The assaults were getting stronger. What had started out as light scratching sounds and muffled grunting noises was quickly becoming a more discernible growling, discernible enough to know the intent of this beast. My soul was at stake and I felt I was losing the battle. Each night I lost ground, the bars seemingly becoming less and less a barricade and more and more a cell that would hold the beast's meal until it could be devoured. I saw no more than its quilted hide, which resembled a patched quilt to disguise its grotesque form from the possible light of the bathroom as tired eyes searched to return to the warm bed. Its only other revealing marks were the blood red eyes that pierced the dark and sent cold spikes through you that could make your blood stop flowing. Now I was noticing the rusted claws sliding through the bars but unable to get the entire hoof through the separation of the bars. It was only a matter of time, sooner or later I would lose my guard and roll too close to the bars and succumb to the beasts mental powers.

I look back and try to tell myself that these things were simply the symptoms of a then overactive imagination and that I most likely saw a quilt that allowed me to conjure the beast under it and under my bed. The showdown was not a spectacular debacle of good over evil and is still sometimes dismissed in my mind as a progression of childhood development, albeit somewhat late by measurable age standards. I was approximately five and a half years old and still plagued by the impending doom of my confrontation with this blanket beast when something changed. One night my parents were out and my oldest brother was in charge. I was allowed to fall asleep on the couch in the living room while my brother sat by the wood stove watching the tv. Perhaps it was because I was near to a protector or simply that the beast could not remove himself from his physical confines of beneath that crib but I did not face him that night. Something new was to take its place which served as an alliance to combat the beast.