Scritch Scratch - Rated PG

There it was again. 

Julie lay incredibly still. For the last three nights, after her parents had said their goodnights, Julie had known that there was something under her bed – and tonight was no different. 

Scritch Scratch 

It always sounded like the bristly whiskers of a broom scraping the bottom of her bed, but she had been too scared to hang off the side to look. If she looked, she might scream, and screaming wasn’t her style. 

Julie was a third grader, and had always been very good at pretending to be brave. At school, she was the only kid to jump off of the swing when it was at its peak. 

At home, her twin little brothers called her in every time there was a spider in the bathroom. Of course, these things scared her - she was just very good at hiding her feelings. 

But this was different. 

This wasn’t a swing on a playground or a spider in the bathroom. Those things were normal. Sure, they were scary, but they were expected. This was her bedroom and this was her bed- this was her safe spot, and there was something there that shouldn’t be. 

There was something under her that only made noise when she was in her room alone. She closed her eyes and pulled her covers up over her head. 

Scritch Scratch 

She pulled her arms and legs in close to her body. 

Scritch Scratch 

She even tried to slow her nervous breathing, to make it sound as if she wasn’t there at all, but...

Scritch Scratch  

Nothing seemed to work. 

“That’s it!” she said out loud to her bedroom. 

She was tired of being scared in her safe place. She was tired of feeling like she wanted to scream for her parents, when she was the big kid of the family. 

“That’s IT!” she said again as she threw her sheets off of her body. 

In a flash, she went from lying huddled under her blankets to standing on top of her bed, and in another second, she jumped as far from the bed as she could (making sure to get far enough away that whatever was underneath couldn’t grab her). 

Landing near her closet, she immediately lay down on the floor and pointed her body back towards her bed – trying to see as clearly as she could what had been making the scritch scratch sounds. 

She had been ready for almost anything, but what she hadn’t prepared herself for was darkness. 

In her haste, she had forgotten that her bedroom got REALLY dark at night, so whatever she was looking for under her bed had an extra layer of shadow to hide in. 

Straining her eyes, she saw an old shoe box, a couple of her toys, and then finally – a large hairy lump with four eyes – looking right back at her! She stifled a scream. 

The eyes blinked. 

In the back of her head, a voice told her to “RUN! Run away!!”, but she ignored it. This was her bedroom. This was the one place she was supposed to be able to go where she didn’t have to be afraid of anything. Whatever this thing was… it had picked the wrong bedroom to hide in - and it had picked the wrong kid to try to scare. 

Lying on her stomach, she flung her hands back and began feeling for anything that she could grab. 

It didn’t take long for her hand to come to a rest on one of her tennis shoes, and it took even less time for her to chuck the shoe at whatever it was under her bed. With all of her might she threw the shoe at the big furry mass and prepared herself for the fight of her life. 

“OW!” a small voice came out from under her bed. 

Julie had readied herself for many things, but “Ow” wasn’t one of them. 

“Owwww” it said again as it started to shuffle out from under the bed, directly towards her! 

This time, the voice sounded somewhat familiar to her. She wasn’t quite sure, but for some reason – it sounded young. 

Still, she grabbed the other shoe off of the floor next to her and climbed up from her stomach to her knees – cocking her arm back to chunk another shoe at the monster. 

“Doooon’t!” the hairy mass shouted – which actually eased Julie’s mind. 

Suddenly, she knew why the monster sounded familiar. Jumping towards the beast, she grabbed a handful of its hairy coat and yanked its fur completely off of its body – revealing her two younger brothers huddled together. 

“You?! You guys are the monster that’s been under my bed this week??” she shrieked as the two little boys in front of her cowered. “Why?? Why would you want to scare me like that?!” 

“Because,” her younger brother Thomas began, “because you’re not scared of anything, and we’re scared of EVERYTHING.” 

“Yeah,” her other brother Michael chimed in, “we wanted to know what it was like to not be scared of something when you were the one who was frightened. We thought if you were scared of your bedroom and we weren’t, we’d look like the brave kids for once!” 

Julie’s mood changed quickly from aggravated to curious. For some reason, seeing her “monster” turn into her little brothers had really taken the tension out of the air. 

“You guys, I’m afraid of a lot of things!” she said, half scolding, half reassuring. 

“No you’re not!” said Thomas, defensively. 

“Yeah, you do everything we’re too scared to do, and you never act afraid.” Michael chimed in. 

Julie thought and thought. Her whole life, she had tried to pretend to be brave even when she wasn’t. She had always wanted so badly for people to be impressed with her, though she had never thought about the effect her bravery might have on others – especially her younger siblings. 

As it turned out, living in her shadow had really started to take its toll. 

“Guys, I’m scared of almost everything – I just pretend like I’m not so nobody knows.” She said. 

Thomas and Michael looked at her, unconvinced. For the next hour, Julie explained to her brother how scared she naturally was, and how she had spent most of her life trying to be something she wasn’t. 

She talked about her fears, the things that made her nervous, and even the crazy thoughts that had run through her head when she truly thought that there had been a monster in her room. 

Finally, she said “How about from now on, I tell you guys when I’m scared – and you can tell me when you’re scared? That way, we can help each other out.” 

Thomas and Michael looked at each other and then back to her, nodding. 

From that day on, every time something came up that was scary to Julie, she told her little brothers – and they did the same. They all became cheer leaders for each other, shouting encouragement whenever the others stumbled. 

In the end, with each of them knowing that no matter how scared they got, that someone would always be there to help them through it – they all actually became quite brave.