Face your Fears

There once was a girl named Chantal, with golden hair and sparkling blue eyes. Chantal loved to laugh and play in the sun all day, and she had lots of friends to play with. But there was one thing that Chantal could not laugh about. It was the monster in her closet. Every night when she had to go to bed, she would stay awake for hours worrying that the monster would come out of the closet. Sometimes she would see shadows on her wall and, knowing the monster was on the attack, would hide under her covers until she fell asleep. Some days she could not laugh and play with her friends because she was so tired.

She didn't want to be scared anymore, so she went to her Aunty Patsy, and told her all about the mean awful monster in her closet.

“Well,” Aunty Patsy cooed lovingly, “What do you do when you see this monster?”

“Oh Aunty, I duck under my covers and hide! Can you come and sleep in mu room tonight?”

“Oh dearest, If I am there, then the monster will not come, but when I leave, the monster will come back. Don't you want the monster to go away forever?”

“Oh yes Aunty, yes I do, very very badly!”

“Then here's what you have to do.” Aunty leaned in very closely and told Chantal what to do. “As soon as you see the monster, you have to jump up out of bed, and tell that monster to leave you alone and never come back!”

“Oh Aunty!” Squealed Chantal, “I can't do that, what if the monster eats me?”

“He won't.”

“But I'm too scared to do something like that.”

Aunty took Chantal up in her arms and and said, “But Chantal, only you can decide to stop the monster, and when you do, the monster can no longer frighten you.” Aunty sat Chantal on her lap and looked her in the eyes, “I promise that if you do this one thing, the monster he will not hurt you, and he will never come back.”

That night Chantal lay in her bed, waiting for the monster to come, thinking of Aunty's promise and what she had to do. Chantal was very scared, and couldn't make up her mind whether to yell at the monster and get it to stop, or to just go on as normal. Then she thought of all those days when she didn't laugh as hard, or play as happily, because the monster had come the night before, and she finally decided that she had to do what she had to do.

At that moment, she saw the shadows and knew the monster was attacking. So she leaped out of bed, called up all her courage, and using her biggest voice, she yelled at that monster “GO AWAY AND LEAVE ME ALONE YOU AWFUL MONSTER!” and then she closed her eyes, just waiting for the monster to snatch her up her it's jaws and eat her. But, as she waited, nothing happened. So she opened one eye, and saw nothing was there. So she opened the other eye, and looked around. Still nothing was there. No monster, no jaws, nothing to eat her. She peaked into her closet, but there was no monster there either. As she looked around the room, she saw the bushes outside her window and the funny shapes they made on the walls with their shadows, but that was it. The monster was finally gone!

The next day Chantal was playing with her friends, and she noticed one little boy was looking very scared and tired.

“Whats wrong?” She asked the boy, whose name was Jonathan.

“There's a monster in my basement, and it makes loud noises at night and I can't sleep cause I'm scared. It's not fun at all.”

Chantal got a knowing gleam in her eye, and told the boy, “I know how you can get rid of your monster, I got rid of mine last night.”

“Really. You mean, theres a way? I don't have to be scared anymore?”

“Yes, I will tell you how, but you know,” She smiled, “Only you can decided to stop the monster.”

THE END