My Eleventh Birthday - Constrained Writing Contest #24 hosted by @svashta
My most miserable memory must have been my eleventh birthday. I did not know a single person who had showed save my friend Ronaldo, who never was much of a talker when others’ were around. It was a dark, heavy day and the clouds were constantly tinkering on the edge of eruption. None of this mattered though.
Two hours into the silent fiesta, a rickety old grey minivan pulled up. A man got out who was wearing a suit that looked to be more expensive than his vehicle. He was very neat and clean looking, and as I watched from the backyard he talked with my parents before grabbing a large trunk and disappearing through the front door of the house.
The man emerged 15 minutes later in a robe and a different set of eyeglasses. What amazed me most, though, is that his hair had changed. In fact, all of his facial features had changed. The man, although he had certainly not looked old before, now looked no different than some of the children at my party. He walked to the back of the yard, got up on the makeshift pallet stage, and introduced himself as “The Magical Mister Mystery”.
The “magic” show was a pathetic bore. Kid stuff. Even at 11, I was too mature for that shit. But I couldn’t take my eyes off his hair, and face. What had happened? I thought to myself. He didn’t look real, not by any means.
The cheap phony approached the climax of his show and I couldn’t have been more ready for him to have finished. He brought out his trunk, opening it slowly for the millionth time, tricking the audience into being amazed every time. But this time, he brought out a dummy. While all the mothers jeered and smiled, I couldn’t help but notice that there was something quite disturbing about this doll. The head.
The head of the doll seemed to have the skin and hair of the man I saw in the suit, yet the doll depicted a child…. and Mister Mystery over there was looking more and more like a child. I ran over to my mother and tugged on her pants, whispering, “there’s something wrong with that man”; but she ignored me after a hard “Shh!”
The man was wrapping up his act at this point. He closed his trunk and began heading back towards the house. Deliberately taking the long route, I watched as he walked past the solitary Ronaldo and dropped his hat. “Be a dear, my boy, and help me with that, would you?” I watched as Ronaldo picked up the man’s hat, and together they disappeared into the house.
I didn’t think much of it. I was 11, for mother’s sake. With Ronaldo gone, however, I sat alone, unnoticed, as the other kids played and cried, patiently awaiting my friend’s return. It was at that time I heard the clink-clunk of the old minivan starting and I walked to the fenceline to watch the strange, awful magician drive away.
I barely caught a glimpse of the man as he pulled away. But it wasn’t him that I saw. In the passenger seat, looking vacant, empty; expressionless as a ventriloquist doll, was Ronaldo. And his hair had changed. His skin had changed. And so had the man’s.
I ran back into the party yelling “MOMMY! DADDY! HE TOOK RONALDO”. But, I was assured, there was no Ronaldo. There never had been a Ronaldo, all of a sudden, according to every one I knew.
That was the last birthday I enjoyed.
This is my entry into @svashta 's "Constrained Writing" contest. It's a very, very cool concept I just found out about and I strongly encourage you all to go and check it out :) This is a work of fiction, I hope that that is obvious :D
This is the second creepy story I read for this challenge and I like it!
Thanks for sharing and being a part of the writing challenge.
Thank you!! I appreciate it very much. I'm new here and want to participate in a lot of these challenges, granted I keep finding them :)
I'll be damned! So wait... This mysterious man "created" Ronaldo, who was one of his muppets, and the man himself was also capable of shapeshifting, or at least capable of "possessing" the body of a child, or at least shapeshifting into a child?
But JESUS! The little kid knew ONLY Ronaldo. THAT's creepy! How long has this inanimte "doll" been around already!? :D
Thank you very much for your entry!
To be perfectly honest, the details of the workings of this man.. I didn't really come up with a solution for that. This was a more trickle-from-the-keys type story, without really any deeper meaning haha.
It doesn't mean that I don't like the way it turned out, though. Just an experiment with my brain. As for the man and Ronaldo, I guess where I was going with that was the was not human(shapeshifting is good input!), and is somehow surviving on the youth of children that he steals from these parties, and has an affect on the surrounding community that he infiltrates :)
Thanks for reading!
It's a really cool story that bugs me for what I.. well.. stated above :P
It could also be that the mysterious man goes to these birthday parties to "steal" kids and turn them into his inanimate dolls, to then reincarnate into as he wishes... or something? :P
A part 2 would be interesting. :P
I guess that was my ambiguous point. If I had to explain my brain, I guess it would go as such; Ronaldo very much is a real child, and that very real child was taken by this mysterious man. It is also inferred that the previous dummy he brought with him, was, at one point, a very real child. The "man" contains his youth by harvesting the youth of children he abducts in various ways; in this case, he dresses up as a human magician to do so. In the end, it was only the protagonist that remembered Ronaldo, as the supernatural being/"man" has the ability to alter people's memories; which would be the only way he could get away with this under the radar.
I guess I need to work on making my ambiguous inferences more clear. Maybe I will do a part 2 :)
So many possible explanations we came up with.... and I love every single one of them!
I want more! ;P
Interesting, I read it as if Ronaldo was taken in a manner that made everyone forget he existed...
Heeeeey! That's a neat idea too! And only the boy's memory wasn't wiped. That's a splendid explanation also! :D
Right. How that actually works; I left open to interpretation :) The point was that this was not a stand alone event; that it had been occurring, and the "man" is harvesting youth of children, getting away with it by his memory-altering abilities :)
Nice story, I am new here as well and just getting going. I thought Ronaldo was your childhood imaginary friend, keeping quiet while company is about. The 11th birthday as a marker in time a piece of childhood passing. Bad magic acts can do that!