Fearless: short fiction #dVerse

My child woke from a nightmare the other night, or was it early morning?

“What’s the matter, love?’ I asked.

“I thought I heard a scratching,” he answered.

“And what do you think you could have heard doing this scratching?” I continued.

“Maybe a big rat” he answered, “or something else more scary…with sharp claws!”

“Where was the scratching coming from?” I asked, trying to zero in on the epicentre of his fears.

“Behind the wall,” he told me, right behind the wall, behind the headboard of my bed.”

I smiled and nodded my head, knowingly:

“There is nothing behind the wall except a space where the wind whistles.” I told him, trying to sound convinced of this myself.

The next morning, after he’d gone off to school, I called pest control.

We take the burden of fear upon ourselves, to spare our children.

I wrote this short fiction for dVerse prosery, where host Merril asks us to write a prose piece of not more than 144 words to include the following lines from Lisel Mueller’s poem ‘Drawings by Children:’

“there is nothing behind the wall
except a space where the wind whistles”

I chose a dialogue-based short fiction, even though I always struggle writing dialogue. I hope it doesn’t come across to clumsily.