I didn’t want to go under the bed but I promised mommy I’d stay there and not come out no matter what I heard, and I always keep my promises. She and daddy said they’d be back to get me as soon as they could, then they gave me a flashlight to keep the monster away. As soon as I got under the bed I turned it on and saw the monster crawl away to the crack between the bed and the wall. I kept the flashlight pointed there to keep him back. Sometimes I’d see that sneaky pete stick a claw out but I’d have my flashlight on him before he made it very far.
When mommy said I couldn’t come out from under the bed no matter what I heard I didn’t think there’d be so many explosions, but there they went. BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! They were so loud I heard my bedroom window break and some pieces of the ceiling fall. If the roof fell down it’ll break my toys, I thought. I wanted to go get them but then I’d be breaking my promise to mommy. I wanted my Superman doll though. He was my favorite and he would have helped me fight off the monster.
I stayed under the bed a long time. Even when the whole roof fell down I still stayed there. Even when I really had to pee I still stayed there and held it in. Mommy and daddy didn’t come back though. And then the light on the flashlight started to get dimmer and the monster started coming out again. I couldn’t keep him away without the flashlight. I had promised mommy I’d stay under the bed no matter what I heard, but I hadn’t heard anything in awhile, no explosions or nothing, so I decided if I came out now I wouldn’t be breaking my promise.
The whole house had fallen down on me. There were so many pieces of the roof I had to crawl through that I hadn’t even noticed it was daytime until I had gotten out from all of it. When I got up on top of all of it I looked around and every single house in our neighborhood had fallen down. A whole bunch of them were on fire too. It looked like Superman had gotten into a fight with someone and just smashed everything up, not just houses but cars and telephones too. Even the road got smashed up. And if the house fell down on all my toys that meant they were smashed up too. I wanted my toys and I wanted my mommy and daddy even more. Why hadn’t they come back?
“Mom?” I shouted. “Dad?”
I heard some noises underneath me. They were coming from where I had crawled through. And then a piece of roof moved out of the way and the monster came out. I had never seen him in the daylight before. He was even bigger than I thought, like ten feet tall, and he had seven claws on each hand and teeth that looked like the big knives that mommy used to chop vegetables. And he was brown and hairy and had a big ugly warty nose too.
“Hey, you’re not supposed to come out in the day,” I shouted. I turned the flashlight back on and pointed it at him. “Back! Back!” I shouted but you could hardly see the light at all in the daytime.
The monster didn’t listen to me though. He was just looking at all the smashed houses and everything else and he looked really sad. I didn’t know monsters could be sad. And then he looked down at me.
“Turn the flashlight off kid,” he said, “there’s no point anymore.”
I turned it off. I’d never heard his normal voice before. I don’t know why but I felt like he wasn’t going to hurt me now.
“Are you okay, monster?” I asked.
He sighed.
“You’re so young,” he said, “you don’t get it, and I probably shouldn’t tell it to you but I wouldn’t be much of a monster if I didn’t. Everyone’s dead kid. The bastards finally did it. They pushed the big red button and now look at what happened. Your mom, your dad, your neighbors, your friends, your teachers, all your favorite actors on TV. Everyone’s dead now.
“Everyone?” I said.
“Yeah kid. Everyone.”
I thought about my mommy and daddy and Joey, who I played Superman with a lot, and Mrs. Richards who gave me gold stars on my alphabet sheets, and even Mr. Gorman who yelled at me for going into his yard. I would have been a little bit happy if Mr. Gorman had been alive but even he got dead.
I cried for a long time thinking about all the dead people. I didn’t want everyone to be dead. I wanted Superman to fly around the world a whole bunch and bring them all back to life. But even Superman was dead now. He got smashed up under the roof when it fell down.
When I stopped crying I looked up and the monster was still there. He was looking at me and he was really sad.
“Who’s gonna take care of me now?” I said to him. “I’m all alone.”
I didn’t think he would answer but there was no one else I could ask either.
“I guess it’s just you and me now, kid,” he said.
“But you’re a monster,” I said, “you can’t make me pancakes or play Superman with me, or take me to soccer practice.”
“There’s not gonna be any more soccer kid,” he said, “and there’s probably not gonna be pancakes anymore either but I don’t know about that one. Tell you what though kid, don’t go anywhere.”
He went and dug back into the hole he had come out of. I heard him messing around down there for awhile, making all kinds of noise. And then when he came back up, he had my Superman doll. He was all scratched up and a piece was missing off his right arm but he was there.
“So,” the monster said, “doesn’t Superman chase monsters?”
I roared and held up Superman so he could fly and ran at the monster. The monster went running down to our front yard and he was so scared he was screaming. I chased after him, down the broken road and past all the smashed houses.