The monster under the bed (Mille & Soup)

Anaya had no idea who had owned this house before her, but she couldn't help but think them foolish for letting it go so cheaply. It didn’t matter, their misfortune was her good fortune. When the house had failed to sell quickly, they had paid for it to be redecorated. Even that hadn’t worked, and they had been desperate to sell by this point. The price had come lower and lower until finally, Anyana had purchased it for herself for only a fraction of what it was actually worth.

At twenty-three years old she had a good solid job with an accountancy firm, and that had gone a long way towards being able to afford the place. All the same, she had been forced to take out a mortgage to make up for what money she didn’t have. But that didn’t matter. In perhaps ten years she could pay it off, or if she decided to move, she would sell the house on again and make a profit.

Even as cheap as it was, it had taken nearly all of her savings for the required deposit. For the next month or so, she was going to have to live quite frugally. Perhaps she could rent out one of the spare rooms for a little while. Unfortunately, it meant doing all of her own cleaning to get the house ready to live in in the meantime.

That was why for the past few hours Anyana had been down on her hands and knees, up on a ladder, and hunched over scrubbing things clean. The house that she had bought was an absolute bargain. New furniture, appliances and flooring had obviously been put in recently, and it even looked as though it had been given a fresh coat of paint. Things had been very, very dusty though. The estate agent had explained that the previous owners had moved away suddenly, leaving the house completely empty for a few months. That explained the dust.

She’d finished the kitchen, bathroom, living room and bedroom by now, but it was starting to get late. There would be plenty of time to finish her work tomorrow, and only a few rooms left to go. Tired, sweaty and with a dust clinging to her, the brunette had decided that it was time to put the finishing touches into her bedroom, have a shower, and then go to sleep.

Things looked great when she was finished, but as she yawned, the young woman decided that it really was time for bed. Her clothes were all still packed away from the move, but the brunette fished a loose white t-shirt and a clean pair of pink panties out of her overnight bag. After her shower she got changed, brushed her teeth, and climbed into her brand new bed.

Exhausted from her work, within minutes she was asleep.

A house like that, at that price? Too good to be true didn't even begin to describe it. There had to be something... wrong. Like, some honest-to-god, seriously fucked up horror movie shit. That was the only way this made any sense! Sure, there was a good amount of dust, but nobody was gonna price this house like this on account of dust bunnies. Whatever the previous owners had run away from, it wasn't dust. Still, shit... this place was some serious business. Anaya had made the right call. Plus, the realtor had explained everything he'd known about the place. No deaths, no anything, just a frantic, sudden retreat.

For reasons that, unfortunately, were gonna become pretty apparent before long. In typical horror movie fashion, she was left well enough alone throughout the day. Nothing jumped out at her, no spooky scary skeletons with a bone to pick waiting in the closet. No, something more insidious was lying in wait for her, some greedy thing in the dark. Something that waited in the black space beneath the bed. Something that, as Anaya drifted to sleep, began to move.

What was that sudden wet pressure on her calf? That squeeze that began to drag her slowly, carefully to the edge of the bed? The thing that dripped and oozed, leaving a smear of green on her sheets as it pulled her? Some dark thing, some ancient thing... a thing that she was now cursed with.