss Parker can’t hear anything so maybe he isn’t there, maybe she did it right. And Mama says that Henry has run off and it’s safe for her to go to bed, anyway.

Mama doesn't lie.

“You promise?”

“I promise, sweetheart.”

“You’re not tricking?”

That’s when the story changes. Miss Parker isn’t four years old nearly five, she’s thirty nine, nearly forty. Her main worry isn’t a monster named Henry. It’s the boogieman who is her twin brother. She isn't looking forward to school and friends. She isn’t looking forward to anything.

“Promise me you’re not leaving me alone with the monsters?” she says, still in her child voice.

Her mother looks confused. “What monsters? We got Henry. Go to sleep--”

And something snaps. “You left me. You abandoned me to real life monsters, for what? For Jarod? For Ethan? What about me? I was a child and you pretended to be murdered in front of me!”

“I don’t understand, sweetheart what are you saying, what are you talking about?”

“For the longest time I hated them all. I hated daddy for having no time for me. I hated Raines for killing you. I hated Jarod for being more important to you than I am. I hated Ethan for being the reason you left. I even hated Sydney for lying. Now I realise. It was all you.”

“I--”

There is only pure satisfaction when she says, “I hate you.”

Who’s to tell what’s real?

Maybe this is the truth you were really searching for.

Or maybe it’s another lie.

Just like everything to do with her.