As I rounded the corner of the kitchen, I saw it. The flash of a red light, going from eye to eye. “By your command” the animatronic hellcat said. It had seemed innocent enough. In fact, it was a present to my daughter from her eldest cousin. A present because the little girl felt so bad that my daughter didn’t have a sister (the cousin has 2 sisters) that she needed to give her favorite toy over, a robotic cat capable of cleaning itself, purring when you pet it and in future generations, someday attempt to wipe out humanity. Or maybe it was just too early in the morning.
Shaking my head I opened the refrigerator to pull out the milk. The carton was warm. Too warm. The compressor of a refrigerator that was less than two years old seemed to have failed. Then I heard a noise from upstairs…
“EASTER BUNNY!” Excited for my daughter to see the cornucopia of presents awaiting her (guarded by that infernal cat), I raced up the stairs and saw her sitting there, sweet, a small ray of early morning sunshine coming in through the wispy pink curtains lining her window. What followed was a perfect rendition of easter: hunting eggs, rifling through baskets and dinner at her grandmothers house. By 1pm it had been a perfect Easter and was time to go home and relax.
And then it happened. Unbeknownst to me, my daughter had been hitting the chocolate all day long. To mix things up, she would occasionally eat a skittle, bite the head off a peep or impale a bunny shaped easter cake looking for the jelly beans hidden within. The chocolate had practically covered her beautiful Easter dress and the “grass” that lines Easter baskets had stuck to it. With her being 3 and therefore about the right size, she looked a bit like a brown spinning devil even before I said no to having more candy.
But no I said and that was the moment that things started to get a bit on the crazy side. The first creepy thing that happened was when I took the candy away. In a deep mephisto-like voice, she said “GIVE ME BACK MY CANDY.” I held my ground. Again I said no. Then her head began to turn. After about 720 degrees, I pulled down some baby wipes and started to try and wipe some of the chocolate from her face. That’s when she levitated towards the top of the refrigerator. I grabbed the candy and ran to the basement, hiding it under the stairs. But still she came, relentless, screaming “CANDYCANDYCANDYCANDY.”
One word seemed to settle her in similar encounters, so I tried my best to fight back the fear and just said “Dora.” As luck would have it, she floated back gently to the floor, wiped that sweet curl back from her face and darted up the stairs and plopped down, cross-legged in front of the television. A couple of quick taps on what she calls the “tiny remote” and after clearing away family pictures on the Apple TV we were watching Benny the Bull have the hiccups in no time!
Then it dawned on me: I needed to use the restroom. I told her I would be right back and went into the bathroom. After catching my breath for a moment, I emerged from the bathroom and she was gone. I raced down to the basement, but the candy was still locked away in the closet. I ran up to the top floor, but she wasn’t there. Then I ran back downstairs and found her, sitting in the middle of the dining room floor, under the table, with a handful of Hershey’s kisses. Or rather with the metallic wrappers lining the floor and molten chocolate lining her face. She smiled.
We went to the kitchen to wash her hands and I noticed a blue ooze coming out of the bottom of the refrigerator. I opened the freezer and noticed that the frozen blueberries had thawed and were leaking, along with a box of popsicles, through the slot where the ice comes out and creating a nice puddle at the base of the freezer. The freezer looked like Sonic the Hedgehog and Max Rebo accidentally got taken down Sonny Corleone style. Of course, when you’ve had about 12 pounds of chocolate (approximately half your body weight), what sounds better than jumping up and down in a puddle of blueberry and popsicle goo in fresh white tights and rubbing your molten chocolate mouth all over your pretty Easter dress? Er, nothing of course!
I reached for a washcloth, but she bolted for her favorite toys, the marbles, which she loaded up into Easter eggs and shook, the sound practically shaking the whole house. She loaded them up into a pan (one of those nice sturdy Calphalon kinda’ pans) and she put the lid on it. She then began to shake it wildly. The sound was deafening, like the Irish mutant Banshee could produce (like in the X-men, you could literally see the sound waves coming off these pots and pans – and they looked kinda’ like the AirPort menu item in Mac OS X).
It had then been at least a minute since the last taste of chocolate. As the candy withdrawals began, I could see the pain in her eyes. Frantic, the pace picked up and she ran into the living room. She shoved poor potato head’s arm in his eye socket and threw him at me, extracting a Reese’s peanut butter cup in one fluid motion. Before I could stop her, she dove back into the blueberry entrails, then rose, looking like Gleek from Super Friends (tail included) and ran screaming into the freshly painted white walls, rolling so as to seemingly maximize her unloading of what seemed like the blood of Avatar creatures.
The blue version of Rorschach’s face aside, things were getting to a point of no return. She was moving so fast that the friction seemed to cause sparks from the bottoms of her previously white good shoes. The curls were now as dangerous as a cat o’ nine tails and I am pretty sure that the carpet looked a little bit like a tie-dye of chocolate, blueberry and white Godiva (oh crap, where did the white chocolate come from). She bolted under her bed. I dropped to the floor and looked under there. Oh look, I thought, my 64 gig jump drive, cool. Back on track, I reached both hands under and pulled her out. I poured a nice warm bath and tossed her in. It seemed to stem the withdrawals that were back.
Then came her mom and all was calm.
I walked down the stairs to clean the kitchen. The cat looked over and said “meow.” That’s when it occurred to me that it wasn’t Sonic the Hedgehog in the fridge, those were cat prints. And as the cat sat and toyed with the Zhu-Zhu pet, torturing the poor robotic hamster and making it scream, it occurred to me that the compressor in the refrigerator had claw marks on it. The hidden chocolate that my daughter had uncovered was hidden below the cat. The cat, clearly the Supreme Leader of Hamster torture was behind it all. The red light passed from eye to eye and that’s when I knew, it wasn’t her. Like when Count Iblis messes with Sheba’s head, in the end, my girl came back to me. By the time mom came downstairs, the little angel was asleep, sweet as the candy the cat had used to lure her into such a frantic state.
The cat looked up at me and seemed to have a grin on his face. By then my wife was back downstairs and he was safe. Until tomorrow then, because you see evil cat, they are supposed to get crazy and take great pictures. That’s one of the things that makes Easter so much fun, especially when you’re almost 3! So bring on SkyNet. ‘Cause things today happened exactly as they should, with or without