Maxine had trouble sleeping that night. If it wasn't for the summer storm that ripped through the sky above her, she would have been sound asleep... well, more or less.

There was a lot that went wrong.

For one, her bed was infested with bed bugs. Do note that the word "infested" should not be taken lightly—they were swarming in there. This was made clear she had made the mistake of picking up her pillow. Those beady little bugs clumped together, made a clicking bug-ball, and then fell off of her pillow before crawling around on the sheets.

Gross.

It got worse, too! Both of her uncles were up and about the house all night, making a ruckus as the cleaned up the house... and if you were wondering, yes. They were married—at least, they wore matching wedding bands on their hands, praying that there would be a day where they could legally be considered as such.

If you were wondering where the second uncle came from, Uncle Wesley was visiting. He had gotten there just that night.

Maxine remembered how scared she was when she first the man. While he was a lot less masculine than her blood-related uncle (as in, a lot less masculine), there was no doubting the fact that he was twice as crazy. He even looked the part! That matted, mouse brown hair of his was even longer than Maxine's, and so curly that if he had stretched it down just a little, it would have reached well past his shoulder (which was where Maxine's hair stopped). There was a bright silver crucifix around his neck, knives and holy water hanging around his waist, and cloves of garlic strung into a necklace that hung over his chest. He wore leather boots up that laced up to his knees and he had guns dangling on both sides of a second belt, and as he sipped away at his highly-caffeinated coffee at eight o'clock at night, her other uncle—Uncle George, that is—set up a bed for him to sleep in.

Her tiny fingers drew circles on the table all during dinner. While there was boiled chicken and vegetables just waiting to be eaten (although, to be frank, what child would want to eat that?), she only ever poked at it with her fork. It was mostly because she was question whether or not it was even edible. By the end of the meal, there was so much cigarette smoke circulating in the air that she could probably take a bite out of it, and after having a near-death experience with coughing out her lungs, she decided that it would be best if she went back into her room.

Uncle Wesley caught on quickly.

"Hey Max– you look awfully tired," the man said as his perfectly-plucked eyebrows furrowed with concern. His voice was an octave higher than most of the grown men that she knew, and while she knew that he was being genuine, she couldn't help but cringe when he took another drag of his cigarette. Just watching it turn red hot before curling in on itself made her feel uncomfortable, and it was worse when blew out a puff of smoke. His demeanor didn't change. "Why don't you go get some sleep?"

"Yeah, yeah," Maxine nodded, using a fist to rub her eye as she stood up from the table. "Goodnight."

She didn't say another word as she shuffled back to her bedroom. Along with the reflection of sheets of rain, flashes of light would light up her room whenever lightning would strike. While she hadn't exactly told her uncle(s) that there was an extended family of bugs crammed into her bed, she gave up on everything and decided that now wouldn't be a good time.

She could always just sleep on the floor.

She trekked over to the closet, ignoring the fact that she felt like barbells were duct taped to her shoes, and went on her toes to reach up and grab a sleeping bag... sure enough, once she yanked it down from the top shelf (with a flashlight and half-full backpack while she was at it), she flattened it down and kicked her shoes off. While the floor was obviously a lot harder than the ground, she managed to wiggle herself into a sleeping position, which required like a sort of combination of impossible gymnastics and wrestling.

Ah, finally, she thought, hardly able to muster up the strength to do so much as smile. I can do absolutely nothing until tomorrow morning.

For a while, she kept her eyes glued shut as tightly as possible. She was out cold. While she slept, vivid images of dancing fairies and mermaids played in her mind, and there was even a split second that she dreamt up Freddie Mercury trying to sell her a car. That was for sure her favorite part. "Maxine," the epically-mustache man sang, reaching out and dangling some sparkly keys in front of her eyes. "If you accept the car, I will hereby declare you an official—"

She woke up when a thud came right from outside.

She jolted awake.

To her dismay, Freddie Mercury had disappeared, the sound of rain came clambering back to her ears, and she found herself on the cold floor of her (uncle's) bedroom.

For a moment, her heart stopped completely. She felt dead. She knew for certain that the thud was real, and as she sank further into the floor with fear, she thought that only a defibrillator would be able to revive her. This is it. This is how I'm going to die, she thought... when she sat up like she would with a bad dream, however, she realized that she was still fully alive.

What the hell was that?

"It's probably nothing..." she thought out loud. She just wanted to confirm that there was nothing, right? Besides. She was too old to be scared by sounds during the nighttime... She rolled right over on her side and searched for the flashlight she had pulled with the sleeping bag, and she found herself squirming and wiggling over to the wall (as she didn't want to get out of her sleeping bag) before she stopped at her bed.

"Gross," she murmured. She barely even realized that she still had her shoes on– and thankfully, that meant that she could step out of her bag and stand on top of her bed (and hopefully smash a couple of the bedbugs while she was at it).

