When I was a child, I used to be afraid of the dark. Afraid of the shadows at night when everyone else had gone to sleep, the pools of darkness where the street lights couldn’t reach, the darkness that surrounded the meagre shields of light I would put up around myself. But nothing scared me as much as my grandmother’s basement. The rickety old staircase that would creak and groan with every step, like some pained beast, lit only by single bare bulb hanging from the ceiling. This provided only a single pool of light in a sea of shadows and the darkest part was in the space beneath the stairs. It always reminded me of a deep cavern, the mouth of the lair for some terrible monster that I had to tiptoe past whenever my mother made me fetch something for her from down there. Always afraid that if I wasn’t quiet or quick enough, that it would wake up and swallow me whole. As an adult now, I realize that that childhood fear was foolish. I know that I won’t be eaten by the monster hiding under my grandmother’s stairs if I walk past it. I know because it promised me so. Entry for writer's contest