He seeked the coldness away from the blinding ball of light in the sky, he craved the shadows and despair and always, always, the cold.

At night, he traveled. Searching. He was hungry, and the only thing that could feed him was the petrified and saddened; the broken humans who also craved the darkness.

He found a richly decorated house, one where a certain room leaked everything he could wish for at all. Dark, cold, despair. And a human girl.

A little girl, as young and little as him. He chose the one hiding place there was; beneath the bed. Close to her.

Instantly, his demonic aura filled the small room like a tidal wave of oil. The child started crying, and he fed off the sound. Fed off, and emboldened it.

She started screaming for her parents, wailing. Both came running, horrified that it sounded as if the child were dying. Yet when the girl cried about a monster under her bed, their noses curled and they scoffed at her.

They revoked her meals. Clothes. Blankets. Forced her to apologize for waking them up for something like a 'monster under the bed.' And they left, leaving the child with one blanket, sniffling.

Still, he fed. Her despair was his treasure. Her despair was his fuel.

He watched her curl up, eyes clenched shut and her brown hair concealing childish features.

Now, he crept from the shadows. He got closer and closer, enjoying her shaking and trembling. He could almost laugh that they were the same age, yet he were something that frightened her to no end.

The girl turned, opening her eyes. They were so brown, so deep and pained and fearful. And they glanced over him.

Yet, he was enchanted with her round cheeks and splotchy face and dark hair like his but shiny and feathery-soft looking. And a pink shirt that slanted across her frame while she clenched a blanket that wouldn't protect her.

She was cold. She was scared. Hungry. Sad. Lonely. And utterly, utterly, bent to her parent's will.

It seemed as if the monster that had come to feed off of the child morphed into something of a protector, a protector against the real monsters she faced.

Her parents.

***

And so it begins.