Mama's Coming--Tyler

 It was 2 a.m. on December the 23rd and it was unusually hot. My 9-year old self couldn’t contain my excitement for Christmas morning, trying everything I could to get myself back to sleep to let the morning come sooner. Finally I had had enough, thinking it had to be a mental issue and just seeing my presents would ease my mind. And so I went downstairs to that forsaken tomb of all things that didn’t fit in the upstairs closets or the garage, not without first grabbing my flashlight. I had to be careful not to wake my mother, surely I would be in for a horrible reprimanding if I was caught. And so after taking great caution to not wake the slumbering Titan, and the fierce guard dog of the underworld, Pancakes, I made my way down the basement stairs. Once I had descended into the underworld as if I were completing my final trial, I began to search. I slithered past the monoliths of dust ridden boxes, surely built to appease some ancient god I knew nothing of, and the old sofa that was a Valhalla to all manner of bugs, and then I reached it, the motherload. I unwrapped each box to see what each present was, being careful not to rip the paper and signal I had been there the night before. Then, all of a sudden, one box fell right in front of me. It was small, and didn’t weigh too much, so I unwrapped it. To my surprise and what surely would’ve been like finding the holy grail to my younger self, I saw it, the thing I had wanted all of my life for the last 2 weeks, a fuzzball. I was so excited I had read every little blurb of text around the box, “I’m huggable!”, “I really eat!”, “My fur is soft!” until I reached one that seemed somewhat different from the rest, “My mama’s always watching, so treat me well!”. If only I had heeded that warning.

 I immediately took the egg-shaped, bright eyed, big eared harbinger of joy upstairs and began playing with it. It was a special kind of fuzzball, a brand new model that could talk, eat real food, and had groomable fur. “Hiya! I’m fuzzball!” it said in a warbly pre-recorded voice. I had nearly forgotten my mother was asleep so I put my hand over its mouth to try and dampen its cries of joy. “I’m hungry, feed me!” it cried, “Feed me! Feed me!”. It was unrelenting, so I did what it told me and fed it the finest 3 day old pizza I could find. I set the fuzzball down in the middle of the kitchen so I could free my hands to grab a plate. After I had walked across the kitchen to grab the dish, I turned around and found the fuzzball facing me, despite that not being how I placed him. I assumed I was just tired and rubbed the sleep from my eyes. I scooped up the noisy little fuzz face and brought it back to the counter to nourish it with its hearty meal, leaving red viscous residue all around it’s mouth. “Clean me! Clean me!” it wailed louder than before. I set it down and dug through every drawer and cupboard I could find looking for a brush. “Clean me, I’m all dirty!” it whined, “Dirty, dirty, dirty!”. Finally I had found a small comb my mother had left on the counter from frantic preparations for family pictures this morning. I dove across the kitchen floor and brushed the incessant hellion as its cries became louder and louder. Once I had finished brushing it, it yawned saying “I’m tired, take me back to bed!”. Gladly I crept back downstairs and began my journey back to the hoard of joy when suddenly my foot caught something and I tripped. Once I recovered myself I realized something truly awful, I had crushed my fuzzball under my own body, shattering his head, breaking his eyes, and spilling viscous pizza residue from cracks in the stomach and I began to hear a deep low humming, an angry humming. Suddenly the fuzzball’s eyes burst open crying “MAMA’S HERE! MAMA’S HERE! YOU'Re in troubl-” as the life slowly faded from its eyes. My mind couldn’t understand what was happening, but primal instincts began to wrap the mangled fuzzball corpse back in it’s festive cage and labelling. I fled the scene of the crime once the deed was done and slammed my door shut. I then lay in my bed facing the ceiling as my heart drummed in my ears, and after many long hours, I finally fell asleep. If only I had known what horror was watching, I would’ve never fallen asleep. 

The next morning I awoke believing the previous night’s events to have been a bad dream and I arose and went down for breakfast. Strangely my mother and Pancakes weren’t present, but this oddity was half-answered when I found a note from her on the counter reading “Gone to get last minute groceries for dinner tonight, I’ll be back by nine!”. I searched the house for the next few hours for Pancakes until about one o’clock, when I received a knock at the door. When I answered it, I found a dear family friend from a few blocks over standing there with a box, and an uneasy look in his eye, the kind you see when a child has to admit their fault to whatever sin they had committed, and guilt coursing through every vein in their body. “Is your mother home?” he asked. I answered no and requested to know what was in the box, it was then that I noticed it had a smell to it, a disgusting smell, not the sweet, toxic pungentness like that of a skunk, but that of death. He said he wanted to find my mother first and tell her, but my curiosity got the better of me and I ripped the box from his hands, tearing the lid off to find the crushed corpse of Pancakes. The man began fiercely apologizing saying he had run out in the road last night and that he had been searching for his owners all morning. He tipped his hat saying he was sorry one final time and solemnly walked off back to his car. 

The funeral service was short but sweet and I buried my beloved pet in the backyard at nine o’clock. I could barely collect myself after that and went inside to mourn, not even noticing my mother wasn’t back by when she said she’d be home. Suddenly the lights shut off and I heard a shrill terrifying screech, a bone chilling screech, one that ran down my spine like a doctor taking a prick and scraping it down each vertebrae. I quickly stood up from the couch and grabbed my flashlight, feeling deep down in my core that I was not alone. I stood there for what felt like hours. Then I saw them, a pair of deep red eyes peering at me from the other room. Then, as I shone my flashlight on them they disappeared into the inky blackness of the dark. I knew I was being watched. After much thought I decided to hide in the basement and call my mother. Grabbing my flashlight and the phone I began to lurch my way through the house, each step echoing off the wooden floors, with my own heartbeat seeming deafening. All the while my mind raced trying to figure out where those gleaming bloody eyes would appear next.

 After I had finally made my way to the furthest corner of the basement I decided now was the time to call my mother. Suddenly the phone rang by itself, and an authoritative male voice came from the other end asking “Is this the residence of Ms. Baker?” “Yes” I answered in the quietest voice I could muster. “Ms. Baker’s been in an accident, she was crushed and killed by a eighteen-wheeler running a red light. Some black creature jumped on the windshield and blocked the driver’s view, if we cou-.” The darkness around me froze and I couldn’t hear the rest of what the man was saying. All I could hear was my own heartbeat, but there was something else, something mechanical. Suddenly the eyes appeared again from around the corner and started slowly closing in. They began to hum in a deep resonance, like the final chime of a funeral bell. I backed up against the wall knocking over multiple boxes and presents, which blocked my view of the eyes. For some foolish reason I thought I was safe and approached the pile, then without warning, the shadowy figure the eyes belonged to lunged forward with metallic fangs the size of my forearm and pinned me to the ground. I could feel the air escaping my lungs and my vision going dark, all the while it’s dead piercing eyes stared into mine, waiting. My flashlight fell from my hand and illuminated the contents of one of the spilled boxes, revealing the last thing I’d ever see. The crushed and mangled corpse of a fuzzball and words right above it that read “My mama’s always watching, so treat me well!”.