writing-prompt-s:
A child is kidnapped. Outraged, the monsters that live under their bed and in their closet vow to find them.
It was a nightly ritual. One they knew by heart. Child tucked into bed. Mother and father leave. And then the monsters came out to play. Harmless fun for them, nightmares for the child, though the monsters didn’t understand why. After all, the child had them to protect him. Why should he fear the night?
But this night was different. No child came to the room. No parents to tuck him in. Instead, frantic voices down the hall. The Horned One beneath the bed was nearest the door, the one with the biggest ears, and so it craned out just enough to listen.
Taken. Missing.
The Horned One relayed this to the Closet Monster, and to the slithering beast in the attic. Rumbles and hisses joined together. The parents, in their panic, didn’t even notice the extra noise. Juse thunder and the house creaking, sounding louder than normal because they were already afraid.
“Listen,” growled the Closet Monster, shaking its shaggy head to free its ears from the masses of hair. “They are calling their police.”
“Police, police,” said the Attic Beast, hissing with every word. “What good will they do? Lock him up? Lock him away for taking our child? No. Thisss. This is theft. He is OURS. What nightmaresss must he be having now, when he is not safe with us?”
The Horned One nodded its agreement. “We must find him and bring him home. And his kidnapper shall face a more fitting punishment from us. But you,” it said, addressing the Closet Monster. “You are the eldest of we three. What say you?”
The Closet Monster flexed its claws and nodded. “We go now, while the parents are distracted. We will bring our boy home.”
And so into the night they went, the Horned One in the air and grown several times larger in the moonlit night, the Attic Beast slithering from tree to tree, and the Closet Monster galloping along the ground like a great shaggy gorilla. They knew their boy by sight, by sound, and by smell. It didn’t take long to locate his trail.
The Horned One arrived first, and so the first thing the man noticed as he wrestled the small boy out of his van was that the moon had suddenly gone dark. His grip on the boy went slack as he stared upward at the great winged shadow, and the boy pulled free to be scooped up in the arms of the Closet Monster. The boy’s eyes grew wide, but the monster put a finger to its lips, tapping its brow ridge with a wink that could barely be seen behind the mass of hair. Its smile was a little terrifying, what with the giant tusks protruding from the bottom lip, but the boy looked from the monster to the man, and seemed to understand.
The man started to shout, to ask what was going on, but barely got two words in when the Attic Beast struck him, all scales and poison fangs, hissing curses into the night.
“Thisss isss for our boy! You shall never harm another!”
It was the Closet Monster who carried the boy home, knocking on the door and letting the boy down on the porch to slip back in through a window with the others. The parents, filled with shock and relief, did not understand why the boy kept saying the monsters saved him. They supposed he must have made up a story to deal with the trauma.
The kidnapper was to be found the next day, eyes and mouth wide open in a silent scream. The official report was that the man stepped on a snake in the dark and the boy must have taken the opportunity to run. The police would never find out what kind of snake had bit him. The poison did not match any living creature known to man, and the size of the fangs was too large for any ordinary snake. They were able to tell, however, that the man died in agony and very, very afraid.
As for the little boy – thanks to the monsters, he never had nightmares again.
Zynn's Exodus 