Little House of Horrors

 

Just now, my cat, who apparently thinks she's a guard dog, suddenly turned towards to door, lowered her head, and growled.  Yes, growled. This is just after I spent ten minutes trying to convince Oliver that there's nothing to be afraid of at night.  In truth, the only thing to really be afraid of is his toys.

When I toss, pile, and shove Oliver and Charlie's toys into their bins at night, there begins a chorus of chirping songs and cheery greetings, excited alphabets and exotic animals as their buttons get pushed (as do mine; shut up already, toys, Mommy's entering her quiet time!) My sister was excited to have found a "super-cool" puzzle one year for Oliver's birthday; it's a wooden peg puzzle (of Melissa and Doug renown, fellow toy connoisseurs), of zoo animals.  What makes it "super-cool" is that when the pieces get put in the correct places, the animals make their respective sounds.  We quickly learned, once the puzzle was left out in the open, that the sounds are activated when the bottom part of the puzzle gets covered up. It reacts to light.  Which became very obvious in our western-facing living room when the sun was setting and the alligator, without its pegged match, roared every 10 minutes  as the shadows changed across the carpet.  Sleepily climbing the stairs for the night, we'd flick off the living room light to hear one last "rrrroar" or the irritating whooping of a chimpanzee, causing us to nearly fall down the stairs in fright.

Charlie got one of those "Violet" puppies for his birthday.  It's a stuffed animal that sings or talks when you press pretty much any appendage. "Just so you know," friends of ours warned, "it goes off by itself, kind of a lot." (It is no coincidence that these friends were not the givers of this particular gift.)  We thanked them for the warning and assured them that we were used to it, and told them about the puzzle.

Two nights later, unprovoked, Violet the Puppy started chatting from whatever box she was stuffed into.  "I lllllllove you!" she told me.  "Yellow. Foot!" Five minutes went by before I heard, "HUG me! Red, heart! Blue, hand!" Okay, Violet, you're getting turned off, I challenged in my head. I dug through a stuffed animal hamper, seeing Violet's blinking red heart illuminating the other furry friends. "PLAY with me!" She taunted. Oh heck no, I thought as I dug deeper.  Where was this freaking puppy? And then, red light blinking through the heap, I hear, "I...SEE you! Do you see me?"  Horrified scream. I found the poltergeist puppy, ripped open the velcro and switched her to "off."

And then it kept going.

No, I'm kidding, it didn't.  But I thought to myself, if this thing goes off after I turn it off, I'm going to poop myself.  And if it doesn't?  I'll have a great idea for the next big horror flick.