Okay, let me start off with this: There was no harm done to the child. Last night was kind of a first for me. I mean, I thought I just had to be watching Jazeline for the night, playing with a 1 and a half year old girl.
Yesterday, I was called to this house down the street from mine. My wife was hoping that my gig with the little girl would go as normal, given that I’m the breadwinner of the couple. She hoped I’d get some practice for when I become a mom. I’ve had a lot of nights babysitting, getting paid, but this one last night was the craziest.
The parents of Jaz offered me about $70 for one night. The parents were going on a date, to get more time to know and love each other, because they didn’t want to have to expose their daughter to a spat too early in life. That is what they told me, but now I’m not so sure.
“Angie, there’s a couple of specific rules I need to tell you about when taking care of her.”
“Sure, Mrs. Reed. What is it?”
“Do not give her refined sugar, period. Stick to giving her the food in the cabinet marked ‘Jazeline.’”
“Got it.”
“And don’t give her anything between midnight and 6:00 a.m. no matter how much she begs!”
The gig began as honestly normal. I was introduced to Jaz, and to be honest, she seemed normal at first. Black hair, green eyes, and oddly pale skin. I just summed that up to genetics.
I’m pretty sure that refined sugar is in candy and cookies. Jaz’s mom gave me a cohesive list of what not to give her, and it seemed easy enough to follow. Wherever I found those, I just hid them in the cabinet marked “Forbidden Foods.” She’d told me to put them there, and lock the cabinet tight. I had no idea why the cabinet had a tight lock, it was just a baby girl! Or so I thought.
I started by playing with flashcards for her. For words and associating them with figures. The idea was to kind of teach her things.
I’d hoped I’d have it easy, but I didn’t. Whenever I was giving her the food I was told to give her, which looked strange, she just kept pointing to the cabinet marked “Forbidden Food.” I kept having to say no and she would keep crying. I did what any parent would have to do to feed her, making odd noises and being soft and all that.
I must not have locked the cabinet tight enough (it was locked pretty tight), because it suddenly opened and a box of cookies floated, repeat floated, towards her. She pointed to it the whole time, and made a weird look on her face, and then the cabinet opened.
I brushed it off as a weird occurrence, but as I tried snatching the cookie box out of her hands, it was as if I was trying to pull a very heavy box off the ground. She was stronger than she looked.
I tried as per her parents’ instructions to give her what was permitted and make sure she didn’t touch the refined sugar. But Jaz somehow did something and a cookie floated into her mouth, she ate it.
I took the box with the rest of the cookies and put it back in the cabinet and locked it tighter than I did last time. I hoped it’d be tight enough this time.
Then, something was happening. I would expect that a small child would just be full of energy and would be hyper if given a thing with sugar, but in this case, her skin turned a deep brown, her hair a pale white, and she started going around the house like if she had super speed.
I desperately tried to catch her, but Jaz was a bit too fast. Eventually, she fell asleep, but not before I caught her and noticed that a lot of the house was wrecked. I put everything back together, and luckily nothing broke that was valuable. It was time for her to sleep by then, and the time then was 7:00 p.m.
As per the instructions, I made sure to stay up, in case she started acting weird at night, as her parents told me she acts weird at night all the time.
But this kind of acting weird went beyond just acting weird. She was floating off her crib. Her eyes glowed red. Her hair started to go wild. I swear, her voice was not one bit good during the night. She said in a screechy voice, seemingly demonic,
“Feed me! Now!”
I checked the clocks in the house. All reading before midnight. But I was told not to trust the clocks when she acts weird at night. I checked my cellphone clock, since it’s usually accurate. It read 12:08. But then it read 11:30. And then two seconds later it read 5:09.
It must have been between midnight and 6:00, because the cellphone’s clock has not acted so weird before. And the sky outside was dark. No evidence of a sunrise happening anytime soon.
“Feed me right now, Angie!”
I had to wonder how the hell she knew my name, or even so much English, for a child at 1 and a half years old. Jazeline was smart, but this was beyond my understanding of caring for a child.
“Give me my fill NOW!”
The voice was getting so loud and screechy that I had to cover my ears. Items in her room were flying about like if we were in a tornado. The lights in the room were flickering, changing brightness. She was floating, her hair was getting wild, spiky, and her body was floating, and her eyes were the worst part. Her eyes kept going about in crazy ways.
I was worried that the cookie might have caused her to be like it, but also worried that she was possessed, or worse, she WAS a demon.
It took God knows how long of having to keep my ears covered from so much noise and shit flying all over the place and feeling distressed before the sun finally rose. I checked my clock on my cellphone. 6:02 a.m.
And then I checked the crib. Jaz was asleep, as if nothing happened. I couldn’t wrack my brain for anything to think of that was scarier than this. Her parents got back this morning and paid me for the trouble.
But when they checked the crib, they gave me a mean look.
“I didn’t give her a single thing after midnight.” I said to them.
“Huh. Did she get any refined sugar?”
“I found stray items with refined sugar in the house, locked them in the cabinet you told me to, but she managed to break into it and steal a cookie. I thought I locked that cabinet tight.”
“You’re not really ready to be a parent, are you?”
“Mrs. Reed, I’ve been babysitting a long time, but this was unusual.”
“How tight did you really lock that cabinet?”
“I locked it as tight as I could! I don’t know how she could just psychically steal a cookie in my presence and break through that lock…”
Mrs. Reed sighed. “Look, Angie, we have to keep her off of that kind of sugar because if we don’t, who knows what she could do? She might just destroy the world if she gets any.”
“She did it herself, ma’am!”
“If her powers really are getting stronger…”
“Powers? What?”
“Jazeline is half-yokai, Angie. We’re going to have to put better locks on the cabinet if her powers got stronger and she broke through the cabinet at its tightest.”
“Honestly, I’ve never done this for someone like her before. Jaz wasn’t really all that bad, just very hyperactive and I’m thankful nothing valuable broke.”
Mr. and Mrs. Reed looked at me for a mere moment. Then Mrs. Reed spoke to me again.
“Angie, I’m thankful you did this for us. I’m sorry I got mad at you. It wasn’t your fault.”
“It’s okay. I’m new to this yokai stuff. Hopefully, I can do better next time.”
“Sure thing.”
My wife, Gillian, just embraced me when I got back. She was worried for my safety. I’ll never forget your kindness, Gillian. I did a family a solid. But I’m really going to have to prepare for nightmares about what Jaz was like in the middle of the night. I’m still kind of scarred by this.