Every night

He could see dark shapes crossing the floor. Those were the alligators, the ones that lived in the tiles on the floor. They lift dark ripples as they moved, and he knew he had to be very careful if was to get to the kitchen without stepping on them. Dodging them was very difficult, but if he stepped on even one, he would die, naturally. In a horrible and gruesome manner, eaten alive by his own floor!

The thing to do of course, was to jump out of the room, avoiding any contact with the floor at all. He gave the matter some thought, and decided that while it was undignified to jump out of his room from bed to carpet to door to kitchen, it was even more undignified to be eaten by the floor. And probably more painful too.

He hunched a little, trying to aim the jump properly. The rug was a little over a foot from the bed, but that was only to the untrained eye. He knew that it was going to be a long jump, the hardest in his life. To make things worse, there was an unfathomably deep chasm in between the bed and the carpet. Populated by alligators that swam through the air for good measure.

Mustering his courage, and sending up a quick prayer to whoever was listening, he jumped.

It was a terrific jump, and he flew past at an unimaginable speed, the alligators snapping at the empty air he left behind! He landed with a thud, and was sprawled over the carpet. He looked quite pleased with himself, but then remembered that he wanted water. In the kitchen. One more fantastic jump would get him out of the room, but then there was the whole hall to trek through, and the kitchen after that!

A determined frown set on his face, and he started to plan out the next jump, which would take him clear to the doorway. Just then the shadows in front of him stopped squirming, and took shape, an alligator head rushing out of the water right at him.

Without waiting, he jumped again, straight at the door. As the wind whizzed by his face, he could see the giant alligator forming up below him, and rising, rising fast with its jaws wide open. Terror struck, he kicked out, and with the tip of his foot, hit the floor, and hit its nose, and was propelled to the doorway!

And just like that, he was out of the room. The hallway loomed in front of him. He could swear that every night it grew a little, and then shrunk back to normal by morning. The end of the hall always seemed further away at night, and taller too, like a mouth. The door frame in the distance gleamed like teeth in the darkness, and from all around him, he could hear snickering.

The ritual had to be followed now, to get to the water safely, and he ignored the monsters he could see all around the hallway, halp glimpses of demons beyond imagining out of the corner of his eyes. Instead, he stepped to the right, and blindly groped for the light switch. As the beasts saw where his hand was headed, they lunged angrily at him, horrible wails rising from all sides, but it was too late!

He had flicked the switch, and bound as they were by their strange rules, they all had to go hide behind the lightbulb. Watching carefully, he was able to just catch a rushed glimpse of the monsters shrinking to a size that would let them all fit behind the bulb. The light from the bulb in the hall also shone of the kitchen door, and he walked up to it, unafraid. The fridge though, was in the wrong corner of the kitchen, the one bit where the light from the hall wouldn't reach. And she was standing there.

He didn't know where she'd come from. He didn't even know what her name was. He'd always been too scared to ask. Because he knew that she was real. She was a young girl, around the same age as he was. She was wearing a brown dress, which was ragged, and her eyes were sunken, and her skin was the pallid hue of a drowning victim. Her teeth could be seen through a hole in her lip, clear, white teeth.

As always, he stepped carefully into the kitchen, facing her. The light switch was now directly behind him, and he considered once again whether he shouldn't just retreat. To turn the switch around he'd have to turn away from her, and hope that she still couldn't step out of the shadow. Turning, he flicked the switch and turned back as quickly as he could, and as the tube light flickered on, she disappeared.

He walked straight to the fridge and took out a bottle of water, and hurriedly walked to the kitchen door. Leaning as far as he could, he got into the doorway, his back to the fridge, his finger poised over the light switch. He knew the next part had to be quick. He tapped the kitchen light off, and knew without looking that she was back. And he ran, straight through the hall, barely managing to flick the bulb off, and alligators forgotten in the face of more recent monsters, he ran straight into his room, and straight into his bed, pulling the covers over his head. And it was only half an hour later that he remembered that he was thirsty, and pulled down the sheet, and took a sip from the hard won bottle.