The Dummy (Or Not)

0:01 To the restless, the insomniacs, the stressed out, the overwork the doom scrollers, the worried, and the board This is for you. Good writing is meant to make you think. This is the opposite. Short, funny, and unfortunately true stories that have mostly to do with nothing to help you turn off your brain and turn on your ram. All names have been changed to protect the guilty. These are anxiety addicts bed time stories.

0:41 Jemma McCarthy was sick of the bullshit. Okay, it wasn't bullshit, No, actually it was her friends and the parenting books she didn't read confirmed in her head that what she was experiencing was totally normal sibling fighting. At least, this is what she told herself instead of pulling out her carefully frosted hair. This was the nineties. She tried to block out the yelling from the upstairs bathroom as she carefully layered the three different shades of clinique eyeshadow that the woman behind the counter at Lord and Taylor had so carefully instructed her on how to apply. She pulled her lid to the side. When did it start to feel like drawn on water?

1:24 And whose fault was that? As if. Answering her silent question, the shriek of her fourteen year old daughter, Simone rang through the thin walls. Ben, get out of here. I have to do my bangs. Simone was now into her second month of high school and taking her hair care very seriously. Jemma had lost her patience with her daughter on the way to their grocery shopping trip to Big Wy that weekend when Simone took twenty two minutes in the shampoo while unable to pick out the correct conditioner for her hair type. The thing is if dry right after I wash it, but then oily by night. So am I combination? Simone put down the panteen provy and picked up the purple Aussy bottle.

2:11 Jemma watched her daughter study the label intently. She'd better bring this concentration to her English homework was all that she could think. Jemma was tired, really really tired. She'd been on call. As an obgyn delivering babies every night that week and was on approximately zero hours of sleep. Big Y was not exactly on her dream list of places to be on that rainy afternoon. Just pick one where you. Like the smell was the best advice she could give Simone. Jemma didn't remember being so obsessed with her products when she was her daughter's age, but the regularly scheduled interruption of every TV show with women faking ostentatious orgasms for herbal Essences products had definitely wormed their.

3:02 Way into Simone's brain. Yes, yes, yes, the bombshells would scream through the television speakers. It was as good an advertising campaign as Gemma had ever seen. Truth be told, she did avoid eye contact with both of her children when it popped on. Jemma pushed her cart past the rose and rows of plastic bottles. I'm going to the deli to get cold cuts. Meet me at checkout. But before she could get over to the counter to order her turkey, Ben, her son, sixteen and now towering above her, bounded down the aisle, knocking over Simone like an oversized puppy. Ben. Simone yelled at her brother at the top of her adolescent lungs, don't get girly shampoo.

3:49 I don't need to smell like a flower shop mom. Jemma could not believe that she had to mediate this level of nonsense. They were teenagers, they were supposed to be more reasonable than toddlers, Right, Ben, get your own shampoo. I'm serious, Simon, hurry it up. Ben grabbed the green bottle of herbal Essence from his sister and tossed it in the cart. If this is what girls like to smell, then that's how I'm gonna smell. Jem's exhausted mine briefly flashed to the woman in the commercial lathering her long brunette locks in an outdoor shower, heaving and moaning. She made a note to tell her husband that another bird's in the bees talk was probably necessary. Parenting at this age was so full of contradictions sometimes, and if she were being honest, kind of a lot lately, her kids acted so immature, so obnoxiously childish, especially around each other, that she felt like not much had changed with them since grade school. Other times she was making a mental note to have a very adult conversation with them.

4:55 It was a lot. Exiting big Y with a cart full of groceries Ben and his friends would most likely devour within the next twenty four hours and four different bottles of shampoo. Jemma screamed at Ben not to get hit by a Nissan pathfinder again. Like one hundred and seventy five pound toddler, he trailed his mother and sister, his head buried in a new comic book that he'd surreptitiously thrown onto the conveyor belt at checkout. It was nearing Halloween, and both teens were on a mission to find something both fun and adult to do. Look at this, he yelled to Simone. That's how they were.

5:35 Maybe that's how all teenage brothers and sisters were. One minute they could be wwe wrestling and hurling insults at each other, and a second later they'd both have their heads buried in the same stupid magazine. No way, Ben, don't you dare, Simone wailed. Jemma was too tired to be curious about whatever her son was doing to piss off her daughter. Simone wasn't having the easiest time these days. Puberty seemed to have descended. All at once on her only daughter. She'd grown at least three inches since school at out in June maybe four. J Gemma had taken her bra shopping twice over the summer and again in September. Poor Simone was just trying to play catch up with both her body and her brother. Mom, she yelled, sounding a lot more like a four year old than a fourteen year old.

