On Monday morning, he awoke, not realising that the shambling unbeast was not under the bed. He thought there was plain old nothing under the bed. As he got ready for work, the unbeast didn't emerge. It wasn't seven feet tall. It didn't smell of deer carcasses. It didn't carefully tread downstairs. It didn't terrify itself with its ghastly appearance in the landing mirror.
As he ate breakfast, it didn't climb into the passenger seat of the car. Obviously. It didn't exist! It didn't fiddle with the radio channels. It didn't accidentally play prog rock so loud the people in the next block could hear it.
At work, it didn't hide under his desk, pointing out the desperate futility of trying to make order in a vast and chaotic universe. When he went to a meeting, it didn't sit next to him and whisper hilarious insults about everyone else there present. It didn't eat the apples from the staff room fruit bowl and spit the pips out all over the floor.
It didn't pick up his smarmy boss and hang him out the window by his feet. It didn't hum TV show theme tunes annoyingly when he stayed late. It didn't ride home on the roof of his car making nee-naw sounds.
When he got home, it didn't sit next to him on the sofa, talking over the events of the day, trying to help him make sense of a life which technically belonged to him even though it increasingly didn't seem to. It didn't insist on double helpings of ice cream at dinner time. When he went to bed, it didn't stay up watching TV until 3 in the morning and drink all the beer.
At 3, it didn't creep upstairs. It didn't stand at the end of his bed, looking down at his fragile sleeping body. It didn't lean in closer, revealing its huge fangs. It didn't breathe the smell of rotten meat all over his face. Its stomach didn't rumble. And there, in the slumbering darkness, it didn't give him the tiniest little kiss, and then it didn't climb back under his bed. And as the light brightened behind the curtains, the unbeast didn't blink and simply disappear.
It didn't do that because it had never been there to start with.
