Grown-up Fears?

Since I’ve started spending more and more time alone, I’ve noticed a few things. First of all, the Simpson’s are always on some channel somewhere. And second of all - the mind came play some pretty convincing tricks on you. Sure there are little mind games you play with yourself in a room full of people (“Did that man in house wares just wink at me?” “Did that woman over there just sneer at me?”) and so on and so forth. But when you’re alone in a dark room at 2:15 am - the mind chicanery is simply off the charts.
We all dealt with the monster-under-my-bed mindset when we were small children, I’m sure. I know for a fact that there was something…sinister going on under my bed other than broken toys and forgotten socks. When my girlfriends and I had sleepovers together, our ‘monsters’ were our main source of entertainment (that and the tracks 6 through 9 of the ‘Grease’ soundtrack). We would gratefully confess to our deepest, darkest secrets and eat dill pickle chips in the dark. Some of these stories stay with me still. One friend in particular - we’ll call her Shannon because that was her name - told me she was sure that there was a man with a machete living in her basement. He would wait until the whole family was asleep and trace his machete around the edges of their beds, lopping off any limbs that may hang over the edge of the mattress. To this day I still sleep in a neatly tucked ball, making sure not to drape over the sides in any way - after all, one can never be too sure, right?
My ‘monster’ was not quite as blood-thirsty, thank goodness. But he was stealthy, I’ll tell you. The rule was (and how I ever came up with this ‘rule’ is beyond me) that I had exactly half an hour to fall asleep. He couldn’t touch me in dream world, you see. Naturally. If I hadn’t fallen asleep, he would reach up slowly with his purple furry arm - yes, I was the only child on record to have ‘Grimace’ the McDonald’s character trapped under her bed - and drag me under into his world. Sure I protected myself by placing my stuffed animals in a strategic perimeter around me but still I only slept about 75 hours total for three years. And finally grew out of Grimace by process of elimination - I checked under my bed and in my closet ritualistically every single night. I’ve only just stopped now because the mess under there scares me more than the monsters.
What about as an adult? We should all have grown out of the mind tricks, right? But sometimes it’s just not our fault. Like when you fall asleep with your bedside lamp on and when you wake up it’s off. Off! You’re alone in the house, you know for SURE you didn’t wake up once. How did it turn itself off? Is it a ghost? Well, if it is a ghost at least it’s energy conscious. And then there are the late night, creaking footsteps, the tapping at your window that sounds nothing like a tree regardless of what everyone tells you or a sudden inexplicable drop in temperature (did you see the Sixth Sense?). I swear, the only reason I got a dog was to cover up all of these late night fears. “It was the dog” - is a resounding refrain in our house.
The thing about my dog is, she plays mental tricks on me herself. I don’t thinks she means to but…Sometimes? When I’m getting changed in my room and she’s lying on the bed watching me with her big unblinking brown eyes - there‘s something that‘s just not right. Especially when I’ve been alone in the house for some time and I’ve started to talk to her just to hear the sound of my own voice - “What are we doing today, Lily?” “Should we go for a walk or do you just want to hang out here?” - she starts to seem; human. Not in a good way. Like one of those Shaggy D.A. dog/human combos. Somewhere inside her doggy body may lurk Tim Allen in a three piece suit. And they’re both judging me I climb out of my pyjamas at 2 o’clock in the afternoon on a sunny Saturday. She watches me so intently that I can’t help saying “What?” self-consciously before covering up. And sending her out to the backyard. Where I can only assume she transforms back into just being a dog.
The only plus side to all of this? When one of the boys comes down in the night and is SURE there is a vampire watching him from a tree across the street - I believe him.