Page 87 of Too Many Beds

It isn’t, but Ben is still grateful to her for trying.

Ben huddles beneath the thin blanket on his saggy mattress and tries not to cry. His ribs hurt, and his face burns from where Mrs. Davis slapped him, blood pulsing beneath the blooming bruise.

The house is quiet enough that she’ll probably hear him if he lets himself sob, and it will only be worse if he interrupts her show with his blubbering. Mr. Davis isn’t home yet, and Ben hopes in vain that he’s late, that he stopped for a drink at the bar with his buddies instead of coming right home.

Maybe Mrs. Davis will be asleep—maybe Mr. Davis will be too drunk to pay any attention to his wife or his foster kid before passing out on the couch.

Ben is dozing when he hears the door slam, the rattle of the thin walls jolting him back to awareness. He goes very still, hiseyes wide in the darkness. He thinks he hears something slither under the bed, but he’s not a baby, he knows that old houses creak sometimes. He doesn’t need to check, not when he can’t tear his eyes away from his bedroom door. It’s locked, but from the outside, keeping him trapped rather than keeping him safe.

There is a buzz of conversation from the living room, irritated and harsh. Mrs. Davis is still awake, and she sounds mad about it, which can only mean bad things for Ben. Ben eyes his closet, wondering if Mr. Davis will find him if he hides in there.

Probably, and it will only make him angrier. Ben has been in this house long enough to know that it's better to just endure, to let them hit him a few times and cry so they will feel better about what they areactuallyangry about and leave him alone.

It’s only really bad when he runs or fights or makes them feel like they have to work for it. He knows that, but it doesn’t make it any easier to sit alone in the darkness and wait for a punishment he knows he doesn’t deserve.

Waiting, straining to hear, Ben thinks he hears something shift under his bed. It's a slight rustling, the glide of somethingbigover the dusty floorboards, but before Ben can wonder about it, the door slams open, the cheap metal handle cracking loudly against the chipped paint of the wall behind it.

Ben can’t stop the gasp he emits, the instinctive flinch away from incoming violence. “You nasty littlebastard,” his foster father slurs, the stench of beer wafting across the small, stuffy room.

“I’m sorry,” Ben squeaks, curling up against the wall, tucking himself into the corner like a rat in the trap. “I’m sorry!”

“You will be, you little piece of shit.” Every step that Mr. Davis makes sounds like thunder against the hardwood, inevitable and dooming.

Ben quails, clenching his eyes shut and tucking his face between his elbows and his knees, barely breathing as he waits for the first heavy blows to land.

They don’t.

Ben hears an unexpected bellow of shock and then a sickening crack and thud. He peeks between his fingers and stares dumbly in shock, unable to move as he watches Mr. Davis gurgle, a puddle of blood blooming across the carpet from the crushed mess of the back of his skull.

Ben whimpers, unable to think, unable to move, unable to do anything but stare stupidly at the creature crouched on the chest of his dying abuser.

It is small and male and mostly humanoid, just a little bit too pretty and graceful to be real. “What?” Ben manages to squeak, wondering if he is dreaming.

“Hi,” the creature says, shooting Ben a tremulous smile that is studded with too-sharp canines. “I’m Luce.”

“You killed him,” Ben whispers, barely able to stop himself from vomiting. “Oh, god.”

The creature—Luce—looks down at the body beneath him, a crease growing between his green eyes. They glow in the dark, liquid and luminous as they focus briefly on the body. “Should I not have?” he asks, looking questioningly back up at Ben. “He was going to hurt you, wasn’t he? Should I have let him?”

Ben blinks at him, stupefied. “I?—”

Luce grins at him, and it's suddenly harder for Ben to breathe. “It’s okay,” he says. “I stopped him like you stopped the mean boy earlier. No one is going to hurt you again. I won’t let them.”

One Year Later

Ben’s cell is cold, but thankfully, lonely. He doesn’t have a roommate yet and the whole facility is daunting, but he’s grateful for the space each night after the rough and tumble of overcrowded classes and the brutal social structure of a juvenile detention facility.

Most people—the judge certainly—believe he deserves to be locked up until he’s an adult, no matter how many times Ben tried to explain that Mr. Davis had fallen. He hadn’t dared mention Luce, the strange creature who had shown up just in time to save him.

It was just a dream, Ben reminds himself, shifting his weight over the thin mattress of his bed. There had been no monster beneath his bed, rising to protect him with a sweet, timid smile and softly illuminated eyes.

Mrs. Davis had slammed into the room and started screaming, and Luce had disappeared between one blink and the next. Everything after that had been noise and sirens and a growing, sickening fear.

“He fell,” Ben whispers, as if anyone is listening, as if anything he says is going to get him out of this cell. “I didn’t killanyone.”

But no one is listening. No one is here.

As if on cue, the lights click off with an irritating buzz, the doors locking automatically to keep all the boys in their rooms until 7:30, when breakfast starts tomorrow morning. Ben doesn’t move. His room is dark, but there is a large window in the door, leaking fluorescent light into the room.

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