I wanted to try and write a scary-ish story to practice because I've only ever written one before, and I wanted it to finish well, so since I couldn't sleep for a few hours last night I thought about it and now I'd like to know if there's anything I could improve... Just keep in mind I got the idea and developed it in around an hour, so it's normal that it's not perfect. I wrote the story in first person personal pronouns, but it is NOT about me.
The title is "Not alone".
When I was a kid, I had a routine to wake up at one AM and go to the bathroom every night. That habit never caused anyone any harm, except one night. On that night, I woke up at one AM and went to the bathroom. Things started getting... I wouldn't say bad, more like weird, but on the bad side? I'm not sure. Anyway, things started getting weird after I flushed the toilet. It always made that strange sound that sounded like a muffled roar. When I opened the door of the bathroom, I saw a tall shadow at the end of the hallway.
At first I thought it was my dad that liked to prank me, and was trying creep me out. But there was no answer, and the shadow was awfully still. I could hear a low grumble, kind of like a purr. The shadow got closer, and even got in the light the bathroom night light let in the hallway, but it didn't stop being a shadow. Only the contours got easier to see, but the thing in front of me stayed in the form of dark, swirly mist. Its eyes were a glowing yellow shape with a shadowy pupil, and it had sharp hands, as if it had thick claws that were part of it's fingers, and if I hadn't realized it wasn't human before, now I had. It was the monster in the closet, the thing under the bed, the shadows every kid sees at night, the cause of cracking floors at night or whatever else a kid gets scared of at night. It was all of those things united as one.
I would have definitely screamed if the sleepiness didn't make me so numb. This felt like a dream, and no alarm bells were going off in my head until the monster stopped purring after looking in the bathroom and started growling and staring at me, its pupils shrunk down to slits. It jumped on me and started clawing at everything in his reach.
But instead of feeling physical pain, I felt such a powerful aura of sorrow coming from the monster that I couldn't help but feel bad myself. I understood why he was doing it. He must have been so lonely, with every child afraid of him and no adult acknowledging his existence, and he must have thought that the roaring toilet could have been another monster that came to keep him company. I felt like I was the monster here, giving the lonely creature hope and taking it away, like a big brother lying about going to Disneyland. As I felt my eyes water from the oppressing aura of sorrow of the monster and from my guilt, I raised my hand and placed on the creature's forehead.
"Sorry. I'm sorry." I whispered to it.
He suddenly stopped clawing at me and looked straight into my eyes with its glowing yellow 'eyes', as if wondering if I meant what I said. When it noticed I wasn't trying to take back my words or run away, he got up and offered me his 'hand' made of shadows, and his aura of sorrow dies down a bit, but still remained. When I took his hand, the remaining of his sadness seemingly vanished and it started purring louder than when it was in the hallway. I was more surprised about his hand being solid and soft than of his out of character behaviour. I didn't ask myself why that big, scary monster was sad about being alone, I was too busy thinking about how a friendship with a creature like him was like. We went back to my room, me slipping under my bedsheets and him under my bed. I let my arm dangle from the side of my bed to keep holding the hand of the monster I from now on called my friend.
The next morning, the monster had healed me during the night and I didn't have even a scratch. My parents saw the mess in the bathroom and thought there were rats in the house. Me and the monster snickered in my room, knowing all too well that we were the ones that had made that mess.
To this day, I'm still friends with the monster I met on that night. We have a lot of fond memories together, like the time he scared the bullies of the school for me, or when he followed me to school one day and he appeared on TV. Nobody ever found a way to explain what happened, and we still laugh about it years later.
I just hope he'll find someone worthy of befriending him when I'm gone... I'm only human after all, I can't stay with him forever, even if I'd like to. And you, who read my story until the end, you should go and find the monster from your childhood and try to befriend it. Everyone deserves a friend, even them.
