Creative Writing: Alvah Akeldama

When I was a child, I was terrified of the dark. I still am, but back when I was around six years old I couldn’t go a full night without crying out for one of my parents to search beneath my bed or in my closet for whatever monster I thought was waiting to eat me. Even with a light on, I would still see dark shapes moving around the corners of the room, or strange faces looking in on me from my bedroom window. My parents would do their best to calm me down, telling me that it was just a bad dream or a trick of the light, but in my young mind I was positive that the second I fell asleep, the monsters would get to me. Most of the time I would just hide under the blankets until I became tired enough to stop worrying, but every now and then I would …show more content…
She collected a large assortment of random pieces of fabric and her sewing machine and created what I would later refer to as Alvah Akeldama, or Al for short. He was made to keep me safe while I slept at night by scaring away all the monsters. He was pretty damn creepy, I had to admit. Honestly, looking back on it all now, I’m still impressed that my mom could think of something so strange and disturbing looking. Alvah had the stitched together look of a gremlin, with big white button eyes and floppy cat ears. His little arms and legs were made from a pair of my sister’s black and red striped socks, and the half of his face that was green was made from one of my brother’s soccer socks. His head could have been described as egg-shaped, and for his mouth my mom attached a piece of white fabric and sewed in a zigzag pattern to shape a wide grin of sharp …show more content…
The next morning at breakfast, my mom asked me where my tooth went. From what she told me, the “tooth fairy” didn’t find it under my pillow. When I told her that I gave it to Alvah, she just shrugged and went back to making breakfast for my little sister. From then on, every time I lost a tooth, I would give it to Al. He would always thank me, and tell me that he loved me. Eventually though, I ran out of baby teeth, and I was beginning to get a little too old to still be playing with dolls. So Al just sat there on my bookshelf collecting dust, slowly fading away from my attention.
Over time the nightmares, became worse than ever. So bad that they even began to follow me to the waking world, terrorizing every dark corner or rustle in the bushes. After one particularly bad night biking home from a friend’s house where I swore a pack of wolves were chasing me, I got home to find something strange waiting for me in my room. There, on my bed, standing fully upright in the soft glow of the moon, was Alvah. At first I just thought my eyes were playing tricks on me again, they had been all evening, so I tried to flick on the lights. Another flick of the light switch. Then another, and another, with no change to the darkness. It was then that I started to get