:

"Usually I've been told that people's fears start out when they are very young, usually around toddler age. Personally, I was rather afraid of dolls and puppets after a few scary movies (Chuckie the Doll was my major fear for years.) This story was made by looking at the world from a little girl's point of view, and how she reacts to a scare from a nasty babysitter."

- Runner up, Heather Honnold

"There's something in the bathtub drain, Mommy"

by Heather Honnold

This story is actually based on something I believed in when I was a little girl of six. The story is being told by a little six year old girl named Lorilie. (Pronouced Lore-eh-lie).

Early in my years, at the age of four, my mother had gotten a job as an Attorney. While she was away, she hired a babysitter to watch over me from time to time. My babysitter wasn't the nicest girl in the world. In fact, she did her best to scare me into behaving. She would threaten to lock me in an iron cage if I didn't stop laughing while she was on the phone with her boyfriend. Sometimes I would pretend that I was an animal in an iron cage, making much noise, and to silence me she threatened she would break my toys and make me play with mud.

One day, while she was giving me a bath, I wanted to stay and watch the water go down the drain, and I wanted her to stay and watch also. I don't think she liked the idea very much, because she got that look on her face like she was going to tell me something scary. She told me, " There are goblins in the drains, and if you sit there while the water drains, they will reach out and drag you into the sewers with them." I never told my mother about these stories, because I was terribly frightened by them and believed them to be true.

Well, a year or two later, while my mother was staying home for a week or two, I was taking my daily bath. (I liked to play outside a lot, and I often got very dirty.) I had toys in my bath, to play with while I bathed. One toy in particular, a rubber frog that was blue and had big eyes, and squirted water when you squeezed it, was my favorite, and I always brought it to bath with me.

Well, I wanted a little more time to play with it, so I decided not to drain the water early. When time came for the bath to be over, I wanted more time to play so I sat in the tub while the water drained, making my frog hop along the edge of the bathtub, going " Ribbit! Riiibbbiiit! " I heard the sound like two iron bars being hit together, and I stopped my playing, sitting quietly and listening to the noises around me. Time passed by rather slowly, and the silence was broken by the clanging of iron again. They sounded like chains. Suddenly, I saw a pair of horrible, ugly green fingers come scraping through the drain. They were warted and hairy, but the scariest thing was the long, awful claws at the end. I heard a horrible noise, it sounded like a sick dog attempting to laugh, a horrible, shrill giggle. The hands extended into arms and came at me, and I gave a shriek, and leaped out of the bath.

Early the next day, I went outside to play again. It was very muddy, and as usual, I got very dirty. Mother told me to take a bath. I didn't want to take one, but mother finally dragged me to the bathtub, filled it with water and told me to get in. However, I couldn't find my rubber froggy! But mother made me go in nontheless. I wanted to end the bath as early as possible, so I drained it about five minutes later. Then.. my froggy popped up from the drain pipe, so I went over to get it, but the pair of horrible ugly hands appeared again, and they grabbed my arm and started to pull. I shrieked and shrieked, and my mother burst into the room looking rather worried. I opened my eyes, and I was sitting in an empty bathtub, with a rubber froggy in my hands... No hands. No evil laughter. Nothing.

I got out, and then shakily looked at the bathtub, and I saw a pair of two red eyes staring, and then a pair of sharp yellow teeth begin to grin.

The End.