One sleepless night

No one can sleep in this house. Is it something in the water?

Stuffed onto the couch like a tall man in a short casket, he twisted and turned over in an effort to get comfortable, his knees always bent, feet turned in then out, hands joined at his belly or behind his head or stuffed between the cushions. He could no longer remember what he’d said to anger the queen to make her send him into exile on the couch.
    It’s funny, he thought, as he noticed for the first time the crack in the living room ceiling and how badly the fans needed to be dusted and how the ceiling needed to be repainted, how I’ve never noticed all that even though I spend so much time in this room. Too busy living. Too busy ignoring the little signs of everything falling apart. He swore to himself that he’d find time to do it some day. Fix everything. Not tonight. No matter how many hours it took to quiet his thoughts and forget the crick in his neck he had to fall asleep.
    He marked his page and dropped his book to the floor. He’d reread the same paragraph four times but couldn’t remember what it was about. As he reached behind himself to turn off the side table lamp he saw his daughter in her pink pajamas standing in the doorway with a look that said ‘I’m sorry, Dad.’
    “You can’t sleep either, Janie?”
    “I’m scared,” she said.
    Upright on the couch now, he silently resigned himself to another sleepless night on a lumpy couch that should have been thrown to the curb months ago, and he motioned for her to come over. “Come here, babe.” Janie glanced back toward the dark hallway as though at an approaching pursuer, and then she rushed over.
    With her head rested on his shoulder, she sniffled. “I’m sorry,” she said with a tiny voice. If she could have she looked like she would have sunk into and disappeared within the couch cushions.
    “What’s wrong? You don’t have to say you’re sorry.” He took her chin in his hand, and she looked up at him. Two moist streaks down her cheeks framed her frown and showed her silent pain. She thinks she’s too old to be scared, he thought. She thinks I’ll be  mad at her. “Now, wait a minute,” he said with sudden seriousness. “Did you sneak out on your bike and go rob a bank somewhere? Did you bust some bad guys out of prison?” His words tickled her, but she stifled her giggles. “Are you the infamous supervillian the police have been looking for? Are you?” She laughed, then told him to stop it because he wasn’t funny. That poked him in the wrong place, apparently, for he used his fingers to flatten his nose into a blob of flesh, widen his mouth to reveal his pink gums and swaying tongue, and spread his eyes into coin slots. Eyes racing from side to side, he impersonated the vocal inflections of a hyena crossed with a wild turkey. Through the whole display his daughter sat patiently with arms crossed and jaws clenched, refusing to breathe or even to move, determined not to crack a smile. When her father finally got up and started dancing the funky chicken, however, her resolve melted and she erupted with laughter.
    “You’re so weird,” she said, when the music in her father’s head had ended and he’d sat down again at the couch.
    His response was full of pauses. “Well, since you’re half-me, this is probably what you have to look forward to,” he said, still trying to catch his breath. “Being old and weird.”
    It took her a moment to think on that, and when she spoke again it was obvious she’d been thinking about something else. “Can you make me a bed on the floor?”
    “Sweetie,” he said. “Your bed’s so much more comfortable. What is it? You can tell me. Do I need to go check for monsters?” he said, stroking his daughter’s head.
     When Janie was five-years-old she developed an irrational fear of the dark and its imaginary denizens. To quell his daughter’s terror Gene would march into her quiet room and shine a flashlight under her bed and in the closet behind her hanging clothes and behind the curtains and in her toy chest and in her dresser drawers, anywhere darkness lived. Only after he’d satisfied his daughter could she climb into bed. Even then, however, she’d made sure to wrap blankets around her feet and her arms so that she wouldn’t wake up missing fingers and toes. That was two years ago now.
    “There’s no such thing as monsters. I already know that. I’m not a baby.” She had nearly outgrown her phobia of dimly lit rooms. Sometimes the hall light would be on in the morning when he’d turned it off the night before, and Gene would smile and laugh to himself. For some reason, his daughter thought she had to play tough.
    “Well, what’s there to be afraid of now that the monsters have all gone back to their home planet?” he said.
    According to her father, who’d conceived this story to appease his daughter’s vivid imagination, a long, long time ago monsters came from outer space, from a galaxy far, far, far away, much farther than grandma’s house, much farther than China, much farther than the moon, as did dogs and cats and pigs and horses and even humans. But when they all arrived on Earth the monsters, who were only looking for a new home like everyone else, were not accepted into society because they were either too hairy or too stinky or too ugly. In the beginning, they hid in shadows, behind rocks and in treetops, because no one wanted to see them in the open. Soon many angry and sad monsters decided to leave Earth and go back home where they wouldn’t have to hide all the time. Some didn’t want to leave, though, because earth was now their home, and so they stayed. But soon after the other monsters had left, the ones who’d stayed became even angrier at their situation and resented with all their hearts that they were not accepted by humans and cats and dogs and all the others who got along just fine together and seemed so happy. These slighted monsters decided they’d get their revenge by hiding under beds and in closets, in forests and even on city streets, coming out only at night to scare the little children of all the other animals on earth at bedtime. Human children, they soon learned through experience, were the easiest to scare. Having watched these human children for so long, the monsters knew that the little children would soon grow up to be big children, and so the monsters targeted them using fear as a weapon. They left all the other animal children alone and just focused on humans, mainly because all the other animal children considered humans scarier  than the monsters. By targeting the humans, the monsters hoped to produce a world full of terrified people who would in effect work to perpetuate terror in their own ways, making the world a place where chaos reigned, a place transformed by fear into a realm of monsters of all shapes, sizes and species. The monsters hoped to create a place like home where they could fit in.  Over the course of history, for that matter, they’ve had great success.
    One night, when it was obvious his daughter would not sleep in her room again without the miraculous intervention of a higher power, Gene said he’d had enough with those insolent monsters and now had no other choice but to have a meeting with the leader of the monsters, who was, of course, living under little Janie’s bed. Before sending her to the living room where everything was safe, he told Janie to be brave and wait patiently for his return, for he would talk some sense into this monster king. Then he crept to her bedroom with a flashlight paving his path and a broom held out before him like a lance. Five minutes later he strode back into the living room with his head held high and his chest puffed out with the pride of a true universal diplomat who’d just secured a treaty between two eternal enemies.  
    “We reached an agreement,” he said. “The monster king will return to his planet with all his monster wives and monster children and monster servants and monster soldiers living in the world if I bring him a gift, a symbol of mankind’s desire for peace.”
    “What’s he want?” said Janie with awe in her eyes.
    “Four Oreos and a glass of milk,” said Gene. “Apparently he’s very hungry and thirsty from being under your bed for so long.”
    Janie laughed and clapped and said, “We’ve got some in the kitchen!”   

