Don't Leave

As the sun set on the Valdez home, Sergio stood on the back porch saying a prayer for his dear cat, Reina, whom he’d lost only three days earlier. She was a beautiful black cat who, in her heyday, had been given the nickname “the queen of rats,” for her prowess as a hunter. He still remembered the day she came up to him–a stray kitten–when he was just a small child playing behind his house. She had been his oldest friend; even his wife and child hadn’t known him half as long.

Once night fell, Sergio went back inside the house. Before joining his wife in bed, he went to check on their 3-year-old son, Gil. As he’d expected, his wife had already put the little one to bed, but to his surprise, the light was still on and the bedroom door was still open.

He leaned into the doorway, saying, “Sleep tight, mijo,” but just as he reached for the light switch, Gil said with a sense of urgency, “Papá, don’t leave.”

Seeing the look of genuine concern on his child’s face, Sergio entered the room, asking what was wrong. Gil explained that there was a monster hiding under his bed and how he’d heard it at night, growling and scratching the bed frame. He said it was waiting to jump out and get him, just like it had been getting the rats outside the house and just like it had gotten Reina.

Sergio tried to reassure him that there was no monster, explaining that Reina was 20 years old, which was an old lady for a kitty, and the rats were probably gotten by another stray cat from the neighborhood. Indeed, Reina had passed from natural causes. He had found her one morning, laying in her bed just like any other morning; she’d died peacefully in her sleep. Still, he wasn’t entirely sure about the rats. He knew that Reina no longer hunted in her old age, but she would sometimes sit in front of the front door, growling. A stray cat seemed like the most logical explanation, but why would a stray leave their kills outside of someone else’s door?

Gil wasn’t convinced by his father’s rationale.

“Can I sleep with you and Mamá?” he asked, earnestly.

Sergio didn’t want to get in the way of his son becoming independent, but he didn’t want to hurt him either. He remembered going to his own father when he was little, fearing that a monster was hiding under his bed. “What, don’t tell me you’re a baby?” he had taunted, in a misguided attempt to toughen Sergio up. While, in facing the problem alone, he’d found that there was nothing to be afraid of, his father’s words had had an unintended consequence; being labeled a baby for being afraid had left him doubting himself. Sergio didn’t want to repeat his father’s mistake.

“You know, mijo,” he began, reassuringly, “the same thing happened to me when I was little. But I just went to sleep as usual and everything turned out alright.”

“Can you stay with me?” Gil asked.

Sergio decided it couldn’t hurt to stay with Gil a little longer. Hoping to lighten the mood, he flopped cartoonishly onto the bed, bouncing his small son up from the mattress and making him laugh. Seizing the opportunity, he got up and flopped again, bouncing Gil and causing him to giggle hysterically. But the third time Sergio flopped, there came a loud crack from under the bed, and it slammed into the floor

“Uh oh . . .” Sergio said, as he and Gil stared at each other in shock. He stood up to look, and his suspicions were confirmed; the bed frame had collapsed under the weight of his fall.

“Okay, mijo, you can sleep with me and Mamá for tonight,” he said. “Tomorrow will get you a new bed frame, and nobody’s gonna get you, okay?”

“Okay,” Gil said.

As they left the bedroom, Sergio turned out the light and closed the door behind them. He hadn’t noticed the evil clawed hand, half sticking out from under the collapsed bed frame, crushed and lifeless.

It had followed Sergio since he was a little boy, but, until recently, had been scared away by Reina. When she was alive, it couldn’t get past the front door, but once she’d passed, it had made its way into the house. It had been waiting, that night, for Sergio to turn out the light and close the door.

But now, finally, it was dead.