Evil Dust Baby

Luca pounced on me as soon as I entered the house.

“Dad! Dad! I have something to show you! Come quick!”

We crossed the kitchen, pausing only to fight with Elijah about who was going to show me whatever was 12 feet away. I figured it was an ant cluster. Or a rat king. Or something else attracted to crumbs. Maybe a raccoon?

Nothing could have prepared me for the horrible beauty of Evil Dust Baby.

Evil Dust Baby’s origin story goes like this: Luca dropped a Darth Vader Lego behind his radiator. He and Schuyler poked around with a Harry Potter wand and out popped a pound of dust and a 4 inch tall baby doll. Schuyler, in a moment of perfect inspiration, named it “Evil Dust Baby.”

Covered in filth, the poor thing had received a one time haircut from its previous owner. I say “its” because there is some debate on EDB’s sex. Like all plastic babies, it doesn’t have genitals. I say that makes it a girl because there are no hanging bits. Luca says that just makes EDB a nothing. There was also some debate on Whether or not EDB was a baby at all. EDB has these magnificent gorilla feet that are clubbed and weird and include way more sculpting detail than its genitals.

Diana did some quick math and determined there has been no girl occupying our house for 20 years, so Evil Dusty Baby had to be from the early 1900s (don’t think too hard about it).

Luca was concerned Evil Dust Baby would reanimate in the middle of the night and kill us all. I was fairly sure of the same thing, but I assured him EDB was just a piece of plastic and there was no way it could become alive in the middle of the night.

That is, until I moved EDB. In some late night inspiration, I crept downstairs and moved Evil Dust Baby from the kitchen to our living room mantle. This evil Elf on a Shelf game was something I was prepared to continue until the boys went to college.

I congratulated myself all the way to the office and waited for the freak out phone call. Which never came.

I texted Diana a few times asking, “Have you seen Evil Dust Baby?” And, “I think I heard an evil baby crawling around in the middle of the night. Did you get murdered?”

No response.

That night, I came home demanding why no one was sufficiently freaked out by the reanimated evil baby. They just shrugged and went back to their screens.

The good news is Evil Dust Baby is still where I left him/her. Waiting to hatch his/her evil.