Stupefying Stories 26

All Those Monsters

by Roxana Arama

Codrin had reached the worst part of the day: bedtime. While his mom picked up toys around the bedroom, he tried thinking of Denise, the cutest girl in the world, and in Seattle, and the whole entire second grade. The curly, dark hair in two side-braids, and the round glasses… Codrin so wanted to wear glasses too, like Jack from The Magic Tree House, but the doctor had told him his eyes were two twenties.

Was Denise in bed too, waiting for a story from her… Who were her adults? Codrin had his mom. His dad lived at the old house. Did Denise live with her parents? He didn’t know her well—she’d joined his class soon after his lower front tooth started wiggling—so he hadn’t spoken to her yet because he sometimes made a silly hissing sound in the middle of words. “Denise” had an “s” and he was in danger of hissing her name. She’d laugh at him so hard, like she did when Fatimah said she’d heard a gecko but meant echo.

His mom filled his faded Elmo cup with water and set it on the nightstand, under the new poster of Dracula’s castle. His dad had brought that poster from a recent trip to see the family in Romania. The castle was in the middle of a forest and had stone walls and red roofs, but Codrin hated it because his dad had also told him how Vlad the Impaler used to kill people in a terrible way, with lots of blood and pain. Having that poster by his bed made him fear nighttime even more. (…)