those who creep under the covers

There is a threat looming large, and sinister, in the dark. She feared the darkness. She had heard many stories of the night taking on predatory shapes; and attacking young, unsuspecting women. Just the other day, Chimi had been woken up by a cold hand on her breast. It was just that, the cold hand. Some unlucky women had suffered more than that: an unwanted child, and utter ignominy. There was talk that the ones who moved in the night, were the visitors; Deki felt it was the ones she knew, the women knew; the ones society approved of. So why did they turn into monsters in the night?
Dorji walked by sharing a friendly smile. Deki shivered. The sky was turning purple, the mountains a silhouette against the darkening evening canvas. She quickened her pace.
Home was warm with dinner, and a loving mother. As Deki closed her eyes to the night, she felt under her pillow for her Drozum; hard, sharp and cold, it comforted her.
Deki woke up to wails: Chimi, the Gup’s daughter had hung herself from a tree. She was five months pregnant. The Gup was a man of steel; unmoving, unforgiving, and totally incapable of love. Deki felt something burn inside her, and grow cold. Chimi was sixteen, the same age as Deki, they had been more than sisters, and now Deki was lost.
That night, Deki was tired. More tired than usual. Her sound sleep was abruptly disturbed by a chill, and a sudden pressure. As she mouthed a scream, a hand quickly stifled her.
Panic. Panic. Paralysis.
The DROZUM! Deki struggled under the heaviness. She bit the hand, it was plump and warm. Then all went black. When she came to, she felt stiff, sore, and wilted to her soul. She knew she was like Chimi now, a victim.
She glared at her Drozum, it had betrayed her. Deki picked it up and threw it at the wall, it stuck neatly, right in the centre of her sketch of Galem and Singye. The couple’s embrace was butchered. Grim satisfaction. Deki decided to let it stay there. She cursed the man who had stolen into the night to meet his forbidden love; his bravery had been turned into a farce. Men had turned into animals without faces. At least animals didn’t hide their faces.
Deki’s mother read her hair. She couldn’t meet Deki’s eyes.
The end of the month gave Deki hope, when she saw red. She waited that night, watching the bundle in her bed. It was Tshe Che Nga, there was good light in the room. The Drozum no longer interrupted Bhutan’s eternal embrace, instead it gleamed in Deki’s hand. The window creaked open. A shadow squeezed in through the window. The Drozum went in through the shadow’s heart. For the women, for Chimi, for herself. The brute was dead.
Deki grinned at the loser, her mind suddenly lit with the thought: he, who creeps under the covers, so deserves this fate. Then she jumped out the window.