    Her father took the offering of cookies and milk on a silver platter back to the monster king. He sat on his daughter’s bed and ate the cookies and drank the milk, thinking all the while that his daughter would soon grow up and think him a sad old man instead of her personal bodyguard and entertainer. When he’d wiped the crumbs from his mouth and the milk mustache from his upper lip, he returned to the living room with the empty platter and glass. “They are leaving now on their invisible spaceship. They’ll be no more monsters on the Earth ever again,” he said. He was a mighty hero that night and got a long hug for his effort. Janie fell into dreams soon after she’d fallen into bed, and slept the whole night through, smiling, toes protruding from the end of her blanket. Before retiring to his own bedroom he left her door cracked and turned on the hall light, just in case.
    Soon she’d grown up enough to know her father had made it all up. And then she began to get scared again at bedtime. She’d tuck her toes and fingers in and ask her father to leave a light on in the hall and crack the door when he left.
    Somehow, growing up can make a child more fearful of life and of the world. Silly fears of monsters under beds transform into realistic fears of their parents’ financial distress and their own nightmares about death. Gene knew nothing he said would change that. Most children see their parents as superheroes who fear nothing and know everything. Only when they grow up do they realize that their parents were only enlarged versions of  frightened children. It scared Gene to think his daughter would soon be old enough to recognize his fear, and she’d know he was anything but a superhero.
                    
