What Lurks Under the Bed

I have 2 brothers. One older and a younger brother that came along after my dad remarried my step mom and is 12.5 years my junior.

My older brother and I were friends as children. We played a lot together as we were closer in age. He is 3 years and 1 week older than me.

Usually he was a fairly level kid. But every now and then he would pull one off on our mother that made us all roar with laughter.

After we were settled into our home with mother, we started back to school. I entered kindergarten and my brother entered 3rd grade, that would have made him around 9 years old.

At that time my mother did not work outside the home and looking back now it was nice to have her there to see us off to school and nice for her to be there when we jumped off the school bus in the afternoons.

Early one morning my mother came into our room to wake my sister and I up for school and left our room, crossed the living room and went into my brothers room to wake him up. We heard her tussle around on his bed and say his name several times in a questioning manner. Mother came out of his room with a questioning look on her face and asked my sister and I if we had seen our brother. She began to look around the house, half calling his name. She checked the bathroom, the back porch and finally went outside calling his name.

Back into the house she came with a concerned but irritated look on her face. Hmmmm. Where could he have gotten too. Back to his room she went. Going over to the bed she threw back the covers to make sure she hadn't missed him somehow in the wadded up blankets on his bed. As she leaned over to shake them out, calling his name again.....

out from under the bed came two hands grabbing her ankles like a vice.

MY. POOR. MOTHER.

She let out a blood curdling scream and sorta fell onto my brothers bed. In the next instant my brother was out from under the bed, holding his stomach and doubling over with laughter.
I think she did fairly well. She wanted to clobber him but keeping herself in check ordered him to stop laughing.

From that time on she woke him up from his bedroom doorway. I'm sure she also had to resist the urge to jump onto her bed at night for fear of the monster under her bed.