nighttime.

There's nights you wish you weren't really yourself. There's always those nights, and she was beginning to realize there would there always would be. Try as she might, despite vows to change penned nightly in a diary she kept hidden beneath the loose floorboards of her bedroom, that muted monster known innocently as shyness had his way with her every chance he had. He wrapped himself around her body, constructing the barrier of folded arms she held so tightly against her body. He pushed her legs, one over the other. She became as small as he could make her. But her tongue was what he really got at. Never mind silly expressions of feline - tongue interactions voiced condescendingly by those who have never had to meet him, when he got a hold of it no one was laughing. He ripped it from her mouth. Sometimes she tried to stop him, at those times when her thoughts wandered back under the floorboards, at those times when she thought she was strong enough. She was never strong enough. He laughed and sewed up her lips, chortling all the while. Then he wormed his way into her mind. By now it wouldn't have mattered if her tongue was still in place. He pulled a pink eraser from his pocket and got to work on thoughts and memories here and there. Stories she might have shared disappeared, lost to his merciless handiwork. He had the best of her on many occasions and tonight was no exception. Someday she would fight him. Someday this would end. But tonight, as she saw the one person for whom she wished she could change, for whom she scribbled those vows in spurts of frustrated ink, walk into the room before her, she felt a sharp shove at her elbow. She crossed her arms. Tonight, there would be no fight. Tonight, she realized as she felt him beside her, was going to be one of those nights.