The Christmas I got a Furby.

I was 9 years old when I recieved a Christmas present from beyond the grave.

In the short months between my mom's death (cancer) and my dad's death (impared driving), I wanted a Furby. I wanted a lot of things- a kitten, siblings, my Mom, a racecar- but the strange and ugly proto-AI toy had me hooked. I circled it in the Sears catalog. I drew pictures of it with crayons. I talked about it obsessively. Did you know it can learn words? That if you have more than one Furby they can make friends with each other? As much as you could in the days before the internet, I researched. I scoured the newspaper, I watched the ads on TV, I read the small two paragraph description in the catalogue over and over. I'm sure it was fucking insufferable. I wanted something cute and weird and distracting. The flashy late 90s ads promised friendship and unconditional adoration from a weird-beaked little guy and after lonely hospital hallways and empty rooms in our house that sounded so good. They came in a cascade of colours from natural to fluorescent, spotted, solid- so many to choose from. Plus, in the commercials, they could burp! Nothing could be better than that. The afternoon I was presented with the gift I was supposed to recieve for Christmas, I knew what that octagonal poorly wrapped box was immeditately. It was an iconic shape. My Dad had been dead a few weeks, the festive surprise had been hiding in the trunk of his car. He had said he would not get me one, they were the hot ticket item, every store was sold out. Very 'Jingle All the Way.' Who knows how many department stores he went to, somehow in the chaos of being a newly minted single parent, in order to make a liar of himself. Was it in the car he died in? I wondered morbidly. I didn't say it out loud, but the tissue paper looked haggard. Then again, he was always terrible at wrapping- as soon as I could manage it, it became a task I excitedly did for him. The woman handing it to me was crying (it was my Dad's girlfriend and that is a story for another time). I got exactly what I wanted. I lost everything. I had a Furby. I tore open the packaging, a hollow pit in my gut. He wasn't there to see it, but I felt I owed it to him to pretend to be as excited as I had expected to be. I said thank you. I faked it. As soon as I was away from prying eyes, I shoved it in a drawer, unopened. It wasn't until I moved to a bigger house with my adoptive family that I became curious about the Furby. The house we were in prior was small for myself and now two brothers. There was little privacy. Now, each with our own bedrooms and a little more space, I found it while unpacking. It was still in its box, the plastic window dented and foggy. I turned it over in my hands and looked at the instructions on the packaging. In this new home, this new environment, I felt a small pang for the kid I was before- the one who wanted a weird little friend. I rooted around in kicthen to find scissors, a screwdriver, the right batteries. Alone in my new bedroom, I cut the Furby free from his restraints, I opened the plastic plate on the bottom with a tiny eyeglass screwdriver. I loaded the batteries. I closed the flap and switched it on.

"Waaaaaah! Waaaaaah!" It excalimed loudly, wiggling and blinking, its ears winging up and down. The Furby was capable of an unsettling amount of motion for a small arc of fun fur, eyes & ears but no arms. It was also terribly loud. There was no volume control on the Furby. You were meant to leave it out, leave it on. The Furby could "listen" to you. It spoke Furbish, which was a gobbletygook of babbling syllables and exclamations. It was before the age of webcams and gaming consoles having motion control. It couldn't watch you, but the eyes and the blinking... it made it seem like it was. It chattered at me and stared and stared and stared. Despite waiting until I could be alone and open the Furby in private without judgement, despite reading up on the Furby obsessively, despite desperately wanting one and this being the last gift I would ever recieve from my late father, I regretted bringing this doe-eyed abomination to screaming life almost immediately. It shifted uncannily on my desk with strange mechanical whiirs, screamed and batted its comically large lashes. It wiggled its ears. I told myself I had to love it. It was brought to me from beyond the grave. I was indebtted to it. This is what I wanted. It clacked its strange beak threateningly. I could feel it's mechanical bones through the spotted fuzz, giving me the sensation that I was holding something that was really alive. I put it on my dresser. I didn't like to touch it. I certainly didn't want to talk to it. I learned rather quickly that its unseeing form responded mostly to sound- I padded across my bedroom carpet in thick socks so as not to spur on its cries for attention. I kept it, but also I avoided it at all costs.

