🧸🧸CHRISTMAS GIFT🧸🧸
🧸🧸EPISODE 4🧸🧸
It’s 25 years already since the teddy bear murdered my whole family. The event that happened that night is still very fresh in my mind and anytime I remember my sister’s slitted neck, my father’s punctured head and my mom’s stabbed stomach, it always leaves me crying for the rest of the day.
I could still remember vividly, everything that happened immediately my Mum burnt the teddy bear and told me to run away while saving my life with hers. I kept on running and running in the dark as she has told me until I passed out on our lonely street around 2:30AM.
I woke up to find Uncle Smond,as we nicknamed him, though his full name was Desmond. He was one of our very close neighbours, I woke up to find him beside me on the hospital bed with a worrisome look on his face.
He must have been apparently so shocked when the watchmen knocked on his door with my lifeless body in their hands because I could see the compressed happiness coupled with sadness on his face when I woke up. He was so happy that I woke up eventually from my slumber and was sad at the same time due to what happened to my family.
Apparently, it was the watchmen that found me lying lifelessly on the street that particular night as I was told, and since I fainted in front of Uncle Ben’s house, the watchmen knocked on his door and they used his car to take me to the hospital.
Even though I was so so little then, I could see the pity and sympathetic look that was on his face and a ball of tears that was already threatening to fall if it gets a little more motivation.
“How are you, Angel”, Uncle Ben said, calling me with the name he usually calls my sister and I.
I couldn’t reply him, I drifted off to sleep immediately after his question and I woke up about an hour later to see my aunt and his husband beside me.
My aunt couldn’t believe her eyes when she saw me on the hospital bed. She started crying immediately she saw me. She tried so hard to conceal it but she didn’t succeed. Her husband pulled her outside to console her and he did the same to me.
They took me in after that tragic event and since then, I’ve been living with them. They treated like one of their daughters and I never lacked anything when I was with them.
That was twenty five years ago.
Everyone around me, including my husband are now aware of my little phobia for teddy bears and toys that has a human figure. That was one of the main reason why I didn’t buy one for my little girl.
She’s just ten years old and just like me, when I was her age, She wouldn’t stop asking me to buy a teddy bear for her even after I bought her a big toy car.
I cleared the remaining files that was on my table. I really need to get home on time in order to prepare some dinner for my husband and child, and moreover, my daughter seems so excited when her Dad called me earlier. She was just screaming out of joy through the phone. I could hear her tiny little scream and that made me impatient. I really wanted to know the reason why she’s happy.
“Maybe her Dad just bought her favourite ice cream she has been demanding from him since the past two weeks ,or rather, he has agreed to take her to the beach she always has wanted to go”, I thought and smiled to myself.
I pushed off my desk a little bit back and stood up from my sit.I vacated my office thereafter.
It’s almost 5PM and it’s really late already. I signed out and got into my car. Driving to the house is another cumbersome task for me.
I got home eventually around 5:30PM after my usual 30 minutes drive to the house and the first thing that happened was Beauty, my ten year old girl running towards me to welcome me.
I was just smiling at her because of her unusual actions because her welcoming me home before I get down from the car isn’t her usual thing.
I gave her my handbag and followed her inside the living room. She kept on pulling me and smiling at me while pointing towards the living room and immediately we got inside, she pointed to a very big box that was lying on the center table.
“Is today your birthday, what’s this big box we have here?”, I said casually as I kept moving towards the box.
I was still smiling until I opened the box to see its content.
It was a big pink teddy bear and I wouldn’t have been so scared if it was just a teddy bear. It has the same eyes, shape and everything, just like the teddy bear that murdered my family twenty five years ago.
© Elisha Kehinde Fagbemi
