Sleepless

Ella was awake, she was always awake.

Her room was lit by a nightlight but that only made the shadows longer. She hugged her mother’s old, blue teddy bear tighter to her chest. Her big hazel eyes stared into the shadowy corner that always lurked somewhere, no matter how her mother or father moved the nightlight.

“It’s okay,” Ella told herself. “Mom and Dad are in the next room, their door is even open.”

But the shadows loomed like monsters waiting for the slightest movement to pounce. Ella swallowed. She could feel the familiar sense of terror coming over her, the sense that if she moved she would be dead.

She knew it was all in her head.

She knew she wasn’t in any real danger.

She knew that if she flicked on the light it would be her room, nothing special, nothing scary, nothing that could kill her, but that didn’t matter. Fear didn’t care that it would never ever happen. Fear didn’t care if it didn’t made sense.

Fear doesn’t make sense, it makes monsters.