Bedtime for My Daughter

Note: This story is my submission for the Wikia Paranormal short story contest.
My daughter finds it hard to fall asleep at bedtime; more often than not, she is up until ten. I suppose that wouldn’t be so bad, but she is only four and she should be sleeping much more. But it never really bothered me, I stay up rather late as well, and with her near me I have someone else to talk to.

Sometimes we have some wild discussions about aliens, horses of all kinds (some with wings some with horns, the kinds of horses all little girls dream about), but tonight we were talking about monsters. This struck me as a little odd because she never wanted to talk about anything scary, and the kind of monsters she was talking about were rather frightening to me. For whatever reason she thought up this monster with jagged teeth to rip into flesh, it had scales like a fish, slimy and tough, like the armor of an armadillo. But that wasn’t the scariest part, that honor was giving to what it will do to its prey.

This monster will stalk you for a while, perhaps even get you to trust it, then attack. When I asked my daughter how that happens, she couldn’t think of an answer. Maybe it was because she was still young and couldn’t think of how to manipulate people that well yet. But, regardless I was happy she couldn’t think of one.

She had fallen asleep at ten-fifteen, which was lucky for me because she started to freak me out with all that monster talk. I picked her up and carried her off to bed. But my eyes widen when I was about to lay her down, she was already in bed. I looked down at the child I was carrying, its eyes were open and black.