Everyone has heard the stories of monsters under beds and in closets, but only a few people know the truth.
          When Tori was six years old, she was terrified of the dark. She feared going to sleep in her room because of the noises that inhabited the night. The bangs, thuds, and scratches that tormented her in a time that should have been peaceful. But she never looked, never peered out of the blanket that she used to hide herself. She knew something was out there, but she was never courageous enough to peek.
          Tori told her mom about the noises, and her mother assumed that it was just her imagination. But she did buy her a star-shaped nightlight to help with her fear of the dark. She plugged it in right next to her bed and told her daughter to look at the star if she ever got scared.
          That night, she clicked on her star and climbed into bed. She started drifting off into sleep, her eyelids fluttering closed, when the noises began again. She tugged the covers over her face and closed her eyes as tight as she possibly could. Tori could feel the bangs reverberating off of her footboard, heard the picture on wall fall to the ground. She had to know what was out there. She had to look.
          She thought of her nightlight. 
          She looked. She peeped over the top of her blanket, and saw something that would never escape her mind.
          Tori saw two things in her room, one with skin the color of a soldier’s blood, and the other’s a white as pure as a single raindrop. They each had a large, open mouth with razor-sharp teeth lining the inside of their mouths. Neither of them had eyes, only indentations where they should be. They were easily over eight feet tall.
          The thing is, the monsters were fighting each other. Crashing into walls, pinning each other down. They did that for hours with Tori watching from the sidelines, trembling with the fear of being caught. 
          When the sun started to rise, peeking through Tori’s curtains, they vanished into thin air, as if they had never even existed. She couldn’t move; she was paralyzed with fear. When her mother came into the room, Tori started crying and explaining what happened. Sobs were tearing her throat and choking her causing her to be barely understandable. Her mom stroked her hair, telling her it was just her imagination.
          Tori knew that she was wrong.
          She grew up knowing that monsters were real. She saw them almost every night, but when she was thirteen she got to thinking. What if it was just her imagination? 
          But what she didn’t know was that they were real. That one of those monsters was trying to protect her, and the other was not. That the reason she didn’t see them after she had those thoughts was because she no longer believed.