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  Mum got fed up getting up to go to me in the night so ever since she’s been very picky over what I’m allowed to watch. I kept telling her and telling her that I wasn’t a silly baby any more. I was furious when she let Michael and Judy watch Titanic but she wouldn’t let me.

  ‘Of course you can’t watch it, Claire. You’d dream you were drowning and then you’d wet the bed,’ Michael chortled.

  I hated being left out. I knew silly old movies couldn’t scare me any more. Or so I thought.

  But then I watched The Monster. I wonder if you’ve seen it? It’s been a big talking point at our school. Heaps of kids go on about how great it is and say it’s the scariest film ever, ever, ever. Some kids say it didn’t scare them one bit. I think they’re fibbing. I bet they haven’t seen so much as the trailer.

  I got to see it on Saturday. Mum and Judy had gone up to London because she had a music exam and then they were going shoe shopping afterwards.

  I was supposed to go too but I made a fuss. I hate listening while Judy plays her violin. She sounds like chalk squeaking on a blackboard. I have to put my fingers in my ears and then Judy says I’m putting her off deliberately. And shoe shopping is soooo boring, unless you’re looking for something cool like football boots or trainers.

  So I stayed at home with Dad and Michael. Michael had his friend, Luke, round. They usually go into Michael’s room and try to access rude things on the Internet, I know. But Dad was outside washing and polishing the car which takes him for ever, so Luke casually produced the video of The Monster from his backpack.

  ‘Fancy watching a bit, Mike?’

  ‘Wow!’ said Michael, eyes goggling.

  ‘You bet!’

  ‘I’m watching too,’ I said.

  ‘There’s no way you’re watching, baby,’ said Michael. He tried to push me out the living room while Luke slotted the video into the machine.

  ‘There’s every way I’m watching it – or I’ll tell Dad,’ I said.

  I don’t like being a telltale but when you have bossy big brothers and sisters you have to use any means at your disposal to get your own way.

  So I won. I watched The Monster. Well, nearly half of it. Then we heard Dad coming back inside the house so we switched over to a sports programme, sharpish.

  You have no idea how appalling The Monster is. Far, far, far, far worse than you can ever imagine. I kept on telling myself it was just a silly old film. It wasn’t a real monster. But it looked so real when it rose up out of the river, sickly green, oozing slime, and semi-transparent so you could see all its horrible heart and liver and lungs and long long coils of intestines, some of them hanging out and spurting terrible sludgy streams of poo.

  Luke whooped with laughter, but it was very high-pitched. Michael started biting his nails. The Monster started oozing up out of sinks and baths and even toilets. It devoured everything – dogs, cats, babies in buggies, screaming schoolchildren, frantic mothers, fighting fathers. The Monster even swallowed this huge fat man and you saw him being digested inside it, getting covered in bile, bits disintegrating before your very eyes.

  Luke stopped laughing. Michael nearly bit his fingers right off. I stared at the screen helplessly, unable to move. The Monster seemed to ooze right out of the television set into my head. It was there, pulsing inside my brain, ready to ooze its way into my dreams.

  They are the worst nightmares ever. I don’t know what I’m going to do. I start feeling vaguely sick at teatime. I go out in the garden and play afterwards but all the time I’m kicking a football about or running up and down with my skipping rope I’m thinking about the Monster. When I’m watching television It’s there too, slithering into Central Perk and nibbling Phoebe and Rachel and Monica like sweets.

  Then Mum starts nagging that it’s time for bed and the Monster is lurking on the stairs, in the bathroom, under my bed. Dad comes to read to Judy and me but the Monster paces the corridors of Hogwarts too, munching Harry Potter into mincemeat.

  After Dad tucks us up and puts the light out I whisper to Judy, desperate to keep her awake. I talk about all the boy bands she’s currently nuts on and the new boots she wants in Bertie’s and the boy on the bike who waves to her every morning and whether this means he really fancies her. This is all terminally boring, boring, boring but it means Judy will keep chatting to me. But no matter how I try to keep the conversation going eventually she starts mumbling nonsense and then she sighs and gives a little snore. She is asleep, dreaming about boys and bands and bikes and boots.

  I struggle to stay awake because I know what I’m going to dream about. I hear Michael go to bed. Sometimes I even hear Mum and Dad go to bed. I play the silliest games to stop myself sleeping. I go through all my favourites.

  Hero: David Beckham.

  Friend: Holly, and Lisa’s OK too.

  Hobby: football.

  Teacher: Mr Speed.

  Colour: anything but slime green.

  But no matter which rainbow hue I choose this sickening slime green oozes over it and I’m dreaming the Monster is coming to get me. I dream it every single night.

  I waited to see if anyone typed in anything helpful on the Worry Website. There were heaps of comments. Everyone said they had nightmares too. I counted. There were thirty. That meant every single person in the class. No, wait a minute. I didn’t comment on my own worry.

  Mr Speed saw me scrolling down the screen, re-counting.

  ‘I’m glad to see you practising your maths as well as your IT skills, Claire.’

  ‘Thirty! It is. Someone’s messing about, commenting twice,’ I said.

  ‘Not necessarily,’ said Mr Speed. ‘Not if we count the entire class, pupils and teacher.’

  ‘Did you put a comment, Mr Speed?’

  ‘Now, you know perfectly well all contributions to the Worry Website are strictly confidential,’ said Mr Speed.

  I read them with great interest, trying to work out which was his.

  I dream I’ve lost my old teddy Cuddle and I search everywhere and once I woke up and I still couldn’t find him because he’d fallen out of bed and I cried.

  I imagine Mr Speed crying for his teddy. Perhaps not.

  I have awful nightmares too. Last night I dreamt about my mum and it should have been lovely but she turned into a wicked witch and cast a spell on me so I couldn’t talk.

  I don’t know if Mr Speed has still got a mum but I can’t ever imagine him not talking, even in his dreams.

  My biggest nightmare is dreaming that I’m with my dad and it’s all happy, happy, happy at first but then he starts getting cross with me and my little brother and my mum so he storms off and I wait and I wait but he doesn’t come back.

  That’s quite definitely Samantha. So what did Mr Speed put?

  Aha!

  I have this terrible nightmare that my feet develop throbbing bunions overnight and so I have to give up my brilliant career as a Premier-League footballer and retrain as a TEACHER!!!

  I looked Mr Speed up and down.

  ‘That’s your nightmare, isn’t it, Mr Speed?’

  ‘The Worry Website insists on anonymity,’ said Mr Speed.

  ‘Yeah, but I know it’s you! You weren’t really a Premier-League footballer, were you?’

  Mr Speed crumpled a piece of paper into a ball.

  ‘Haven’t you read about Speedy of United in all your football annuals?’ He dropped the paper ball and then aimed a nifty kick at it. Only it wasn’t nifty. It wasn’t even a kick. He missed it altogether.

  I shook my head.

  ‘You should have seen me before my bunions,’ he said. ‘So, Claire, we’ll do a swapsie. You know my worst nightmare. Tell me yours.’

  ‘Oh, it’s – it’s stupid,’ I mumbled.

  ‘But scary?’

  ‘Very, very scary.’

  Mr Speed looked at me carefully.

  ‘You look like a little panda. Dark circles under the eyes. Are these nightmares so bad they stop you sleeping?’