There Was Something Crawling Under My Bed

The Night Everything Changed

I was twelve years old the first time I heard it—

a soft rustling sound coming from the dark space beneath my bed.

It wasn’t loud.

It wasn’t sharp.

It was quiet enough that I might’ve ignored it…

but clear enough that I couldn’t.

At that age, midnight was a place full of shadows that moved when I blinked.

A place where every noise felt personal.

A place where the darkness seemed to breathe.

So when I heard something crawling under my bed,

my heart didn’t ask for explanations—

it simply raced.

I remember clutching my blanket,

knees pulled to my chest,

eyes wide open in the dim glow from the hallway.

I wanted to scream.

But fear doesn’t always make noise.

Sometimes it just sits with you,

breathing softly in the quiet.

What We Fear in the Dark

The sound didn’t stop.

Every few minutes I heard it again—

a scrape, a shuffle, a tiny thump.

In my mind, I imagined everything:

Monsters.

Ghosts.

Creatures parents insisted didn’t exist.

But the truth was simpler:

I was a kid who didn’t yet know how to understand fear.

Fear felt bigger than me,

like something that lived outside of me,

waiting in corners and under beds.

I wanted to wake my mother.

I wanted to turn on every light.

I wanted to pretend nothing was wrong.

But I didn’t move.

I just sat there,

listening,

letting the fear grow louder than the sound itself.

It’s strange how fear works.

We never fear the noise—

we fear the meaning we give it.

The Moment I Knew I Had to Look

Around 2 a.m., something changed.

Maybe it was courage.

Maybe it was exhaustion.

Maybe it was the realization that I couldn’t sit frozen forever.

But a small voice inside me whispered:

“Look.”

Just one word.

Soft.

But strong enough to carry me through the shaking in my hands.

I slid my feet to the floor—

slowly, carefully—

as if the carpet itself might bite.

I bent down,

heart pounding so loudly I could hear it in my ears.

The darkness under the bed seemed deeper than before,

as if hiding secrets it wasn’t ready to let go of.

And then—

I saw it.

Two small eyes stared back at me.

My breath caught in my throat.

But they weren’t glowing eyes.

They weren’t monstrous eyes.

They were familiar.

They belonged to our old ginger cat, Milo.

Half-asleep, dusty, and apparently offended that I’d woken him.

He let out the tiniest meow—

a sleepy complaint—

and stretched his paws with complete innocence.

I almost cried from the relief.

All that fear—

all those racing thoughts—

because of a cat who simply wanted a quiet nap.

The Lesson I Didn’t Expect

Looking back,

I laugh at how terrified I was that night.

But the older I get,

the more I realize the lesson was never about what was under the bed.

It was about how easily we let fear create stories that don’t exist.

Fear isn’t the monster.

It’s the storyteller.

And the stories it writes in our minds

are almost always scarier than reality.

That night taught me one of the most important truths of my life:

Most things we are afraid to face

aren’t as terrifying as we imagine.

But we never find that out

unless we look.

Facing the Shadows We Create

As I grew older, the fears changed.

They no longer hid under beds—

they hid in responsibilities,

in failures,

in the unknown.

Fear of speaking up.

Fear of disappointing others.

Fear of trying and not being enough.

Real fears.

Adult fears.

The kind we pretend not to feel.

But every time life brought me a new shadow,

I heard that same quiet voice from the past:

“Look.”

And every time I finally faced the thing I’d been avoiding—

I found clarity instead of monsters.

The job interview I dreaded.

The difficult conversation I postponed.

The apology I was afraid to give.

The dream I was scared to pursue.

All of them were less frightening

once I confronted them.

Just like Milo under the bed,

most fears are simply shadows waiting for a little light.

The Night That Still Lives in Me

Sometimes, late at night when I can’t sleep,

I remember that twelve-year-old version of me—

trembling, curious, brave in the quietest way.

I think about how I almost let fear grow bigger than truth.

And I remind myself that courage doesn’t always roar.

Sometimes it’s just a whisper:

a decision to look toward the unknown

instead of hiding from it.

That night changed me.

Not because of what I found under the bed,

but because of what I found inside myself.

A strength I didn’t know I had.

A bravery I didn’t yet understand.

A willingness to face the dark, even when my hands shook.

And that is a lesson I carry into every corner of my life now.

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Thank you for reading...

Regards: Fazal Hadi