When Night Falls Over Backward | Previous Challenge Entry

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TITLE: When Night Falls Over Backward | Previous Challenge Entry
By Troy Manning
05/28/09
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The monster in whose mouth Milo continually found himself in his dreams was named Parsifal. This was happening with such frequency that he no longer awoke from them in a cold sweat. What is more, Milo knew that if he started counting the monster’s teeth, he would wake up before he reached the molars. He did learn that he had to take care not to touch any of the teeth though because Parsifal was a species of dragon and they were usually fairly hot.
One day Milo woke up from an especially pleasant dream and found that he was sleeping on something hard. His second cousin had been reading a story to him the night before about a princess who made soup from stones and peas. He suspected the uncomfortable object was a dragon’s tooth that came loose from Parsifal’s eating the princess and her soup. Instead, he discovered it to be his second cousin’s lighter that she was using with a can of hairspray to imitate a dragon to tease him. Milo took a mental note that he would not be disclosing more of his nocturnal adventures to Anastasia anytime soon.
It was a most joyous occasion the night Milo realized that even when Parsifal did emit a cascade of flames, he was largely unaffected. I say largely because, in the morning, Milo’s stepmom barged in his room and yelled at Milo to get out of bed but then realized that he had a particularly bad fever. She said she could feel the heat before she even got to the bed but Milo thought surely she was exaggerating. She started to treat Milo nicely until she saw the lighter on his nightstand. She asked if Anastasia had been in his room. She would have been none the wiser if Anastasia’s lighter wasn’t personalized. Vanessa looked in Milo’s closet and then under his bed. She then started screaming and when she stood he saw that her hair was on fire. Milo knew that Anastasia had once lit their third cousin Yvette’s hair on fire so he assumed that she must have been under the bed and that she had more than one lighter. He specifically remembered, however, that Anastasia had gone out the window the way she came and that he closed it behind her. Milo glanced toward the window and saw that it was closed as was his bedroom door that Vanessa slammed as she often did when she left his room. He hoped she would be okay. Milo suddenly became afraid when he realized that it couldn’t have been Anastasia who was under his bed. He suspected Parsifal momentarily but he knew that if he was so big that Milo could fit in his mouth then he could hardly fit under the bed without making a lump. Milo closed his eyes hard and imagined counting teeth in hopes that he would wake up to discover that he was only dreaming. He had always been afraid of the light.

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