    There on the couch Janie was silent for a moment, unsure of what to say or whether she should say anything at all, when the only words she could think of terrified her. She was ashamed of her fear, Gene thought, as though it were a habit she couldn’t kick. She was quite grown-up already, which alarmed her father who saw her self-consciousness as a badge of maturity which she was still too young to wear.
    “Janie,” said Gene, taking her chin in his hand. “You can talk to me and I’ll listen, okay. I won’t even say a thing. You can tell me anything.”
    She thought about that. “Like when I say prayers?”
    “Yes, just like that, only you’ll be talking to me, not God.”
    “And you won’t say anything, like God?”
    “I’ll say something if you want me to,” he said.
    For a moment she seemed to collect herself and her thoughts, breathing deeply and closing her eyes to calm herself, and then she said, “Do you know anything about ghosts?” She looked up at him pleadingly as though her father were a doctor and she a patient asking about the results of a biopsy.
    He almost laughed at her serious expression and her out-of-nowhere question. Laughing at his child’s serious inquiry would compare to removing his rabbit suit at a costume party to reveal that he was actually a balding man in a suit and tie who thought everyone else was acting ridiculously childish.  If he wanted to continue their relationship of trust and honesty he would have to play along. This was Janie’s party and at the moment she felt comfortable with her father and his costume.
    “Ghosts?” he said. “Like Casper? Big and white and floating around?”
    “No,” she said. “Like dead people.”
    To hear her speak of such grave matters nearly made him cry. He didn’t want her to grow up so soon, to concern herself with the world of adults, which was full of violence and injustice and sadness and death. He wanted to shield her from those realities for as long as he could because he knew the day would soon come when he could no longer protect her from the world’s brutal truths. He only hoped to show her so many beautiful things about life and the world that once she began to see all the devastatingly ugly things she’d see them as a few weeds in a vast field of sunflowers.
    Death was not an ugly thing. Gene wanted to tell his daughter that death was just the natural end of life. It shouldn’t frighten people, but it does because they can’t understand why they die rather than live forever. And most people don’t like to get scared. So they condemn what frightens them and what they don’t understand until they see those things, like death, as very ugly things. Or they make up places where they’ll go once they die so that death doesn’t seem so scary and ugly. He wanted to say all of that.
    Did Gene want to begin a philosophical conversation about life and death and the meaning of it all with his daughter on the living room couch at three in the morning? No. He imagined he’d have more fun and more success pulling his own teeth.
    “Well, darling,” he said, still unsure of the direction he’d take, knowing every word was a step down a long, rocky road. “I’ve never met any ghosts. And I consider myself a likeable kind of guy, too. So if ghosts really existed then I bet they’d like a guy like me enough to at least say hello. But they never have. See? So I don’t really believe ghosts exist.”
    “Do you know any dead people?”
    If she only knew, he thought, how many people he’d known over the years who were now dead, and in how many different ways they’d died, she would never want to leave the house again. She’d probably never sleep again. “I knew people in the past who are dead now. Yes.”
    “Well, do you see them?”
    “No,” he said.
    “Do you try  to talk to them?”    
    “Once in a while, yes.”
    “Do they talk back?”
    “No.”
    “Well, why do you talk to them?”
    “I guess it’s a way for me to talk to someone without them saying anything back. Even though they’re dead, they’re alive in my heart. They live in my memories. I keep them with me wherever I go. So I can talk to them whenever I want about anything I want. And I know they won’t tell anybody else what we talked about.”
    She looked down at the back of her hand. “Like talking to God.”
    “Yes,” he said.
    She thought about this for a moment. “Suzie said she saw a ghost at her grandmother’s funeral.”
    “Suzie’s a girl in your class?”
    “Yeah. She’s younger than me. But she saw a ghost. And I haven’t.”
    “And what did she say about it?
    “It was standing over by her grandmother in her casket. She said it looked like an old lady standing in the sunshine. But she said there wasn’t a window. She went to tell her mom but it was gone.”
    “And what do you think about that?”
    “I think she’s crazy. Why would a ghost want to be at a funeral? If I could fly around and go anywhere like a ghost can then I wouldn’t be at a funeral.”
    “Where would you be?”
    “Um…“ said Janie, deep in thought, one finger on her chin. A smile came to her face as she settled on an answer. “I know-I’d be at Disney World!”
              
