There’s a monster under my bed.

She doesn’t talk, but she’s not a baby monster because a baby monster would cry. This monster doesn’t cry. She snarls and growls and sometimes she screams, and I can’t sleep because it won’t stop. Why won’t it stop?

I told Mummy and Daddy. They said there was no monster, that they checked and everything. They even checked under Little Jack’s bed, but they said she wasn’t there either.

They’re silly. Everyone knows you can’t see the monster.

She’s just there.

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The monster under my bed said hello to me today.

Mummy said there aren’t any monsters under my bed even though there definitely are. I said so but she doesn’t believe me. Daddy said a bad word and Mummy shouted at him. It’s because he was angry at me—I’ve told Mummy and Daddy about the monster under my bed before, and now he thinks I’m lying but I’m not. The monster under my bed is real. And now she wants to talk to me. I don’t want her to talk to me. Monsters are scary.

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I ignored the monster under my bed. She didn’t like it.

She tried talking to me again, and I ignored her because you have to ignore strangers. Usually, she just makes sounds, like Mrs. Truman’s dog growling when I walk past her house to go to school. Then she said hello, over and over and over again like a parrot. Now she mixes both together and won’t leave me alone. Why won’t she leave me alone?

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My toys are going missing.

First, it was my ball, and then my dollies, and now my ponies! And I don’t know where they are! Daddy says it’s because I don’t put them away. I do though, and they keep disappearing anyway! I looked in the wardrobe and in the toybox and even in Little Jack’s room but they’re not anywhere!

The only place I haven’t looked is under my bed, but I don’t want to look under there. I didn’t put my toys under the bed. My ball and my ponies go in my toybox, and my dollies go on my bed, not under it. If I look under my bed, the monster will get me.

I hope my dollies aren’t scared under there.

I am.

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Little Jack doesn’t have a monster under his bed. It’s so unfair!

I checked and everything! There are no monsters, no demons, and no bad people hiding in his wardrobe! His toys don’t get lost, and Mummy and Daddy don’t shout at him. Why can’t I have no monsters under my bed?

Mummy and Daddy say I have to share with Little Jack. But I can’t share the monster. I don’t want to try. That means I have to see her.

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Mummy shouted at me for drawing on the walls.

She said I was too big to do that, and I shouldn’t do it, and I was naughty. But I didn’t! I don’t anymore, only on paper and cards and the pavement with chalk.

And crayon doesn’t dribble down from the ceiling.

It looks like Little Jack was playing with lots of paint, but he couldn’t have done it because he’s a baby and can’t reach that high. I told Mummy about it running down the wall and she put her hand on it. Her fingers were red and wet when she walked out of my bedroom. She didn’t notice.

She ran her fingers through my hair and went downstairs. My hair is now sticky, but I can’t wash it by myself, and Mummy thinks it’s clean because we washed it this morning.

The monster under my bed made a sound when she left. It sounded like laughing.

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How do I stop the monster?

How do I stop it from being nasty and scary? Mummy and Daddy don’t believe me. Little Jack is too little to understand. There are no other grown-ups in the house.

The monster said my name. She said it over and over like when Little Jack gets to watch his telly and watches the same thing all the time, even when it’s my turn. She then said, ‘Come here’, but Daddy says not to go to strangers who say that.

Is the monster a stranger? She lives under my bed, and I know she’s there. And she has been there for a really long time, so maybe she’s not a stranger.

Mummy says I have to be nice to people even when they’re being nasty. Maybe I should try that.

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The monster said hello again. I said hello back.

Nothing happened.

I said hello again.

My ball rolled from under the bed.

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When I came home from school, my dollies were on my bed again. They didn’t look scared, so they must have had a good time.

I said thank you to the monster. She purred like a fluffy cat.

I like fluffy cats. Maybe I can like the monster.

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The monster asked for chocolate biscuits. She said monsters like them a lot.

She said that monsters don’t eat children unless they’ve been naughty and that I’m a good girl so I’m okay. Mummy hides the chocolate biscuits in the bag with cleaning cloths under the sink so Daddy doesn’t eat them all. She forgot that I know where they are, so I took some for the monster. The monster even shared them with me! Not even Daddy shares the chocolate biscuits with me all the time, but the monster did!

The monster told me that monsters know everything. I think monsters know more than Mummy and Daddy, even though they said they know everything too. But they didn’t know about my monster. They said she wasn’t real. Maybe Mummy and Daddy don’t know everything.

The monster is nicer than what the stories say. Maybe she will be my friend.

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The monster told me her name.

She has a very funny name, and you can’t say it in English. The monster made all sorts of funny sounds and said that was her name. It sounded very silly, so she said I could give her a new name, so the monster is now called Fluffy, like cats! Fluffy gave me a name too, and the funny noises sounded like a reindeer, like Sven!

The monster has never seen Frozen! Maybe the monster’s mummy didn’t let her watch it, which makes no sense because Frozen is my favourite movie and everyone in my class has seen it. I asked the monster if she wanted to watch it on the telly downstairs. The monster said no because Mummy and Daddy wouldn’t like it, which is sad because Mummy and Daddy are usually nice when I watch movies with people. Fluffy does like the music though. We sing ‘Do You Want To Build A Snowman’ a lot.

I like Fluffy. She isn’t so bad after all.

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My dollies can fly!

I went into my bedroom because Mummy said it was bedtime, and all of my dollies were flying! Fluffy was giggling under my bed, so I think she was doing it.

That means Fluffy is magic!

