The children cry

They beat their fists against me

They beat their fists on the creaky floorboards and sob and sob

Creak creak creak

They ask me so suddenly, every day of their lives

Their candy-eating, fun-loving, colorful

Tag and hide and seek playing days

Where's daddy?

Where's my mommy, where's my daddy?

They protect me from the dark monsters in the corridor

The one with glass shard fangs and the fingernails like

Machetes laced with iodine and arsenic

Where's daddy?

He comes up the stairs

The blackened, glass like stairs that are broken

Glass shards like the monster's teeth

That nearly stab his knees

Creak creak creak

He is here

To hug the children's troubles away

To smile in his pearly teeth

And his shiny skin

He's here to make them hug

The dirt and tears away

They ask him

Of where his wife may be

She's been busy lately

She has a lot of work to do

And I do too

But they need him

They hunger for him like flies on rotting fruit

They need him to make them sleep

As they cannot shut their rubbery eyelids otherwise

He says she's busy

Busy

But they don't believe him

They want her

But he only embraces them like sticky paper

Where all the flies are stuck

And they slowly decay

Their crusty shells of a body left behind

For the monsters to pick at

With their beer bottle teeth