She can hear his breathing.

The loud, heavy breaths he intakes under her bed. They give her chills that creep down her body right to the bones. Once it was lights out, she'd shut her eyes to go to sleep, but she knew trying was pointless. Because she would then hear the ebb and flow of his breathing- as she always had each and every night- and snap open her eyes to stare into the darkness of her bedroom.

She can just imagine the grotesque creature. Waiting. Hiding under her bed frame for the right moment to jump up and scare the living daylights out of her. She'd been hearing all these noises: the bumps that go in the night, the thuds against the walls, the crashing of glass. She can only blame it on the monster she lived to fear.

She regretted thinking for even a second of his appearance. Depicting sharp, pointed fangs to gobble her up, the dark, soulless eyes penetrating every ounce of emotion left in her, the long horns, the claws that could rip her to shreds- she could picture every detail so vividly. Except the only things she'd see under the bed were dust bunnies making even more dust bunnies.

But she knows everything she hears is real.

And no one ever believes her.

A fourteen-year-old still believing in the man-eating creatures hiding in her house. Who would believe a thing like that? She drove her friends away with her tall tales, leaving her family to listen to her complaints. Although her mother worked nearly twenty-four hours a day, she had little time to hear out her daughter. And whenever she did, she'd only play along to the stories.

That left the girl to spend most all of her days with her babysitter, Meiko. When she did ramble on about these mythical creatures, Meiko had seemingly went with her silly beliefs like her mother. To make the matter sound even more goofy, her babysitter would constantly look under the bed, and claim there was a monster there.

"Oh, Rin, you're right!" she'd exclaim with an exaggerated gasp as she lifted the blanket drooping over the edge of the mattress. "There is a monster here, but he doesn't look like he wants to hurt you!"

The tease brought upon Rin made her crazy. Meiko would only treat her like she was still some six-year-old afraid of the dark (and frankly Rin had that fear), so she could assume that the first time she insisted the truth, Meiko had called her delusional.

She patiently stills in her bed. Not moving a muscle as the tension builds in her chest. She clings to the blanket with one pale hand, her skin flushed of its color making her look pallid in the dark. Illuminating in the corner had been a single nightlight and she didn't find it to be of much help.

Suddenly there's a thump she hears coming from her closet, followed by the noises of boxes toppling forward from the very top, hitting against the closet doors, and plummeting to the floor. She closes her eyes.

Then she hears something else; footsteps exactly outside her bedroom door. She hears a specific clicking noise with each step, as if it were coming from boots or maybe heels. It was unlike anything Rin had heard before. She knew for a fact Meiko wasn't up at this hour because she was off sleeping in one of the bedrooms her mother gave her for the nights she'd sleep over. She was a heavy sleeper and none of the noises Rin would casually hear woke her up.

The footsteps pause and Rin immediately smells something... putrid. A disgusting odor she can't stand the whiff of that she risks sitting up in bed for. She's about to cover her nose with the blanket and open her mouth to breathe in rather than with her nostrils, but she's taken aback.

Held in front of her mouth is a finger with long, claw-like nails, hovering near her lips as to quiet her down. Her gaze trails to whom it belongs. Someone- something that she can almost perceive as human, yet at the same time, not quite. He wore a long dark coat and had unkempt blond hair, huge, black pointed horns protruding from those golden locks, two sharpened fangs from his lower jaw jutting out from his lips, and silver eyes trained at her, then to the door.

Rin gulps anxiously, quivering in the bedsheets as she glances to the door as well. She quickly breathes through her mouth and listens in to the noise. After a silent minute, the clicking of footsteps continue and the odor vanishes from the air.

She stares at the creature looming right in front of her-

The monster under her bed.

. . .

Word Count: 810

. . .

Side notes: A scene from my probably-going-to-be-revived idea titled "Monster Under the Bed." An AU where Rin has monsters under her bed, no one believes her, she encounters one of them, and the rest was never thought of.

A/N: Waaa, another dorabaru I decided to write for whatever reason. I've been wanting to write this fic, but nothing amazing ever comes to me for the plot, so... that's sucky.

But here're the things I have thought of. Fun fact: Len, Miku, and Luka are the monsters in Rin's house. Not just one, but three. Len's the one who keeps breathing so loudly under Rin's bed, Miku in the closet accidentally bumping her head against the walls and low ceiling (constantly swearing under her breath for doing so), and Luka in the attic randomly finding herself breaking fine china and fragile objects scattered around the room.

Lazy/clumsy monsters doing their job protecting Rin here, I know.