 

Author's Note

All thoughts and comments are welcome. Thanks for reading. (The next chapter will be added soon.)

Reviews

[bluessadmood]

lovely writing ,strange how a child imagination can go so wild and look very reasonable ,i really wonder ,i liked the dialogue between father and daughter ,and how he uses tricks to convince her and calm her fears ,it tells a lot how a relation between father and children should be ,i liked it a lot ,you tell a great story here ,and its wonderful,thank you ,moayad

[dc]

I really enjoyed this.
It reminded me of the time I convinced my younger sister the boogie man was really just a bad dancer.

"Four Oreos and a glass of milk," said Gene. "Apparently he's very hungry and thirsty from being under your bed for so long." - This made me laugh. : )

[Celtic Cat]

aww...this is so great. You are definitely a great story teller....especially strong in your openings and vivid imagery. Love these characters and this situation. It's just so darn realistic that you can feel yourself on that darn couch, cursing for not throwing it out. Especially it being your known exile. How sad. But...true. I like the blatancy of the seven year old...it's so great and perfect. It's endearing that she feels left out cuz she hasn't seen a ghost like her friend did. Of course, having said that...what a set up for future fumblings! Can you say Peer Pressure? You've touched a lot of nerves in this one. From begrudging insomnia and poor maintenance to trying to protect our young from harsh realities....you've taken me a great many places in a very short amount of time. In short, you make me want to read again. Bravo! (and thanks!!)

ok...something pulled me into reading the other reviews....and I'm guessing Nicole is a friend of yours....so you don't mind the feedback. I gotta disagree, too, though...I really liked that whole story about the monsters and everything coming from outer space...and the details about the oreo-cookie and milk treaty were fabulous. Whether as CBoylan suggests (and may have just spoiled a plot line I haven't read yet) or not...it's a cool tale that shows how much the father actually cares about his daughter. He could have just said something really lame, but he didn't. He took the time to make up his own fairy tale to cure her daughter of her fears...so that really does a LOT of revealing about who this guy is and what the relationship with his daughter is like. I love her trying not to laugh....and him finally busting out with the chicken dance...another very telling bit about the dad and daughter. She's in the midst of some deep thinking....and he just wants his little girl happy...at any cost. So....I'd keep it all in. It's a great intro to your characters....even the absent mom in the scene is a little telling as well. I love this, I think it's great...and I'm on to the next bit. (in a hurry)

oh....and a note about the RULES.....it's nice to learn 'em....but that doesn't mean you can't break 'em. So while Nicolle may be attempting to keep your literary butt in literary line....don't lose your spirit and nuances in the process. Like one of the lead singers from Heart said about vocal training...."they can train the rock n roll right out of your voice". Never quelch your voice...in the spirit of literary correctedness or not. It's a strong one...and it'll keep your readers captive.

[Solst Rapture]

Remarkable. You are a very competent writer and this was an absolute pleasure to read. This has a place waiting for it in every book shop in the world. I'm looking forward to the next chapter. It's very nice to have come across you.

[Raef C. Boylan]

Nicole Hellene's review is the most thorough here, but I disagree with most of it.

I liked the detailed description of the monster plot and truce; we learn later that Gene's trying to write a book, so this is like a demonstration of his imagination being powerful enough to convince a kid, as opposed to coming up with a lame 'trust me: they don't exist'. Maybe when the whole book's here, i'll have another look with this in mind and let you know if, in my opinion, it could do with chopping down - but at the moment, this is your style. You give us 3-D characters instead of 2-D and I appreciate that.

