Hi, internet! My name is Tommy, and I’m 10 this year. My mommy says that’s a very big number, big enough to go on the internet myself.
I was going to share with you guys the muffin man song, but I don’t remember how it continues. But maybe I’ll remember it later. Haha.
I will tell you all about me instead! I have a mommy, daddy, a little sister and a baby brother, and we all live in Kinderdeib. It’s a very small town in America, with the nicest and biggest houses I’ve ever seen. I’m in grade 5 and my best friend is my neighbor, Peter. Mommy and daddy say I’ve lived in Kinderdeib all my life, though I don’t actually remember any of that.
You see, mommy and daddy say last year I had a big, bad accident. They say I knocked my head real hard and all my memories disappeared. I had to re-learn everything from scratch – mommy and daddy’s faces, the school I go to, all my friends…
The accident changed all our lives. Even my sister Janey refused to call me ‘big brother’ for ages. She seemed scared of me, like I was a stranger. It was a very scary time for me too, and I don’t like to think of it.
But my therapist Miss Alexa says it’s a very good idea to write down all that I remember, and especially the bad stuff, so I can work through the thing she calls ‘trauma’. I think she means the nightmares? Although it has been one whole year since the accident, I still get them sometimes.
Oh, hold on. I hear the chime of the muffin vannnnnnnnnnnn
Okay, I’m back. I got a free muffin with blueberries! That’s because I’m one of the muffin man’s special muffin kids. He must like me because I’m extra nice. Peter is also a muffin kid, but Janey is not. She has to pay for her muffins, and she’s super jealous of us. Ha ha!
Anyway, I was going to tell you all about my bad nightmares.
Other kids get the monster under the bed, or the ghost in the closet, but my nightmare monster is the hand through the window. I’m sleeping in a tiny room, much smaller and messier than my room now. It always feels familiar, but I don’t recognize it. The walls are blue like the sea, with all sorts of paper drawings stuck to them. I think I drew those. There is a crooked window in the corner, where the moonlight comes through and dances in pools on the floor.
It’s quiet in my dream, until the hand comes. It smashes through the window glass, extending impossibly long and wide, lurching for my face. It is veiny and rough and the size of my whole body. The fingers wrap around my arms and belly, squishing me so tight I cannot breathe. I try to scream but the hand squeezes the air out of my chest. One finger clamps down over my eyes and gone is the yellow dancing moonlight. All is dark. That’s the scariest part. That’s when I start to cry.
The hand tosses me into a moving room. It smells warm, like Grandma’s kitchen on Sunday afternoon. Tea kettles and lazy sunshine and fresh homemade chocolate muffins melting in an oven. But I don’t have a Grandma, so I don’t know how I know what that’s like. The room smells sweet, but the floor is cold and hard, and it jostles me from left to right, like a coin in a tin can. There are two men there too, with deep voices. They talk about a delivery, and laugh roughly, as I lie on the floor bumped and bruised. I can feel the wetness of my tears and snot on fabric wrapped all around me. I scream but no sound comes out.
I always wake up at this part of the nightmare. I am full of sweat and panting and my head hurts and my heart is screaming in my chest. I’m terrified the hand will come back to me again and take me away from my family, because the nightmares are too real to just be my imagination. Sometimes I think they’re memories.
But Miss Alexa says I am safe here and that these are just nightmares. She says these nightmares are normal and lots of kids here have them.
It sill feels strange to me. At night I see nightmares, and in the day I see strangers.
The living room is filled with pictures of me in vacations I didn’t take, places I’ve never been and clothes I’ve never worn. My hair is too yellow and my eyes are too blue.
Sometimes daddy will point at the photo album and say “remember when we went to the Great Lakes? You loved the water.” And I will say “yes, daddy”, but it’s just a big fib. He will say he is proud of me, and happy to have his son back. That makes me sad, because I have no memories of the Lakes. Just of the photographs he keeps showing me, again and again.
Life is getting better though. In October, mommy and daddy let me paint my walls blue like the sea. Janey calls me big brother now. And in December, my brother Nathan came. Mommy and daddy were talking about that delivery for ages. Nathan is special because his skin is brown like chocolate, unlike the rest of us. Now, my family looks like all the other families in Kinderdeib. They are all colourful, like packs of skittles. It’s what makes our little town so special.
Oh oh oh I remember the song from just now! I used to sing it years ago, but it feels like a whole other lifetime, in a different place and different time. I think I sang it with some friends. Old friends I haven’t seen in ages. Someone made it up for us kids, putting new lyrics to the ‘do you know the muffin man’ song.
Do you fear the muffin man?
His frosting knives, his jars of ‘jam’.
The muffled screams from his muffin van,
Please fear the muffin man!
Ha ha, it’s so silly.
Anyway, goodnight, website. Talk to you all soon!