Waking Nightmare. Short audio story narrated in American English.

Pogo the Ogre, Big Giant, and The Abominable One had spent hundreds of years locked up in Monster Prison. They had entered voluntarily, when they realised that frightening children wasn't a good way to make a living. Since then, the three of them had been sad and lonely figures. Frightening children was the only thing they knew how to do well. They lost all hope, and felt useless. They had already served their full jail sentences several times, but when they were told they were free to go, they answered by asking where they could go, and what could they do, if all they knew in life was scaring people...

However, all that changed on the day they locked up Nightmare. Nightmare was a tiny little monster, who devoted very little time to frightening others and spent most of the day sleeping.

But when awake, he was great fun. He told hundreds of stories of how he had changed people's dreams to make them more amusing, and of how these changes almost always turned out so badly that they would have scared anyone. Pogo the Ogre, and his friends, loved Nightmare's stories, but they had to wait for the sleepyhead to get up so he could tell them. Now, that was by no means easy. It seemed not even an earthquake could wake the guy.

Until one day, when the three monsters combined their terrific cries. Nightmare woke up with a start. He looked at them, wide-eyed, but he didn't seem frightened or angry. Rather, he seemed happy.

- "Great!" he said, "I've always wanted to get up early. That way you enjoy the day much better. You know what? You guys should work as alarm clocks. I know a lot of sleepyheads who would really thank you for it."

The three monsters were so happy to hear those words. Finally they could be of some use! After so many years, it turned out they could do much more than they had believed. And they could do it without frightening or bothering children.

That very day they left the prison, ready to make their first alarm call. And so it was that the three monsters became famous for their special service for sleepyheads, and were happy to have understood that there is always something nice we can do, just waiting to be discovered.