Does that mean Fluffy knows Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy? I need to ask her. It would be cool if she did. Maybe they’re all friends! Santa Claus would be a very good friend, and I would be able to have any toys that I want, and I wouldn’t have to wait until Christmas anymore because Santa Claus would just give them to me.

My dollies were flying above my bed in circles, and they looked like they were having a lot of fun. They definitely weren’t scared. They were like birds swooping and diving like they do on the telly.

My hair started doing that too! It started bouncing up and down like springs by my face, and it tickled lots! Fluffy found it very funny.

There’s no more red stuff on my wall, and there’s no more growling, and I know where all my toys are. Fluffy doesn’t scare me anymore. She’s too nice to scare me.

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I told my friends in school about Fluffy.

Leah said she was scared of monsters like I was. I told her that Fluffy is very nice and a lot better than I thought she was and is now my friend. Maybe she could be friends with her monster too! Monsters seem to be very good at being friends with people, even if grown-ups don’t like them very much and say they don’t exist. They do. Grown-ups just don’t think so.

Taylor heard me talking to Leah about her. He’s one of the boys in my class, and he can be very mean. He told me that Fluffy isn’t real, even though she is, and he didn’t believe me! He said I should grow up and stop playing pretend. But I like playing pretend, and I didn’t make Fluffy up!

I told Fluffy about Taylor. Fluffy doesn’t like Taylor very much either and said that I definitely wasn’t lying, and everything will be okay. If Fluffy says it will be okay, then it will. Fluffy knows everything.

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Leah said her monster is still very very scary. I said monsters are good at being scary.

Taylor heard us and said I was lying and he was really mean! Why is he being mean? I wasn’t mean first. He said only babies were scared of fake monsters, but Fluffy isn’t fake, and I’m not scared. And I’m definitely not a baby!

He ran away after that, laughing lots and lots.

And then he wasn’t.

Something blue flew across the playground, and Taylor fell down, down, down. He hit the ground and then he was crying, like the baby he called me! Mummy says I shouldn’t laugh when people get hurt, but it was very funny.

The blue thing rolled to my feet. It was a ball. I looked over to where it came from.

No one was there.

I told Fluffy about it when I got home. She did say everything would be okay. She talked to me with the voice grown-ups use when they know something but don’t want me to know. But I think I know what it is.

Nobody I can see threw the ball.

Maybe Fluffy doesn’t just stay under my bed after all.

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Taylor doesn’t pick on me in school anymore.

He looks very scared when he is near me. Maybe Fluffy said something to him. Maybe not. It doesn’t matter really. If he tried to hurt me again, I know what I will say.

If you do that, I’ll tell my monster on you.

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It happened again!

I was walking home and four of the girls from the big school were mean to me, and it happened again! Fluffy definitely doesn’t just live under my bed, but I never see her, which is weird because there aren’t a lot of places to hide outside. The girls were calling me lots of words that I don’t understand, but they were laughing at me so it must have been bad. It’s always bad when the big kids laugh at you.

They started to push me too, which Mummy and Daddy say isn’t very nice. They’re right. I don’t like being pushed onto the pavement. Neither does Fluffy because the girls didn’t do it again. Fluffy didn’t throw a ball, though. If I’m telling the truth, I don’t know what Fluffy did, and Mummy says I should always tell the truth. All I know is I was on the pavement, and then the girl who pushed me screamed.

She sounded very scared, and then there was a crash and the other girls started screaming too. They said a bad word a lot like they forgot that they weren’t allowed to say it. A car had stopped in the middle of the road, which Daddy says grown-ups should never ever do. Three of the girls were standing next to it, and something lay on the road next to them. Maybe the other girl was sleeping. Her friends should have moved her because sleeping on the road is a bad idea. I don’t think the other girls should have been standing next to the car either. Unless they know the driver. Then it’s okay. It’s not stranger danger then.

The girls left me alone after that. I don’t know why, but Fluffy must have done something. She told me to ignore them and get up, that she would take care of everything and I shouldn’t look at the car. Fluffy is always right, so I was happy enough to start skipping on the way home.

Something gooey ran down the middle of the road to the car. I couldn’t see it properly, but it was very red and covered a lot of the road, like someone got red paint and dragged it, pretending it was a truck. It looked sticky, like when Mummy shouted at me for drawing on the walls. I wonder what it was.

If people from the big school are scared of Fluffy, does that mean grown-ups are too?

I’ll find out when I don’t want to do any homework. Homework is stupid.

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I got my answer today. Grown-ups can be scared of Fluffy too. Mummy definitely was, and she’s very grown-up.

She tried to shout at me and she didn’t believe me when I said that she can’t tell me what to do. She didn’t think I have a monster. She does now.

I was told to tidy away the toys in the living room, but they’re not mine so I shouldn’t have to. Little Jack should put away his own toys, but Mummy didn’t like that idea. She said I should stop making up stories about monsters under the bed and put the toys away before she sent me to my room.

She then became my monster’s toy.

Fluffy picked her up like one of my dollies, but I think monsters play with their dollies a bit different. Mummy went flying around the room like a ball instead of a dolly. She hit the cupboards a lot, and glass exploded everywhere! I now know why Mummy and Daddy said don’t play with balls near a window—the window would explode too.

Mummy hit the floor. There was a very loud thud.

She isn’t moving anymore.

The floor is sticky and red. I don’t know how to hide it from Daddy. Daddy will be very angry that the floor is sticky and red. But I don’t need to worry.

My monster under my bed will protect me.