Megan sensed the weight on the other side of the bed without opening her eyes. Slow air whistled through sharp teeth. The tang of ash and cypress burned the inside of her nose and settled on her tongue. No. Unreality washed over her sleepy mind. She had to still be dreaming. He hadn’t visited her in years.
The bed shifted, its legs creaking like bones about to break.
“Hello, little friend,” he said, his voice as velvet as it had always been.
“You’re not really here.” Tears burned beneath Megan’s closed eyelids. “You never were.”
Hot, animal breath brushed the raised hairs on the back of her neck. Everything in her screamed to pull her blankets higher, to hide just like she had as a girl, but her clammy fingers froze.
“I thought you would be happy to see me after all these years.”
“You’re not real,” she said, just as her parents had once taught her. “Monsters aren’t real.”
“Monster?” he scoffed. “Is that what they taught you to call me?”
He was only an imaginary friend who’d gone wrong. Who’d once been her living diary, her best friend at the back of the playground, her audience when she’d practiced reading aloud, her partner when she’d danced in the rain, but who’d rotted when she’d tried to leave him behind her. Who hadn’t been willing to say goodbye. She’d fought so hard to ignore him—to grow up too soon—before he’d finally given up on her.
Or at least, she’d wanted to believe his silence had meant surrender.
“You’re not real,” she declared, raising her voice above the pounding in her skull, “so you can’t hurt me.”
He chuckled. “I’m so sick of hearing that.”
Cold fingers crept across her shoulder.
Megan gasped. He’d never touched her before.
“All you have to do is look at me, and you’ll see.” His nails pressed into her skin, as if they might break through it and draw blood at the slightest twitch. “I’ve come to save you—this time for good. You can stay that gleeful child forever. We can be together again.”
“You weren’t supposed to come back,” Megan whimpered. She wanted to shout, wanted to wake up her parents, but her voice was trapped in her tight throat.
Seconds passed, silent save for the ticking clock that counted each one. His fingers loosened, but his shadow still covered her like a second sheet.
“It hurts, you know. We used to be happy. Before you pushed me away. Before you tried to forget me.”
Megan tried and failed at swallowing. “My parents, the doctors, they all showed me how to make you go away. You were only ever a nightmare. I made you up.”
“What a cruel thing to say! I was angry, that’s all. The adults turned you against me!” He laughed. “You were never that powerful.”
“Snap out of it, Megan,” she pleaded with herself. “I turn eighteen tomorrow. I’m too old to let my imagination play tricks on me.”
“My little friend…” A hand cupped her cheek and filled her with winter. “Did you really think I’d let you grow up?”
“You’re not real!” she shouted, her blankets drenched in sweat.
“Then why are you so afraid?”
“You’re not real!”
“Then you’re acting like a fool.”
“You’re not real!”
“Then open your eyes.”
She would. She’d prove to herself that there was no one there. She’d wake up.
She opened her eyes.
Her final scream shook the house.
Rowan Rook (he/they) is a queer/trans speculative fiction author, editor, poet, and game designer and developer. They see the world through a lens of plot ideas and armatures. They are also neurodivergent and a night owl, sky-gazer, geek, and cat dad. An indie soul, they prefer the strange and provocative to the familiar and safe. Rowan lives for stories that inspire wonder, evoke deep thought, offer exhilarating experiences, and leave lingering emotions. They live in a port town in the rain shadow of Washington’s eerie Olympic Mountains, surrounded on all sides by strange and shimmering seas.