The first time the Demon Queen appeared in my bedroom, I tried to decapitate her with my solar system nightlight.
I was fast asleep, but got woken up by the freaky sound of buzzing. Then I smelled that rancid, belch-y, acid-y odor I’d come to associate with the rakkhoshi during my adventures in the Kingdom Beyond Seven Oceans and Thirteen Rivers. As soon as I opened my eyes, I saw her tell-tale outline: pointy crown on her giant head, sharp horns peeking through her dark hair, and evil talons reaching from her long arms.
I reached for my magic bow and quiver under my bed, but when my hand came up empty, I remembered I’d left them in my locker at school. So instead, I laced my fingers through the plastic rings of Saturn, yanked my old nightlight from the socket, and spun the entire solar system like a flying discus right at the Rakkhoshi Rani’s head.
Unfortunately, the sun and orbiting planets never managed to hit her. To my shock, the plastic solar system just sailed through her see-through, sari-clad body, crashing on the front of my Princess Pretty Pants dresser, part of the disgustingly princess-themed bedroom set my parents had bought me when I was, like, six.
“Honestly, Moon-girl! Is that any way to greet the mother of an old friend?” The rakkhoshi’s fangs glinted in the moonlight that streamed through my curtain-less windows. Then she stretched her claw-like hand toward the fallen night-light, making the plastic explode with a fiery bang.
“Stop that!” I ran out of bed, throwing my bedside glass of water on the place my bubble-gum pink carpet was burning. It did basically nothing to squelch the flames, though. “You’re going to burn the whole house down!” The smell of melting plastic gagged me as Mercury and Venus started ooblecking right before my eyes.
“Spoil sport!” The Demon Queen drawled, but she did lean over and breathe an icy gust of wind onto the burning planets—a little mini hailstorm—leaving a charred and smelly solar system on my bedroom floor.
“You’re not real.” I blinked my eyes, trying to wake myself up. “I’m imagining this.”
The demoness belched. Loudly. “You don’t have enough imagination to conjure the likes of me!”
Hoping to catch her off-guard, just in case I was wrong about the whole being-a-nightmare thing, I launched myself at the rakkhoshi with a ferocious yowl. But she just yawned, and let me go flying right through her vaporous form.
I slammed into my dresser, hitting my head hard on a tiara-shaped drawer knob. “I knew you weren’t real!”
“Oh, fie on your underdeveloped cranium, you pea-brained tree-goat!” The queen picked her teeth with a long nail. “Listen up, I have something important to tell you. A matter of life and death. About…”
“What?” I prompted from my position sprawled out on the floor.
“Oof!” The demoness made a choking sound, grabbing at her throat. She repeated the nonsensical word, fluttering her hands like she wasn’t getting enough air. “Oof! Eesh! Arré!”
Then, her image flickered, like she was a broken movie reel.
It went on like this, night after night. The Rakkhoshi Rani showing up in her smelly but see-through form, insulting me, trying to tell me something, but then disappearing.
If the demoness were real, I would have guessed this was some kind of trick. But since she obviously couldn’t be, I could only surmise I should stop sneaking so many chocolate chip cookies before bedtime. Because man, was this a super weird dream. Every time we got to the part where she wanted to tell me her secret, the rakkhoshi would open her mouth and flap her lips, like some kind of landed demonic fish. She would claw at her throat. Her mouth would move, but no sound would come out. Eventually, her image would flicker and fade altogether.
The closest she got to telling me her secret was one night when she managed to tell me some kind of riddle poem that made absolutely no sense when I first heard it:
Elladin belladin, Milk White Sea
Who seeks immortality?
A drum and flame, eternity
Life and death in balance be
My heart in chains where my soul sings
The prison key a bee’s wings
With father’s tooth you crack the case
Humility must wash your face
Sacrifice is love’s reward
The path of truth is ever hard
Justice can’t be stopped by a wall
Purity is not the end-all
Without the dark, the light will fail
Gods and demons both will rail
Elladin, belladin, Milk White Sea
Who seeks immortality?
“What is all that supposed to mean? What’s that elladin belladin stuff anyway?”
“Oh, this pancreatic pain! This gaseous gallbladder!” The queen groaned. “Try to listen between the lines, khichuri-brain!”
“I’m trying!” It was hard to win an argument with a figment of my imagination. “If I figure out your riddle, will you leave me alone?”
“Oh, the intestinal agony of your stupidity!” The rakkhoshi grew so big in her frustration, her crown grazed my old-fashioned popcorn ceiling. She blew green smoke out of her ears and nose, and burped like she was lactose intolerant and had just eaten a cheesy burrito chased by a dozen milkshakes.
“You can’t understand, can you Loonie-Moonie?”
“Of course I can’t understand! Because you’re. Not. Real!” I shouted so loud I actually woke myself up.
Coming back from the bathroom, though, I couldn’t help but stare at the dents in the popcorn ceiling, the flakes of plaster on the foot of my bedspread, the half-melted solar system on my dresser, and the charred spot on my carpet. Plus, my bedroom smelled all gaseous like it was at the receiving end of an exhaust vent straight from a garbage dump.
But that was all just my middle-of-the-night imagination. Or maybe some cookie-induced sleepwalking. The nightlight was obviously so old and decrepit it had just spontaneously combusted. And the smell was probably a lingering combination of melted plastic and some nasty gym clothes that I’d forgotten to wash. Or so I tried to convince myself.
But the thing about subconscious dreams that aren’t actually subconscious dreams? Eventually, they come back to bite you in the chocolate chip.