These are the things that live in my head.
There were dark things that lived in the nooks and crannies in my room as a child, and they only came out when I would go to bed at night. I couldn't see them, but I knew they were there. They were faceless and gray, covered in dust and lint, coming and going from dark and desolate places.
I would lay as still as possible in the hopes that I would dissolve into the blankets and bedsheets, become one with my pillows, because I knew they were watching.
Always watching.
Just watching.
And as they watched, I'd fall asleep in my frozen state.
In the morning my grandmother would come in and find me still in bed, afraid of getting up because there might be a muma under my bed, ready to snake out and grab at my bare foot. She'd look under the bed, swatting the floor underneath with her hand, and cheerfully declare that there wasn't anything under there except dust bunnies as she'd pull one out to show me.
I on the other hand knew that those weren't dust bunnies. That was the stuff that the mumas left behind, the stuff that rolled off their gray cloaks.
For Illustration Friday: linked. Three linked figures representing my childhood fear of dust bunnies.