She had to crane her neck to get a better look. Not only was it dark out, but the window was quite far away from her, too, meaning that she'd have to squint, balance herself, and stretch her neck out all at the same time.

It was only when lightning flashed that she was able to get a glimpse of what was outside. The glowing shadows of water droplets fasted upon her face, almost matching the beads of sweat that she didn't know was coming from out of her, and she saw a tuft of brown fur.

It wasn't moving.

"Ew... even more gross," she murmured.

Her world suddenly began to grow dark. There was a somber feeling that made her stomach sink to her knees, and as she nervously clutched onto her sleeping bag to hike it over her shoulders again, her eyebrows furrowed.

"What was that?"

She didn't know why she was speaking to herself... or at least, she tried to convince herself that she didn't know. As her sneakers sunk into the bed (and onto the mashed-up, still-a-little-crunchy bed bug corpses), she resisted the urge to gulp down the bile building up in her throat...

She was only talking to herself because she wasn't alone.

Something glinted under a split-second flash of lighting. As sheets of rain continued poured down, she kept on her fingers clutched against the windowpane, which was cold enough for the glass to fog up around her fingertips.

It was then that she saw that same glimpse of something that made her stomach drop even more.

And that something was moving.

It wasn't just moving, though—it was twitching. It was only slight at first. The movement began at what was presumably an ear, and then the spine or a leg—although it took only a few moments before it became a violent kind of movement. Bones popped and joints rolled back into place, and as a little girl's eyes watched in horror, what was presumably a fawn convulsed out into the darkness. Then it stopped moving... then, after whipping its head around at a neck-breaking speed, it stared her straight in the eye.

This wasn't at all a fawn...

Fawns don't have claws.

Maxine was so startled that she stumbled backwards, her eyes fixed on that... thing. She fell backwards horribly fast, as if had been pushed a little too hard on a swing set, and as she cracked her head on the bed frame, she didn't even to brush off the bugs beginning to crawl all over her skin. She just rolled out of the bed, stood up, and took a horrified, closer look. It wasn't hard to see the small pieces of skin and fur missing, revealing literal holes in its body and a pitch black darkness... she was certain that she could see chunks of white ribs poking out of it.

She was too panicked to think much more.

Fawns don't have claws! She thought. That wasn't doing anything productive for her current state of panic– hell, it came as a surprise that she didn't pass away at the ripe old age of eleven from a heart attack. Her hand clutched onto her shirt as she began to hyperventilate, becoming horrified with the impossibilities of what she had just spotted. They don't have claws, or missing pieces of fur, or anything! They bleed– they don't have... shadows living inside of them!

That same, hollow thud echoed throughout her room.

The thing was trying to get inside.

It was almost as if it didn't care about the risk of cracking its skull open— it kept on ramming into the wall, trying so hard to break it that dust began to fall from the ceiling.

"Stop it!" she shrieked. "Stop!"

She jumped straight out of her bed and onto that horrible wooden floor, curling up into the fetal position and slamming her hands over her ears. She no longer cared whether or not people heard her scream– hell, that was what she was trying to do– she wanted the thing to go away. She screamed so loud that her lungs burned and her throat probably ripped, and as she began to shake and sob with fear, the thudding and banging only persisted. It grew so loud that she could hear it, despite her hands being cupped over her ears— it was like it wasn't even muffling the noise... and it only became more and more aggressive.

A light flooded her room.

"What in the hell is going on?"

It took a few seconds for her shaking hands to fall away from her ears. Once her uncle had stormed in, the only sound she could hear was her panicked breathing— her lips had gone chapped and pale, as did her face, and she felt sweat dripping from every part of her body. Never in her life did she think she'd be relieved at Uncle George's voice— much less, the sound of him cocking a gun right along with it.

The scene he and Wesley walked into was probably a strange one. His niece curled up into a ball, her face sticky with sweat and tears, and a sleeping bag perched right next to her bed.

"What the hell was that?" he asked. His scruffy beard had little crumbs of bread hanging in it, and while Maxine would normally poke fun of that, she couldn't bring herself to say anything. "Was there something trying to get into your room, Maxine?"

She stared up at him.

"Thuh-there was this thing outside," she gulped. Her eyes were now red and her nose the same color, and as some runny snot threatened to drip out, she sniffled, wiped it on her arm, and shook her head. "I thought it was a baby deer, but... then it stood up, and..."

She trailed off. Instead, she pressed her face into her kneecaps in order to wipe her tears and snot from off of her face, and as Uncle George went on to search for anything, her Uncle Wesley came by to help her up.

"There are some bugs on your legs," he said. His higher-pitched voice made her feel a little better than her other uncle's intimidatingly deep one. That comment, of course, was followed by Wesley flinching every time he brushed off the bugs crawling up the girl's calves. He let out a long sigh and flashed a pitiful smile, grabbing onto one of the girl's hand with the most delicate touch that she had ever been given. He was much more comforting.

"Let's get you all cleaned up."