Sorry, the ending is a bit rushed because I procrastinated, haha.

Night had fallen.

The sun had slowly set, while children outside playing were called inside to dinner. The crickets sounded, their cries washing over the hills like water. The roads were empty. Lights went off as the children snuggled up underneath thick blankets. Slowly businesses closed. Doors were locked. Parents finally went to bed.

It was then that darker things began roaming about.

It has been said that night is dark so that you can visualize your fears with fewer distractions. Grown ups would dismiss this as fancy and make-believe. They credit this to your brain confusing images because its darker. Kids are there to say that those people are stupid, because they have forgotten what its like to experience that. To feel the raw emotion coming from knowing that something horrifying and primal is in your room. However, there are obviously rules, and as much as kids hate rules, they are thankful for these ones, as without them they would be pulled into the netherworld screaming, never to be seen again. The rules are as follows:

1: Nothing can get you while your entire body is in the bed, so woe betide the one who likes to let his arm dangle along the side of the bed. He is DOOMED.

2: Light destroys the things trying to get you. Obviously. They know this however, and duck behind doors and under beds to escape the light.

3: Screaming scares them. If you scream or cry out, they will hide, and there will be no evidence once the parents get there. 

4: Clowns are immune to the top three rules. By some cruel trick of nature, clowns are immune to all rules and easily get children. BEWARE CIRCUSES.

5: All creatures can ignore all rules once you see them so KEEP YOUR EYES TIGHT SHUT AND YOUR BLANKETS OVER YOUR HEAD. Once you see them, they will loom over you, grinning, and then strike.

6: Once you reach 13, you are exempt from monsters and face much more terrifying things, such as clowns.

The things moving now knew these rules, and every night they crept into different rooms in an attempt to scare and take the children. However, two of these particular creatures were, although absolutely nightmarish, had very little luck. Let’s meet them, shall we?

The Swamp Monster was created one day in the 1900s when a movie about him was released. However, with the birth of special effects negated his aquatic, lizard-like visage and long claws, and simply made him look like a man in a plastic suit. Younger children delighted in the “fishy” and teased him terribly, while the older ones dismissed him as their father or older sibling in a plastic suit. He was currently silently picking the lock of the front door with one curved claw, and he chuckled in a wet, thick way. 

Hatchikusema was the subject of a Japanese urban legend. She was a tall woman, seven feet tall, with blood-red Japanese robes. Her oily black hair came down all around her head, with a gap around her head. Her nose was long and painted yellow, set exactly in between her sinister black eyes. Wrinkles around her face showed many smiles that had shone out of the face.  They were not nice smiles. Her thin lips spread wide, hiding unearthly fangs. However, almost nobody had heard of her. She would enter rooms hissing “I am Hatchikusema!” only to hear the answer, “Who?” She currently was sliding through an open window. 

They crept silently down the hall. The Swamp Monster got there first. He stopped outside of a door and opened it, entering the blackness beyond.

Hatchikusema came through the window and slunk over to the door. Finding it open, she stopped in surprise, before continuing. 

The Swamp Monster leaned over the bed, a black shadow of the night, the very epitome of fear, when-

“What are you doing here?”

The Swamp Monster was so surprised that he lost his footing and almost tumbled onto the figure in the bed. He whirled around to see Hatchikusema. She repeated her question.

“What are you doing here?”

He paused before answering. “What am I doing here? What are YOU doing here? This is my operation!”

“I was here first?”

“No, I was!” 

“I was!”

“I was!”

The conversation lulled. Presently, the Swamp Monster looked slyly at Hatchikusema and said, “I have been planning this for three weeks.”

Hatchikusema smiled and replied, “I’ve been planning it for four.”

The Swamp Monster growled and leapt at her.

The fight was short but brief. The Swamp Monster tore at her with primal claws and fangs, and she countered every one of his moves with karate. They were silent until Hatchikusema’s kick sent a vase flying through the air. It shattered on the ground. Instantly both creatures were hiding in the shadows. Nobody woke up, save the person in the bed. And when he sat up, they realized their mistake. 

There were only three bedrooms in the hall, but the first one had two windows. They had both spied through the second window, and, not thinking to look through the other window, assumed that the middle door was the door to the room they had been spying on. The person in the bed was not an infant, as they had thought. It was the fully grown uncle of the infant in the other room.

The Swamp Monster looked at Hatchikusema, and Hatchikusema looked at the Swamp Monster. They crept out of the room, never to tell anyone about this incident ever again.

They didn’t count on me.