6:30 Do not let him buy this. Jemma unloaded the paper bags into the trunk of her hatchback. The kids helped without being asked. She tried to remember this as a parenting win, but she had no interest in getting involved in this stupid argument. Before she could tell them to cut it out, Simone shoved the magazine into her mother's face. Gemma was so, so tired. What she really wanted was to go home, throw on her sweatpants, and pass out to the soothing. Sound of General Hospital. Instead, she found herself staring at an ad for the World's Creepiest Ventriloquist Dummy. It was one of those faces that looked like.

7:12 It had been carved from wood. More at home on a haunted vaudeville stage in the nineteen thirties than anywhere in Massachusetts in nineteen ninety six. It's painted on brows, exaggerated eyes, and unhinged jaw looked like it could climb directly into your soul and wreak absolute hafock. There she was just about to chastise. Simone for overreacting when she felt herself physically repulsed by the image. Ben, you don't need. This, Jemma tried to calmly show the page out of her face. Ben grabbed the magazine. I do. It's part of my Halloween costume. Ben declared, as if he'd been thinking about purchasing this very ventriloquist dummy for ages and hadn't just stumbled upon it mere seconds ago.

8:00 His mind was set. It probably didn't hurt that just showing Simone the picture made her shriek. A week and a half later, the package drive for Ben from her warehouse in Long Island, New York, and that's when the mayhem started. Much to Ben's delight, the dummy was bigger, creepier, and much more realistic than advertised. Simone's reaction to the thing was as outsized as its bulbous nose. Get it out of here, she would yell, walking into the computer nook to do her homework. The nook was an. Attractive feature of the house, a small space that Gemma and her husband had fallen in love with at first sight.

8:42 In between the two kids rooms at the top of the landing. She'd put two desks, one with a family computer. It was the perfect place to direct Ben and Simone to get their homework done before they locked themselves in their rooms. There was no door, it was more of a loft really, and the setup allowed the Pains to keep an eye on their son and daughter in the evenings. But all was not well in the homework nook. Ben had taken to leaving Charlie, as he'd named the dummy on the reading chair in the corner. He would never have admitted it as a six foot tall, sixteen year old guy, but the thing creeped him out too. He didn't like waking up in the middle of the night and seeing Charlie sitting on the floor staring at him with his menacing eyes and torturous smile, so the wooden man was relegated to the homework room. He's helping me with world history, Ben would throw at Simone. The only thing that made keeping Charlie around worth his own discomfort was how miserable Charlie's presence made a sister.

9:44 You should get. Along with him, you're both dummies. Ben doubled over, cracking himself up, while Simone yelled downstairs to her parents to stop Ben's shit. Jemmo was over it. It seemed like every expect didn't. Mother in town had decided to deliver their babies back to back to back to back this month, and she was exhausted to the point of borderline insanity. Charlie had only been a member of the household for three days, and Gemma was already fed up with hearing about him. She stormed upstairs, much like she done when they were both young children, fighting over legos. Or Barbie g I Joe wars.

10:24 Stop it, she yelled to her teenagers. Why, she asked herself. They would stop when they were good and ready. There wasn't much she could do. She could threaten to forbid Ben from having his friends over, but Hull could she The truth was as much of an imposition as it was to have a house full of high school junior boys in her basement. She felt way more comfortable when she knew exactly where Ben was. She could threaten not to take Simone to her girlfriend's house to watch Beverly Hills nine oh two and zero, but if she were being honest, she was so happy that her shy, introverted daughter had finally made some friends that she wasn't going to get in the way of Simone having her small social life. Stomping up the stairs, hoping there was something left in her that could still scare her children into behaving, she worried about no longer having any kind of leash over them. How are you supposed to punish teenagers? Before she could dive any deeper into this question, she got to the top of the landing and saw what was causing the commotion.

11:28 Charlie had been thrown onto. The old love seat in the computer room, his head tilted to the side and his arms laid on the cushions as if he were begging to give the world's most horrifying hug. Get it out of here. Her daughter's yell caught her ear drums off guard. Jemma briefly wondered if Simone was capable of any other volume than screaming her freaking head off. Jemma stomped over to the offending doll, grabbing his heavy wooden body. He weighed much more. Than she expected, and then something caught her eye. No one, not even her husband, would have noticed it. There's mother's intui shit, and then there's something else.

