Neil Gaiman really is a magician. The worlds he constructs within his tales are so vivid and magical, and also relatable; he will slip in a sentence that adds a whole new layer to the reader's understanding of the events without taking them out of the story. He, somehow, manages to combine the mythic and the personal. 
 This brief story showcases those skills admirably, as a young (unpublished) writer talks with his young charge about the type of bedtime story the latter would like to be told - a scary story, scary enough to be interesting but not to keep him awake - that turns into the boy telling him about a monster that he has, of course, made up...