When I was a toddler, one of my uncles bought me a particular stuffed toy as a birthday or Christmas present. This toy was the eponymous character of a mid-late 80s tv show. I was very fond of this toy and the show.
But I have a distinct memory of when things changed. One morning I was getting dressed and I was watching the show on the tv. In this particular scene the main character is behind a counter (as puppets typically are) and ducks under it as a human character comes along. The idea that this waist-high thing could hide right within reach instantly terrified me.
From that point on I was convinced the toy and the tv character were one and the same, both animate, scuttling around under various pieces of furniture. Patently ridiculous and hardly original what with being under the bed, for example. When I banished the toy to the area behind the walls of the loft, I became afraid of being alone in the loft. For years I wouldn't stay up there without the tv or radio on to kill the silence.
Eventually the loft was converted into my bedroom and the area behind the walls was accessible only by three waist-high panels. Staring at the panel at the far end of the room, because it couldn't possibly open. Because the panel would never open outside the unthinkable nightmare. But what if it did? But what if it did?
Many years ago the attic was cleared out and I saw the toy again. I even watched the character's film with the stuffed toy. But the dichotomy between the animate puppet on the screen and the inanimate mass-produced toy was still disturbing. I stared at it and didn't dare look at it a minute more. I wanted to thrust a knife into it. But what if it did? It was packed away and I don't know what happened to it. And in the back of my mind I still don't want to know. Part of me will not provoke the improbable possibility, when the rest knows it's absurd.
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