a-monster-3

A six-panel comic. A child in bed calls out, "Mom! There's a monster under my bed!" The mother replies from the doorway, "No, no. He's dead." The child asks, "Maybe it's a trick?" and the mother says, "I don't think so. He's pretty actively decomposing." She continues calmly, "There are a lot of small insects. I mean... a lot. The surface looks like rippling water." The child, now peering under the bed too, says, "Oh wow. There are other bodies. Little ones. Big ones. It was a family," and the mother responds, "They must've been so hungry." In the final panel the mother walks away saying, "Anyway, wake me up again if you want some specifics!" The joke is the deadpan, gruesomely detailed reassurance treated as routine. Votey: the mother lies awake in bed next to her partner, both staring upward, as a thought bubble reads, "Are we good parents?"