The Cocoon Eaters - Chapter 4 (Babysitters)

*here is a chapter from a children's story i recently wrote. it is still much in the works and therefore any and all feedback is open! hope it makes your lips turn!

Chapter 4 – Babysitters

As any kid who has had a babysitter knows, babysitters can be nuisance. They’re kind of like teachers because sometimes you get a good one and other times you get a not so good one. Or, they’ll start off one way and then turn another way later on. It’s all luck really, and your parents are entirely clueless about the true character of a babysitter because babysitters do a thing I call The Parent Act. Let me give you an example.

When your parents come to the door to greet a new babysitter and introduce ‘you kids’ to them, the babysitter will usually crouch down so that they’re face-to-face with you, throw a big stinky smile in your face and ask, “so what’s your name?” All you can really do is pretend to be shy and hide behind your parents to avoid the fake stench of their brutal bubblegum breath.

Now let me tell you a thing about babysitters and bubblegum. First off, did you know that pretty much all babysitters chew bubblegum? Maybe it’s genetic. Anyway, the flavour of bubblegum that they chew can tell you a lot about what the babysitter is going to be like. I’ve learned that grape, watermelon and cotton candy flavours are usually safe, but strawberry or sour apple are sure signs of a bad babysitter. But back to The Act.

So then your parents take the babysitter on a tour of your house to show them where everything is: food for dinner and snacks, the bedrooms, the bathrooms, and a list by the phone of emergency numbers. All that terribly boring stuff. Meanwhile, the babysitter keeps saying they “simply love” everything. This is the phrase to look out for.

They “simply love the house,” they “simply love children,” they “simply love babysitting,” and so on. All lies. But parents take the bait, and as soon as your parents leave the house, your babysitter takes off their plastic Parent Act babysitter face.

I should say that I once had a perfectly sweet babysitter whose name was Rose, and Rose was an exception. Rose never chewed bubblegum, she brought her favourite stories over to read to me and she even came up with exciting games for us to play together. But then Rose moved away, and I got Lorraine.

Lorraine had perfected The Parent Act so well that even I fell for it. My parents still believe that she is a wonderful babysitter to this day, even though she doesn’t clean up after herself and she watches pay per view movies without asking. But truly, she’s really, really bad.

Not only does she chew sour apple bubblegum, which by the way she wasn’t chewing when I first met her, but she also does this thing where she blows a small bubble, brings it back inside her mouth and then pops it with her tongue. At first I thought it was kind of a neat trick, but she does it every minute and that sharp clicking sound it makes when the bubble pops in her mouth is so irritating I can’t even sit in the same room as her.

To make it worse, when she’s finished chewing one piece she swallows it and then she pulls another one out from her back pocket, which is all squished and warm and gooey from being back there for who knows how long, and immediately starts chewing and popping. It’s absolutely disgusting.

When my parents go out, which they do almost every Thursday and Friday night, Lorraine comes over and does this: she turns on the T.V., and then she grabs the portable phone, the potato chips, my mom’s magazines and my mom’s nail polish. She waddles into the family room, plops herself on the couch, takes off her ratty socks, and begins multi-tasking. Usually she just watches T.V. and talks on the phone while painting her toenails, but sometimes she also eats potato chips. When she’s eating the chips she gets crumbs all over her chest, and then guess what? She just pulls the piece of bubblegum she’s chewing out of her mouth and uses it to pick up the crumbs. And then when she’d got them all, she puts it back into her mouth and gets right back to chewing. See what I mean? She’s really sick.

The only time I ever hear her voice, which sounds like a toad’s, is when she yells, “hey kid, go to bed will ya.” But I don’t really have to because there’s no way she would actually get up off the couch to check. So I keep reading or whatever I’m doing until eventually I fall asleep.

With Lorraine I can pretty much do whatever I want as long as I stay out of her way, which suits me. I used to think about telling my parents exactly what she does when they’re away, but then I wondered if they would believe me. So I came up with a plan instead.

My plan is to invent something that will make Lorraine never want to come back. I got the idea for it one night when I heard her say on the phone that, “the bloody noises in this house at night totally give me the creeps.” After hearing that I started working on something that would scare her while she’s alone in the family room after I’ve ‘gone to bed.’ It’s not finished yet, but I can tell you what it’s called: The Sitter Spooker.