There Was Something Under My Bed

When I was a little girl of about 4 or 5 me and my mother lived alone in an apartment. The apartment had two bedrooms and me and my mother shared one.

Well, one night I was in our bedroom while my mother was in the kitchen washing dishes. I was sitting with my back up against the bed and I has my dolls all lined up beside me against the bed and against my mother's bed. I was talking to them about the Devil, saying that he was bad and to beware of him when I felt something knock on my back three times from under the bed. I did not look under the bed. I got up and ran out to my mother and told her. Now, my mother was into religion then and she did believe me. She had gone through a divorce from my father who was a minister but, believe me, was a horrible, abusive person. She went into the bedroom and read a passage from the Bible. Nothing like that happened again, but I was terrified to go into that bedroom alone or to the bathroom since it was just a few steps down the hall.

The only other things I used to see were black "rats", as I called them, run out of the wall and across the floor and into the opposite wall. I never saw them clearly, mind you, they were only a blur. But I'm not sure I would have wanted to get a good look. Thank God I never did. This is the only story I have for now, and believe me, those of you out there who are nonbelievers will never know just how much I wish this story weren't true. I still have trouble to this day sleeping in a bed thats up off of the floor. I'm struggling with myself not to get rid of the frame on my new bed and put it down on the floor where I know there will be no space underneath. You can't possibly know what kind of horror that instills in a child and they are condemned to carry that with them forever.