12:10 The way a mom who has known. Her child every day of their life knows, and this is their fearful face. It only lasted a second, not even a second, a millionth of a millionth of a second, but Jemma saw it the flash across Ben's eyes. He didn't want that creepy ass doll in his room either. Out of frustration, exhaustion, and some real annoyance, Jemma could have laughed, but that wouldn't. Have fixed anything. She maintained her even but slightly pissed off voice. Get your homework done and no TV tomorrow. Ben, you set your alarm for thirty minutes earlier to give simone in the bathroom, and that is final. The next morning, everything ran perfectly, smoothly. We're lying it did not. There was yelling and screaming, door slamming, and breakfast not eaten.

13:04 As Gemma waved goodbye to her awful children, standing in her bathrobe on the chilly October morning, she wondered how normal her situation was. She felt like she needed to get through to both of them, to wake them up, to get their attention, and to remind them who exactly was in. Charge of their household. Pouring herself a steaming cup of coffee. Jemma sat down at the kitchen table. Maybe she should have actually read the parenting books. The shit was hard that evening. Neither Simone nor Ben had any interest in going upstairs and getting their work done. Jemma's husband had had a long day at work and was buried in a Sam Adams in a newspaper in front of the muted television in.

13:44 The living room. His grade of buruntal help hovered just over a d. That's it, she yelled. Ben and Simone, who are now arguing over the last brownie. Go upstairs. Both kids threw her a look that conveyed their disappointment at being born and went to trudge up the stairs to wade through the homework that felt like cruel and unusual punishment. Ben flicked the switch on the wall. Nothing happened, the light bulb went out. He announced to the house, offering no solution on his end, Like all teenagers in the nineties. Were wont to do. Your father will fix it, Jemma called back. Her husband didn't look up from the paper.

14:27 The stairs creaked under the weight of the growing teens. Jemma kept her eyes glued to them. Ben walked over to the corner table on the landing and turned on the desk light. The sheer terror in his scream was alarming enough to alert the neighbors. Simone followed right behind, yelling many decibels above her usual volume. This was the first time in Jemma's memory that those two had been on the same page about anything. The screaming was enough to shake their dad from. His happy place. The hell is going on? He put down his beer and paper and joined Jemma at the bottom. Of the stairs. I have no idea, said Jemma, with absolutely no conviction, because she did. In the corner of the computer nook sat Charlie. Someone had expertly used a sharpie to carefully draw down the center of his eyebrows, creating a very effective and terrifying face. His wooden hand had been affixed to a knife which was raised above his head. A red substance splattered around his body, as if there had already been more than one victim and he was looking for another. Under the dim flicker of the desk lamp.

15:42 It was an image that would have made m Night Shamalan salivate. But at the house on Maple Lane, one day before Halloween. It was an image that the McCarthy siblings would remember for the rest of their lives. What what is going on? Simone whispered. Jemma didn't remember the last time she'd heard her daughter speak that quietly. Ben was not happy. Ben was embarrassed. He looked at his dad, then his sister, then Charlie, and then his mom because, oh, his mom was laughing. Jemma hadn't thought that she would be able to scare the shit out of her kids. She thought the scene would at best startle them, maybe make them pause there fighting for eleven seconds. Instead, she'd managed to get their attention on an almost profound level. This is stupid, muttered Ben, who wouldn't admit how much it scared him until he was well into his forties. Huh, concluded the dad who went down to his paper homework. No fighting set your alarm was all that Jemma felt she needed to say.

16:47 She turned on her heel and went back down the stairs to replace the bulb that she had removed earlier in the day. Simone and Ben just stared at each other, then silently went to their desks and start at their homework. The next morning, Ben was up and. Out of the bathroom before Simone was even out of bed, and Charlie was gone. The mess was cleaned up, and the dummy disappeared. Ben didn't ask about him and picked a different Halloween costume, but Charlie never left. Jemma packed him away in the basement and would pull him out a half dozen times over the years to scare the shit out of her kids when they were being assholes.

17:29 This is a tactic that may or may not have been in a parenting book. She wouldn't know, she never read any of them. Thanks for listening. If you still can't sleep, why not do some shopping on the small business links at anxiety addictsbedtime stories dot com support some really cool people, and don't forget to subscribe and to send us your stories sweet dreams.