It really isn't easy to show so much of your character's mind when he or she is not narrating the story themselves...I don't know if you do this to challenge yourself, or because you prefer not to write in the 'first person'; a fixed narrator can limit your reader's access to all of your other characters, whereas when you're an outsider-narrator, it's like having mind-reading abilities [albeit limited ones].
I didn't notice any places where the narration stood out as having changed in depth [and this is my second read] - but I'll keep an eye out for it.

Nicole's review reads like she maybe regarded this as an entire short story rather than a first chapter. When I'm reading a realistic novel, I don't want clear-cut themes or messages...life isn't like that. Especially not in the introductory chapter. So it's fine that nothing in particular got resolved, since this part is for us to get to know some of your characters, to get a feel of them and know a little about their situations.

Yeah, this is more a counter-review than a review. I just thought you should see how your readers' opinions differ with regards to the written style of this story.

I'll be back to offer some better constructive critique someday soon.
Overall though, a good write. I enjoyed reading this.

[Lucinda Bogart]

Adding some notes...

[Nicole Hellene]

According to her father, who'd conceived this story to appease his daughter's vivid imagination, a long, long time ago monsters came from outer space, from a galaxy far, far, far away, much farther than grandma's house, much farther than China, much farther than the moon, as did dogs and cats and pigs and horses and even humans. But when they all arrived on Earth the monsters, who were only looking for a new home like everyone else, were not accepted into society because they were either too hairy or too stinky or too ugly. In the beginning, they hid in shadows, behind rocks and in treetops, because no one wanted to see them in the open. Soon many angry and sad monsters decided to leave Earth and go back home where they wouldn't have to hide all the time. Some didn't want to leave, though, because earth was now their home, and so they stayed. But soon after the other monsters had left, the ones who'd stayed became even angrier at their situation and resented with all their hearts that they were not accepted by humans and cats and dogs and all the others who got along just fine together and seemed so happy. These slighted monsters decided they'd get their revenge by hiding under beds and in closets, in forests and even on city streets, coming out only at night to scare the little children of all the other animals on earth at bedtime. Human children, they soon learned through experience, were the easiest to scare. Having watched these human children for so long, the monsters knew that the little children would soon grow up to be big children, and so the monsters targeted them using fear as a weapon. They left all the other animal children alone and just focused on humans, mainly because all the other animal children considered humans scarier than the monsters. By targeting the humans, the monsters hoped to produce a world full of terrified people who would in effect work to perpetuate terror in their own ways, making the world a place where chaos reigned, a place transformed by fear into a realm of monsters of all shapes, sizes and species. The monsters hoped to create a place like home where they could fit in. Over the course of history, for that matter, they've had great success.
One night, when it was obvious his daughter would not sleep in her room again without the miraculous intervention of a higher power, Gene said he'd had enough with those insolent monsters and now had no other choice but to have a meeting with the leader of the monsters, who was, of course, living under little Janie's bed. Before sending her to the living room where everything was safe, he told Janie to be brave and wait patiently for his return, for he would talk some sense into this monster king. Then he crept to her bedroom with a flashlight paving his path and a broom held out before him like a lance. Five minutes later he strode back into the living room with his head held high and his chest puffed out with the pride of a true universal diplomat who'd just secured a treaty between two eternal enemies.

Wow you're long winded. Just to let you know I got to this point, looked at how insanely huge the paragraph was and dropped my jaw to the ground. Delete it, it's not moving the story forward and it's taking up space. If you're going to keep it, cut it down to one sentence because to be honest the only person who really cares about the epitaph of monsters is the daughter and a reader is just going to get overwhelmed and move on.

"Four Oreos and a glass of milk," said Gene with one finger in the air.

