Sometimes I like bedtime. My room is so nice and comfy! The carpet is blue like my grandpa’s eyes and the walls are pale, pale, so pale pink, like almost white but sometimes when the sun comes up in the morning, it shines through the cracks of my curtains and you can see the pink and it is like the pink of a carnation that can’t decide if it was growing white or pink and so it just settled somewhere in between, and I like to think that sometimes I can’t decide between being shy or friendly so I just stay somewhere in between like my walls or those flowers.

My bed is white and metal. It is curvy and twisty and sometimes when I can’t sleep, I trace the swirls with my fingers and I imagine that I’m on a roller coaster or a ski slope or the tip top of a whirly-gig and I’m just twirling around and around and nothing bad will ever happen to me. It is covered in pink blankets and blue blankets and green blankets and rainbow blankets. It is warm and twirly swirly and sometimes when I get scared at night, I just pull the blankets up, up, up, to my chin and I stay so, so, still so that no one can even see or hear me and that way I know it is going to be okay always.

Bedtime is good when we all go together. Bedtime is nice when my Winnie-the-Pooh nightlight makes the room glow like warm, sticky honey dripping from the comb. Bedtime is fun when we read until my eyelids feel so heavy even though I don’t want them to, even though I want to keep reading and thinking and laughing in the light because sometimes stories are all I have. Bedtime is sweet when I get kisses and hugs and tucked in snug-as-a-bug-in-a-rug.

Sometimes I don’t like bedtime. When the lights go out, the blue carpet turns into the ocean, deep and dark and dangerous. It rocks and rages and sometimes I’m afraid it will sink my boat and I’ll drown and no one will ever find me. When the lights go out, my porcelain dolls look at me from their shelves, the white-pink walls casting a glow, lighting up their faces, and I’m afraid they will come down and bury me in ribbons and lace and maybe in the morning, I’ll be a doll on a shelf, stuck there forever and always, and I will be searched for high and low, but no one will ever to think to look for me in my own room.

When the lights go out, my bed turns into a jail cell, but I like it. It keeps me safe from the sharks in the ocean and the dolls on the wall. If I’m not careful, though, like if I stick my hands out between the bars, or if my foot falls out from under the covers, they will get me, no matter how strong the bars are, because no matter how strong the bars are, they can always find a way in.

That’s what Henry says, at least.

When the lights go out, that’s when Henry comes. He doesn’t come every night. He doesn’t come on the nights that the books put me in a deep sleep. He doesn’t come on the nights that the door stays open a little crack so I can see the light from the living room. He doesn’t come on the nights that I fall asleep on the couch, curled up on Daddy’s legs.

But now I have to be a big girl. I have to go to bed and fall asleep in there. I have to close the door so I can be more independent. I have to turn off the lights, count my sheep, say my prayers, and sleep tight, but I can’t really, not with Henry there.

He lives in the corner of my bedroom by the closet. Up high, close to the ceiling, where it is darkest. Try as I might, Winnie-the-Pooh’s light never reaches that corner. I can’t ever see up there. During the day, it looks normal. Like any other corner in any other room. At night, it gets darker, darker, darker until finally Henry comes out, wearing his bandana over his mouth, telling me to be quiet, telling me that if I’m not a good girl, the ocean will take me or the dolls will take me. So I pull the covers up to my chin and I stay still. He can’t get me if I’m on my bed, safe within its bars.

When Henry comes, my room isn’t my room anymore. The floors are hard and splintery, covered in dust and grime. The walls are a greasy-white, dirty and stinky. There are no books, there is no Winnie-the-Pooh, the only doll in sight is tattered, missing an eye. There are no curtains, and when the sunlight comes through the dingy windows, it accentuates the must and filth of the room. There is no Daddy to that comes through the door in the morning to take me out of my bed, hanging me by my ankles, swinging me around like a monkey, because the Daddy is Henry.

Henry comes into the room and he is a real-life Henry. He isn’t filmy like when he hovers in the corner in my room. He is big and covered in dirt and stinky. He steps on the one-eyed doll and pushes the girl who lived here to the side. He pushes her and pulls her hair and yells mean things at her. He tells her that she is WORTHLESS and DIRTY and GOOD FOR NOTHING and I wonder how any Daddy could say that to any daughter and how it could ever be okay. I can’t do anything because I am safe in my bed with the covers pulled up to my chin. If I move, then he’ll know he took me with him to his house, my house, our house but not our house. My house when it was his house. If I make a peep he will leave the girl and come for me and I don’t know if I am as strong as her.

She used to cry. She used to cry a lot when she heard him come home every morning from working the night shift at the cemetery. She used to hide in her bed, with the covers pulled up to her chin, but that was until she realized she wasn’t really hiding that way, not like I can. I think she knows I’m here with her. I think it makes her feel better. But also I think it makes her feel sad because she knows that my Daddy isn’t like hers, in some way. She doesn’t cry anymore, though. She doesn’t hide anymore, though. Instead, she brushes the hair out of her eyes and braces her body for impact.

He comes in and he steps on her one-eyed doll. He calls her names and he pushes her. He stinks of old beer and stale tobacco. He is dirty and mean and I can’t stop him from hurting her because he’ll know that I can see. He’ll know and he’ll never let me have a good night’s sleep again. He’ll know and that dark corner of my room will get bigger and bigger until I’m the girl in his house and I’m not me anymore, and I really can’t be her.

So I stay still with the covers pulled up to my chin, just waiting and waiting for it to be daytime in my room, in my house, so that I can swing like a monkey and forget all about Henry and the girl for a while, but this time is different. This time when she hears Henry coming into the house, she braces herself and slips something into her sleeve. I can’t see what it is but it looks sharp and she winces from its weight. She stands so, so still and I stay so, so still and we just wait and sure enough, he comes crashing in. And he hits her and he screams and he calls her names and he smells so, so bad and I just wish I can see my Daddy and be in my room but it’s not ending and then suddenly he is on top of her and I don’t know what he is doing but it looks wrong and bad and like something a daddy should never, never do and she knows it and now the thing is coming out of her sleeve but he doesn’t see and I’m glad he doesn’t see. I see. It is a knife. It is the knife that he usually keeps strapped to his boot but she must’ve snuck it out last night before he went to work and he never noticed and now it’s in her hand and he’s on top of her and it’s so bad and it’s so wrong and I’m staying so, so still.

She plunges the knife deep, deep into his throat. He screams but I don’t care how much it hurts him and she doesn’t care how much it hurts him. She looks at me and his blood is pouring out all over her small face and she looks so much like a girl in the photo albums in my living room and I wish I knew who she was. She looks at me and she is covered and he is screaming but the screaming is getting fainter and he is getting weaker and she smiles a sad smile and she whispers “I’m sorry,” but she doesn’t whisper it at him. She whispers it at me because she knows that I’m stuck with him now, but maybe if I am strong like her I can make him go away too.

The sun shines through my curtains and the pink-white walls are there, shining down at me. My Winnie-the-Pooh nightlight is still on, but its glow is nothing compared to the sunlight streaming in. The blue of my grandpa’s eyes warms the floor and I know that I am in my room. I hear my Daddy coming. He pretends to tip-toe to my door and then crashes in and grabs me by my feet to swing me like a monkey, but something is wrong this morning. I don’t want to take the covers away from my chin. The dolls are still looking at me. And Daddy looks like Henry today.