The Furby hated me for the months it had been left in its prison. I was sure that it knew how long it had been in an opened box, in a drawer, in a trunk. Now able to voice its displeasure, it did- loudly and often. It tortured me by screaming suddenly at random intervals. I was ashamed. It made strange kissing noises and blew raspberries at me from across the room when I went to bed at night. Each time I picked it up to move it, it wiggled and jeered maniacally. I hated it back, and it knew that somehow. It had been so close to a death, that must have tainted it. It was embued with some sort of bad energy, it had seen the other side and now contained a vicious spirit. I continued to refuse to speak to it, hoping it wouldn't learn language. I was scared of what it might say. I let it garble on my dresser ominously, convinced I deserved the torture. Finally, after days of frustration and jump scares from its incessant chortling, I snapped. It was time to turn the cursed thing off. I picked up the Furby, screwdriver on hand, ready to wrench it open and take the batteries out for good. When I turned it over to deal the final blows, it let out a terrible human-sounding, "NO! Waaaaaaaaaaah! Waaaaaaaaah!" It batted its eyelids furiously, wiggled, flapped its ears viciously. I dropped it in horror. How could it learn to say NO? It writhed loudly on the floor. In picking it up again, my fingers wound up in its mouth. "YUM YUM," It declared. I threw it onto the bed. "MORE," it shrieked. My silence had not worked. It knew human speech. It was absorbing language through my thoughts. It had learned to taunt me.

I came at it with renewed vigor. Enough was enough. The cursed toy had to go. It shivered and screamed as I switched it off and wrenched the bottom plate open to rip out the batteries. I was sweating. The last present from my father, ruined. I couldn't care for the rotten thing. It was too much. I was a failure. I was unworthy of tiny fuzzy friendship. It was me who was tainted. I cried soundlessly. The Furby lurched and blinked. "Hungryyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy," it intoned. My heart stopped. It was too late. I had brought it to life and now it refused to die. Being close to death had made it immortal. I accepted the gift and now would have to keep it forever. Horrified, I shoved it into the closet where I had built myself a hiding place and reading nest. I shut the door. Its voice was quieter now, but I could still hear it, garbling a mixture of English words and baby-speak. I could see its wide eyes through the crack in the door.

The Furby lived in that cozy nook I had built, squirming in the dark. The screams turned to painful moans, the zombie electronics refusing to give up the ghost energy. I knew the laws of horror movies- if I refused to fear it, perhaps the power would leave the cursed thing. Unfortunately, my resolve was weak. My feverish and uneasy glances towards the closet gave it renewed purpose. It cried out to be let back into the light, to absorb my thoughts and find new phrases, to blow obscene kisses at me. I deprived it, staying silent, telling myself it couldn't get me. It invaded my dreams, squirming to a strange beat. In my dreams it came with friends, more Furbies in all colours, speaking their rudimentary language and clacking their tiny beaks. I avoided the closet with a wide berth and tried desperately to forget it, but still it peered outwards.

Our big house was old, and in exploring the various cabinets and crawlspaces, playing hide and seek and unpacking boxes, I discovered something. Inside the hallway linen closet (skinny, tall, stacked with small shelves for bath towels), a hidden trapdoor to the attic. I waited until the family was asleep and climbed the shelves to move the plywood and peer inside. The space above was dusty and cold, the opening barely large enough to stick my small head through to gaze into the unfinished space. It was secret and quiet and perfect. I knew what I had to do. I stole to my bedroom armed with a threadbare striped towel, so ruined with age that no one would miss it. I squeaked the rolling closet door in my bedroom open. The Furby's eyes shone in the moonlight, its body squirmed. One ear got stuck mid-flap. "Aaaaahh-" it protested. "I'm sorry," I whispered before throwing the terry cloth over it like a net. The struggle was short-lived. I wasn't afraid anymore, just sad. It wiggled halfheartedly, cooing from inside its blanketed cocoon. I tied it shut and climbed back up to the trap door on the thin linen shelving with my heavy burden, straining to shove the Furby up and up through the flap, to tip it into the attic with a thunk. In my haste to close the plywood shaft I unbalanced myself, and fell from a few feet, landing with a crash. The breath rushed out of me, the tragic task now complete. "What are you DOOOOOING?!" My oldest brother yelled from his bedroom, appearing sleepily in his bedroom's doorframe. He peered into the dark hall. "Uh. Nothing," I uttered pathetically, laying across the floor. "Go to bed," he huffed. And I did. I threw the door open to my bedroom, which now seemed bigger. More inviting. I flicked the lights on and off, rustled my sheets in large sweeps and flaps. I was no longer pinned by the terrible responsibility of the technological nightmare of the Furby, the existential dread of its gifted life. No longer bound to its awful existence. It no longer watched me threateningly from the closet. Weeks went by and my child brain began to forget the toy-shaped cryptid that once held dominion over my bedroom. I painted, read books, listened to music. I danced in the afternoons, stomped across the floor. It wasn't until a while later, in my younger brother's bedroom, that I remembered. I flopped onto his bunk bed and landed unexpectedly on a stack of towels. "Keeping a stash?" I threw a particularly fluffy blue one at him. "I have to," he said conspiratorally, holding it tight. "The hall closet is haunted. I can hear the ghost crying."

Happy Christmas, everyone! May you get everything you desire, even if it haunts you. If you want to tell me a weird little Christmas story, put it in the comments. <3