--> said Gene (end) or said Gene, finger in the air (if you must). Stephen King says that quotes should be strong enough to stand on their own without any more instruction after "said so-and-so." We already know he's got his finger in the air or we can sense it through his tone of voice.

Somehow, growing up can make a child more fearful of life and of the world. Silly fears of monsters under beds transform into realistic fears of their parents' financial distress and their own nightmares about death. Gene knew nothing he said would change that. Most children see their parents as superheroes who fear nothing and know everything. Only when they grow up do they realize that their parents were only enlarged versions of frightened children. It scared Gene to think his daughter would soon be old enough to recognize his fear, and she'd know he was anything but a superhero.

I take it this is the epiphany of the story. Here's the deal, it's a good epiphany, but that's the thing, it's a very well known epiphany that we all have when we're about 15 and realize parents suck. This type of stuff appeals to the teen genre because they haven't gotten to it yet, but the rest of the world has, so if you're going to write about something we already know about, it better be the best darn description of a rose by any other name smelling sweet that we've ever read. In other words, prose is your weapon of mass destruction, use it in the absence of story substance. Also if this is the epiphany, don't just throw it at us, disperse it throughout the story or hide it and make us find it ourselves and also leave it open for interpretation so you don't give an audience a chance to disagree with you.

She felt ashamed of her fear as though it were a habit she couldn't kick.

Rule #13 that William Gibson seems to follow, never ever use the phrase "she/he felt�" if you can't show it through character action and reaction then it doesn't belong in the story. Reword this or just delete it because we get it anyway.

To hear her speak of such grave matters nearly made him cry. He didn't want her to grow up so soon, to concern herself with the world of adults, which was full of violence and injustice and sadness and death. He wanted to shield her from those realities for as long as he could because he knew the day would soon come when he could no longer protect her from the world's brutal truths. He only hoped to show her so many beautiful things about life and the world that once she began to see all the devastatingly ugly things she'd see them as a few weeds in a vast field of sunflowers.
Death was not an ugly thing. Gene wanted to tell his daughter that death was just the natural end of life. It shouldn't frighten people, but since they can't understand why they die rather than live forever they get scared. And most people don't like to get scared. So they condemn what frightens them and what they don't understand until they see those things, like death, as very ugly things. Or they make up places where they'll go once they die so that death doesn't seem so scary and ugly. He wanted to say all of that.
Did Gene want to begin a philosophical conversation about life and death and the meaning of it all with his daughter on the living room couch at three in the morning? No. He imagined he'd have more fun and more success pulling his own teeth.

Another example, you're delving into your character's mind and showing it to us. There's nothing wrong with doing that, it's just that it has to be done a certain way, and if it's not in the first person, then its hard to pull off (campy). In the third person, again, use actions. Instead of these drawn out paragraphs, just say something about his hand quivering and how he looked at his daughter with pained eyes, like she was growing up too fast. Quick, concise, to the point, time is money so don't waste it.

To comment on the second part of the story, bluntly, you lost me. It had absolutely nothing to do with the first part of the story and had no point or meaning. Your characters didn't learn anything and didn't resolve anything. I also felt like you wrote two different stories and stuck them together on the same page.

To comment on the entire story, I'm not quite sure what it was about. Was it about growing up or facing fear, dead people, god, or all of the above? There didn't seem to be a clear problem or a clear solution and I didn't grow as a reader by reading your story. However, sentence structure wise, it was coherent and grammatically well written to the point where I could sit and actually read the whole thing, which is saying a lot because the majority of people here can't write a decent sentence to save their lives. The only time I really got officially bored was with your out-of-place monster story. All in all, not the best thing I've read, certainly not the worse. Clean it up, shorten it, clarify your message to the reader and it may become something yet. Thank you for sharing.

[♥ Courtney &hear..]

Oh my god i loved it. I remembered when I had silly fears of the unknown in the dark and all this brought back memories of when id have my dad check every nook and cranny of my room for anything that might be lurking about. You did a wonderful job here!!!!!!!