The childhood dream of the gnarled beast beneath the bed. Long rotting grin slowly opening and closing with a castanet click in thick darkness. Waiting, still.
My father would have to kneel down and reach in and make great play, a dumb show in the shadows, of pulling him out and wrestling him to the top of the stairs and then throwing him down. It was a nightly ritual.
But I knew, even then, that he would always climb back up, his pale scaly belly scraping the bare edges of each stair and then silently across carpet to creep back under the bed to wait once more.
Yellow peg teeth in darkness, stoned eye, like a well, in darkness, the weight of him, in darkness, black carved claws in darkness, saw-edged tail heavy in darkness, a spell, occult, in darkness, stilled, apprehensive, in darkness.
To wait once more for the unsleeping child to drift or forget, and let limp foot or finger fall from between sheets, and linger within reach. Waiting, still.
And now, even now, when the night is unquiet and sleep is a shadow I slip into and out of, I hear the slow slither, the click-clacking teeth, and know he climbs up still for me, and always will.
Ben Tufnell is a curator and writer based in London. His poems have appeared in Anthropocene, Entropy, La Picioletta Barca, Pangyrus, The Rialto, Shearsman and Smartish Pace, amongst others, and stories have been published in Conjunctions, Litro, Lunate, Storgy and Structo. His debut novel, THE NORTH SHORE, is published by Fleet (Little, Brown).
