Cartoon

Alice Bennett was four years old, and she was friends with TV characters. They were some of her best friends, her only friends, in fact, as she refused to go outside. No, she had to stay inside, where the TV was. And though the characters were her good friends, the TV was her best friend of all, he introduced her to her good friends, didn’t he?

Alice was the best child in the world, she was quiet and never disobeyed her daddy. Why should she be loud if her friends were here? They only yelled on occasion, and she always quieted them down. Daddy was very, very busy, you know. And why disobey daddy? Disobeying him means the TV gets taken away, and then she can’t see her friends. Of course, she could always find a way to see them still, but it was too much work, she would rather just do what daddy asked and avoid all the trouble. Of course, daddy worried about all the time she spent watching the TV, but he let her anyways because he felt bad about mommy dying in that car crash. She didn’t mind mommy being gone, she never knew her anyway, but daddy was constantly worrying anyways. And daddy didn’t seem to get it--the TV was her friend. But he just didn’t get it, no matter how hard she tried to explain! Daddy probably dismissed it as toddler nonsense. It’s funny, how often grown-ups dismiss those much younger than them. They don’t seem to get that kids are smart in their own right. And absolutely none of them realized these weren’t her ‘imaginary friends!’ They were as real as her crayon set, or her dollhouse(which she didn’t use, it was a gift from her nice grandma, but she was playing with her friends all the time)! They would never get it.

“Urgh. School sucks,” Alice’s baby sitter, Megan, grumbled. She had walked in a half-hour ago with her cute zebra-print backpack slung over her shoulder, plopped down on the couch that was in front of the TV, and began her homework, occasionally glancing up to make sure Alice was still breathing. Her chest is moving? Lungs still functioning fine? We’re good.

Now, Alice had heard of this mythical thing called ‘school’ before. According to some of her daddy’s friends, she should be in Kindergarten by now. But she wasn’t. Daddy always nervously excused himself, saying “Well, her mom’s dead, I’m just so nervous about sending her someplace where I won’t know what’s going on for four hours…” Of course, Alice didn’t acknowledge the idea of school, holding it in complete disregard. Why should she worry about school, right? Her daddy wasn’t sending her anytime soon. Besides, she could just throw a fit and get her way if he tried, daddy always got so nervous when she cried, like he had injured her by making her clean her room. It was mean of her to do that to daddy, but her friends might get lonely! Alice looked back at her babysitter, who was still sitting at the couch, doing her homework, which looked to Alice like a lot of gibberish. Unfortunately for Alice, this meant the babysitter was paying no attention to her! What a rude lady. The child reached over, and with a swipe of her hand, knocked the babysitter’s homework off her desk.

“Augh!” she shrieked. “You brat!”

Alice pouted. Daddy would never call her a brat. And what did she need all those papers for anyway? Either way, her babysitter glared and picked up the papers, shuffling them into a stack. The poor babysitter began working on her homework again, eyeing Alice warily. A chubby hand reached over and shoved them off again, the person that the hand belonged to still pouting. Her friends were laughing and cheering her on as she did so. If her friends liked it, it must be okay. They were always right.

“Stop that!” the babysitter snarled, snatching up her papers and pulling them out of little Alice’s reach. Alice frowned and jumped up and down, trying to reach the older girl’s papers she was so protective of. Jeez, what was with these papers?! Was she a spy? She was probably a spy, and these were secret spy papers. SECRET. SPY. PAPERS. YES. With grunts of effort, Alice tried as hard as she could to grab the papers. They were secret spy papers, she had to read them! That was the moment she remembered she couldn’t read. She shrugged it off, her friends could read it to her. So she kept jumping, trying to grab her babysitter’s secret spy papers, until she gave up and began scaling her sitter like a mountain, desperately trying to reach the papers. The loud guffaws of her friends rang in her ears, and she was laughing too. Her friends approved, and that meant what she was doing wasn’t bad, right?

The sitter grabbed at her young charge’s shirt, yanking her off her. “FINE!” she shouted, “YOU CAN HAVE MY STUPID HOMEWORK!” She dropped the papers into Alice’s waiting hands, but then walked over to the plugged in TV and reached for the cord. Her young charge realized what she was doing, and let out a bratty shriek. Sitter-lady was trying to kill her friends!

Her sitter jerked to a stop, covering her ears, then asked “You gonna give up the papers?”

Alice shook her head firmly, and the sitter reached for the plug again. Responding to this, Alice ran for a kitchen drawer her daddy didn’t know she knew about, where all the sharp things were kept. ‘But daddy told us never to touch sharp things...’ she thought, but her friends looked at her pleadingly and Alice thrust her hand into the drawer, grabbing a large-bladed X-Acto knife, which she ran at her sitter with, stabbing her in the gut just as she began to pull the plug from the wall.

Something warm and red sprayed onto Alice’s hand out of the little cut she made, and her sitter gurgled blood and fell to the ground. The little girl knelt down and shook her. What happened to her? Was this some weird adult thing? She gingerly touched the wound she made, and red stained her hands. Her eyes widened, and she realized there was sweat dripping down her face, which she wiped off with her red-painted hands. When the odd red water clouded her vision, something strange happened to her friends. They turned white, and they...they twisted  oddly, and became splattered with red water as well. It almost seemed like they were rotting, their bodies ruined and twisted, cuts like her babysitter’s covering their bodies. Alice frowned. Her friends were messed up, and icky. Giggles rang through the air, and this cheered up the red-stained Alice. Friends liked it. They were happy with what she did. That must mean it’s okay, right? If they liked it, she should do it again, like with the secret spy papers.

And so, our newly anointed murderer left, bloody X-acto knife in hand, giggling. Never trust children with imaginary friends, you know. You have no idea if they are exactly…right in the head. And if you ever see a laughing, blonde child with big brown eyes, I would suggest you be wary. Unless of course, you want her waiting outside your window. Best wishes to those who find themselves in this situation, but I do not know how one wins against someone who does not fear death, and has the power of her own imagination fueling her strength.