I knocked on the door of the Miller’s house at six o’clock sharp like I always do on Saturday nights. My babysitting career has been nothing but a success these past three years, and the Millers have been nothing but a wonderful, loving family with well-behaved kids. Ava and Holden, ages five and two, have become like my own children, their sweet and spunky personalities keeping me entertained.
As the door swung open to 647 Maple Leaf Street, I saw Ms. Miller, halfway done with her makeup with Holden at her feet. Per usual, the kids ran right to the door and tackled me down, hugging and tickling me. Ms. Miller passed the kids off as she continued getting ready and said she’d be back down in a minute. This was the typical routine. Nothing was out of place. Well, not yet.
I fixed the kids some macaroni and cheese with broccoli and peas, our typical Saturday night dinner. Classic Holden wouldn’t touch the broccoli, that is until it transformed into a rocket ship headed for his mouth. Despite having worked with these two for years now, they still fall for my classic tricks.
Ms. Miller came down the stairs, hair and makeup complete, ready for her night out.
“Everything is the same as usual,” she said. “Only thing I wanted to tell you is that Ava has been a little off lately, more goofy than usual. We’re thinking it’s maybe the restless nights she’s had with her growing pains. You know how she gets when she’s tired,” Ms. Miller said with a laugh.
“No worries at all. I’ll get her to bed on time tonight,” I replied.
Ms. Miller grabbed her purse and headed out to the car with Mr. Miller in it, ready to go out after a long day at the golf course.
The evening continued as usual. We played with legos, played house, and even baked some cookies for dessert. I did notice that Ava was acting a little strange, staring into space and laughing, but I attributed it to the lack of sleep her mother had described. When the clock hit seven, we all headed upstairs for a quick bath and bedtime.
When I got upstairs, Holden on my hip and Ava following right behind me, I heard the bathtub water start flowing.
“Hello?” I said, very confused about who could be up here.
“Hi” Ava said with an eerie ear-to-ear grin as she stood in the bathroom.
“I thought you were right behind me!” I said, even more confused than I was a minute ago.
In a robotic tone, almost inhuman, she replied, “It’s me, Ava, look behind you.”
I whipped my head around as fast as I could, and there stood Ava on the step behind me.
“What the hell,” I thought to myself, heart racing with fear. I couldn’t show my terror to the kids, so I kept myself calm and brushed it off as a silly trick she played on me.
I plopped the kids in the bathtub, and when I turned around to get their soap from the cabinet, I began to hear them blowing bubbles in the water.
“Ah, everything is fine. We are back to our typical Saturday night routine,” I thought to myself. The kids always competed to see who could make the biggest bubbles in the tub.
With the soap in hand, I turned back around to see Ava holding Holden’s head underwater. The sound wasn’t joyous bubble blowing, instead, it was the sound of a two-year-old drowning.
“Look!” Ava said back in the robotic voice, “I’m letting Holden win the bubble contest tonight. But since he is dying, that means I’ll win the contest every other night.” She let out a laugh and immediately went back to her deadpanned face in the span of a second.
I scurried over to pull Ava’s hands off of Holden’s head, but when I touched the water, I noticed it was scalding hot.
“I turned up the temperature to burn his skin,” Ava continued, “Aren’t I so smart?”
My face immediately flushed, and I sunk my hands into the water, despite the temperature, to pull out Holden. His entire body as well as my hands were blistered with third-degree burns, and the poor kid was blue.
I immediately began CPR and told Ava to get me my phone. I looked up to the tub when she gave me no response, and she was nowhere to be seen.
“Not my main issue right now,” I thought to myself, “I need to get this baby back to life.”
I continued CPR as best I could as I ran with Holden down the stairs to get my phone. On the kitchen countertop was Ava, but she didn’t look quite like she had before. Her skin looked like it had been melted, the way queso looks on a tortilla chip. Her eyes had changed from light blue to black, and her teeth had become pointed. She held my phone in her hand, and said, “The only way you’ll get this back is if you let me take a bite of you.” Her grin showcased her pointy sharp teeth and her bulging black eyes.
I had already lost the Ava I knew, so I wouldn’t let myself lose Holden too. I handed Ava my arm, and her drool immediately started oozing out of the sides of her mouth.
“Ava Miller,” I said, trying to hide the quiver in my voice, “Take a bite of my arm NOW and hand me that phone. Your brother is dying!”
Ava’s teeth neared my flesh as she sniffed out the juicest bite she could find. I was still trying to give Holden CPR with one hand, the color having slowly returned to his burned, blue body. I felt her dagger-like teeth slowly piercing my arm, one stab at a time, like millions wasps stinging me. Hot blood was rushing down my left arm as my right was still working furiously pressing on Holden’s sternum. The sound of her little teeth impaling my flesh reminded me of ripping into a nice bite of steak. She finally chomped onto my arm, pulling an inch-wide circle of flesh off. The pain was indescribable, how I would imagine it would feel to get your arm ripped off by a chicken wire fence. I screamed in pain as my eyes went dark, but I forced myself to stay awake for Holden.
As calm as I could be, I said sternly “Give me my phone right now.”
Her mouth full of flesh and tissue, blood dripping down the sides, she slowly grabbed my phone with her left hand and rubbed the blood off her chin with her right. She transferred the phone into her right hand, smearing blood all over it, still maintaining her doll-like grimace.
I dialed 911 as soon as she handed me the phone, and as it began to ring, Holden gasped for air. Tears involuntarily began rolling down my cheeks as I was beyond relieved to have one of the kids back and also feeling the immense pain from the lack of skin on my arm.
I explained as best I could to the 911 dispatcher, and although skeptical of the story, they sent two ambulances immediately. When I looked back up on the countertop where Ava had been standing, there was no one there. I could hear that demonic laugh again upstairs, but I couldn’t get myself to go up there to search for her.
The ambulances arrived, and Holden and I hopped right into one. I told the paramedics that Ava was upstairs, but something was exceptionally wrong with her mentally and physically.
“We’ll get her into the other ambulance. You worry about the little boy,” the paramedic said.
While in the ambulance, they hooked us both up to countless monitors and gave us pain medications galore. Suddenly, I panicked. How the hell do I tell Mr. and Ms. Miller what happened? I left Ava alone at the house, the number 1 no-no of babysitting. The paramedics saw my panic set in and immediately put a sedative medication into my IV.
I woke up to not only Ava’s parents sitting between my hospital bed and Holden’s, but Ava was there as well. My heart rate skyrocketed, creating a rush of nurses to my bedside. They gave me some nondrowsy stress relief medication, but I still was beyond confused as to why Ava was there, looking like her normal self again: no sharp teeth, skin attached to her face, and eyes back to blue.
Ms. Miller began to speak: “Jess, we are so sorry about what happened.”
Mr. Miller and Ava then chimed in, “It will never happen again,” they all said in the robotic tone Ava had possessed a few hours prior. The three of them smiled the same way Ava had in the kitchen and left the hospital with Holden. Safe to say, I will never return to the Millers again.