I used to have this Stitch stuffed animal that I would pour apple juice on, and suck the juice back out of. It was sopping-wet all of the time. I used to slam it against walls and it would make a loud thud. Now it wants revenge. For some context, as a child I was the biggest fan of the critically acclaimed 2002 Disney animated field Lilo & Stitch, so I had a stuffed Stitch toy. I used to call it Sich, because I didn’t have the linguistic skill to pronounce Stitch. I’d chew on its ears, throw it around, and use it generally as an emotional support crutch.
This year, since I am trying to heal my inner child, I brought him to school with me. I may have accidentally thrown him in a bin in my dorm with a handful of crystals and sage I got from Spencer’s Gifts on a whim, and a novelty black flame candle from the movie Hocus Pocus. It may have also been a blood moon or something? I dunno. Regardless, Sich is now alive and sentient only between the hours of 12:07am and 4:23am. It began by speaking in a film-accurate alien language, but every night its English grows stronger. The upside to this is I now know several alien expletives to use at my leisure.
This doll also has a personal vendetta against me for all the abuse it endured. It specifically knows how to target my insecurities and references my childhood trauma, which is not helping with my initial goal of healing my inner child. However, the entire time the doll sounds identical to the voice actor Chris Sanders, so honestly it’s kind of funny when Sich tells me that I don’t talk to my father enough. I’ve been making Tik-Toks of the stuffed animal’s tirades to profit from the situation in some capacity, but no one will believe me, and everyone says my character voice is shit. I may have incidentally incurred the wrath of Ventriloquist-Tok.
Sich has now started clawing at the lid of the bin under my dorm bed to be let out like a cat, and refuses to cooperate until I return it to the Disney store back home in Pennsylvania. I cannot comply; I don’t have a car. The longer I deal with this monster, the more tolerable he becomes, and the more I understand the unique psychology of whatever demon possessed this doll. I now feed Sich dry ramen noodles and it agrees to stay quiet as long as it can watch Pokemon reruns on Netflix whenever it is it’s awake. I approve of this: the Pokemon anime is quite good and ramen is delicious. We have a lot in common. While it is harder to sleep, it is a worthy exchange for the constant verbal abuse I endured.
My original plan was to bring him back to the Disney store, but now I have grown emotionally attached once more. Since it has been a couple of weeks, it now sleeps with me in my bed and leaves ramen noodle crumbs in my sheets, but I don’t care. Sich may have forgiven me. Which means that I may or may not have healed my inner child, or became friends with some sort of malicious supernatural entity. It would be the best decision to let it go, but Ohana means family, and family means nobody gets left behind. And Sich is family.
Connor Stanford is a Sophomore Theatre Studies major who is being held hostage by Sich, you can reach them at [email protected].
Art by Selkie Racela.