12+   "Sweet dreams, Tiger."

I open my eyes and stare at the ceiling above my bed. Why had Mum's mantra from my childhood bedtimes entered my head? I roll over, sprawling an arm across Annie's deserted side of the bed, a stark reminder she's no longer here to help answer my questions. I roll back onto my back and self-analyse my thoughts.

I blame Facebook. On the anniversary of Mum's passing last week, my eulogy post with the faded photo of her sitting beside my bed, reading the young me a bedtime story, appeared in my timeline memories. Dad must have taken the photo. I don't know when or why. However, it fitted with the background role he played when I was a boy.

It was Mum who did things with me, helped me with homework, drove me to weekend sports and parties, took me to movies, read to me in bed, and gave me the nickname "Tiger". She said it was because I roared like a tiger when she read Winnie-the-Pooh stories featuring the bouncing Tigger. 

Dad was always working or away at conferences or sitting on his sofa, nursing a scotch, watching the news and current affairs shows on TV. And no one talked when Dad watched the TV. 

So, I'd head to my room early for bed and Mum would join me to read a bedtime story. I think she also wanted to escape Dad's silence. Initially, she read to me, but as my reading developed beyond roaring whenever she mentioned Tigger, we took turns reading stories, putting on the funny voices of the characters.

When it was time to turn off my bedside light, after begging for "One more chapter, purleez, Mum!", she'd lay down the book, give me a good night kiss, and say, "Sweet dreams, Tiger." I don't recall if I said anything in reply or just fell asleep.

I sigh and turn to face my bedside table. The retro digital clock, a gift from Annie, taunts me with the passing time. I regret the ungrateful twelve-year-old who declared he was old enough to read by himself, excluding Mum from bedtime-reading. And the teenager who stopped reading for pleasure, and sat in silence watching TV with Dad, while Mum read upstairs, alone in her bedroom.

It was Dad who called to say she was sick. I flew home as soon as I could, shocked to see Mum's shrunken shape barely lifting the covers in bed.

"Why didn't you call earlier?" I asked her. 

"You're so busy, Tiger," she replied. "I didn't want to bother you."

I promised I'd come back home after a conference, but Mum died while I was away. I slipped into a deep depression, drinking scotch, and not talking to Annie. It wasn't a surprise when I arrived home late one night, and she'd left me.

I roll onto my back and sigh again, wishing I was a boy once more. And Mum was here, reading me to sleep with bedtime stories.

© 2025 Robert Fairhead

Thanks to Pexels for sharing the children's bookcase image for this story on Pixabay. I loved reading Dr. Seuss's "Oh, The Places You'll Go!" to my son.

I wrote Bedtime Stories for the April 2025 Furious Fiction writing challenge run by the Australian Writers' Centre, and it was my sixth April entry for the challenge since my first in 2020, A Song on the Radio. The Writers' Centre's brief for this April's challenge was:

• Each story’s setting had to be a BED.
• The first sentence had to contain only three words.
• And the story had to include the words SHAPE, ENTER, and QUESTION. (Longer variations were acceptable.)

My opening line, "Sweet Dreams, Tiger", and the setting with my protagonist tossing and turning in bed, reflecting on childhood memories of his mother reading him bedtime stories, came to me quickly. 

I drew on some of my favourite memories as a parent, reading to and with my son, before he became an independent reader, and then hit his non-reading teenage years. (I wrote about this in the Bedtime Stories blog post in 2018.)

I also wove two more relationships through the story for my protagonist: with his father, who played a "background role" in his childhood; and his former partner, Annie, who leaves him as he becomes more like his silent, scotch drinking father after his mother's death.

Annie is the only character I named in the story. Mum and Dad didn't need first names for their roles, and the protagonist's nickname, Tiger, was perfect for the "sweet dreams" effect I hoped to achieve with the story.

I tossed around two titles: "Bedtime Stories" and "Sweet Dreams, Tiger". I submitted the entry to Furious Fiction with the former, but afterwards wished I used the latter. However, in sharing the story on Tall And True, I tweaked the closing sentence, and stuck with the original title. 

Finally, I'm proud to say that Bedtime Stories made the longlist for the April 2025 Showcase on the Writers' Centre website. A fitting reward for my sixth April Furious Fiction!