Flash Fiction: A Terrifying Television

Welcome to the Spot Writers. This month’s prompt is to use the following five words in a writing: marble, TV, evil, butcher, couch. This week’s post comes from CaraMarie Christy, the young-un of Spot Writers. Visit her blog on Word Press at Calamariwriting and check out her book from when she was twelve, Fairies Fly. CaraMarie is also hoping to share a new marketing project coming up with Kindle Worlds! *Knock on wood!*

A Terrifying Television

By CaraMarie Christy

It was the clearest thing in the world, in the mind of two-year-old Colleen Cuellar, that the TV was a horrendous, deadly trap worse than any timeout imaginable. People walked in and out of the box, summoned by a black wand that was often lost in the cushions of the Cuellar’s red couch, and then disappeared into nothing whenever the wand demanded. If she stood too close to the TV, Colleen was sure she would be sucked in, and never let back out. It had happened to Elmo. One day she had been playing with her red friend and the next he was inside the box, singing a song about “Elmo’s World”, and she could not find him anywhere, despite knowing she had left him next to the coffee table the day before.

That was what the TV was then. A monster, that could butcher people and then leave no trace of them behind. Their bodies were shrunk down for this reason, until they were almost smaller than Colleen. People were not supposed to be her size, she was sure. People were supposed to be large, loping creatures, with hands the size of her face. They were supposed to eat big foods at the grown-ups table and talk about cars. And something called an “I-95”. Colleen had a car, a very nice car with big, red wheels.

A crackling noise rang from the TV, the signal that her bubble-gum-chewing “babysitter”, as the people called her, had woken it up. Colleen chucked her car across the living room and screamed. In her fascination with her own car, she had forgotten all about the people eating box. For a moment, she watched it, glowing across the room, showing a small dog on its way to a summer camp. And then the dog was gone. It was replaced by two people holding hands and chewing gum. The dog would never come back.

Colleen had to act.

There were few places to run and even fewer places to hide, that weren’t covered in giant, white locks. Desperate, she crawled as hard as she could away from the babysitter, hoping to stay low to the marble in the kitchen long enough to avoid detection and get to the dog’s crate. He would help her, despite his own captivity whenever the babysitter was around. Slowly, she made her way toward the black wires where his snores were emitting. She could not run. The rustling of her diaper would alert her pink haired caretaker to her escape attempts.

But, even without a rustling diaper, the babysitter noticed before Colleen could reach safety. The big girl’s feet thumped against the living room carpet as she got up from the couch. Just as Colleen’s fist was around the lock to the dog’s crate, Katie wrapped her arms around her waist and hauled her up into the sky. They were back in the living room before Colleen could bite her captor. The evil babysitter didn’t understand the danger that they were in and Colleen didn’t like her enough to try and save her. Colleen’s struggle was only for herself and it went on for hours. She crawled, ran, and even rolled, but she could never make it far enough to open the dog’s cage.

A knock at the door signaled a break for Colleen. She was exhausted, so she curled into a ball at the far side of the living room, next to her play pen, and stared at the TV, daring it to try and eat her at such great a distance.

“She’s got a lot of energy today,” moaned the babysitter as she let in Mr. and Mrs. Cuellar. They dropped their coats over the couch. “She keeps trying to get to the kitchen and play with the dog. And she’s starting to get fast at it, too.”

The corners of Mrs. Cuellar’s eyes wrinkled. “Have you seen the video we got of Collie’s first steps? I don’t think she ever could walk. She just runs.” Mrs. Cuellar picked up Colleen and patted her head. “Here, I think the disc is in the DVD player already. We were showing it to the Beasleys. It’s pretty funny to watch.”

The crackling noise made Colleen clutch to her mother’s blouse. Every bit of her wanted to stay there, to never look at the monster in the living room, but the big people were all staring intently at the box. With one eye, she peeked, then shrank back into her mother at what she saw.

She was in the box, running toward the marble in the kitchen, just as she had been doing earlier. She could see herself running on the screen, her diaper swooshing, feet slapping the marble, but she couldn’t feel herself moving at all. The box had her. It would never let her out. Maybe it had always had her.

Colleen wailed.

The Spot Writers—Our Members:

Val Muller: https://valmuller.com/blog/

Catherine A. MacKenzie: https://writingwicket.wordpress.com/wicker-chitter/

Dorothy Colinco. www.dorothycolinco.com

CaraMarie Christy: https://calamariwriting.wordpress.com/