She liked to kill Tamogatchi’s. Those little two-bit characters on the black and white screen. She loved watching the screen fill with the little black lumps of poop until she could no longer make out the shape of her pet.
Allowing them to drown in their own feces became too easy though, she’d simply let it sit for a couple hours and came back to her dead Tamogatchi character and simply get a new one. She never knew why the Tamogotchi gods always allocated her a new pet, there must be too many, she thought.
She now feigned being a good mother. She fed her pet and cleaned its tiny screen. It would bobble around happily. She then would “forget” about it. Once again, killing her pet with negligence.
That, too, soon became boring, as it just delayed the Tamogotchi’s inevitable death.
Once she received her newest pet, a little smiling creature that somewhat resembled a bear, she started by ripping up the little yellow plastic that framed the screen. This didn’t seem to affect the pet who still bounced around happily. She began to rip the buttons off, one-by-one. It proved a challenge, but she eventually removed the soft plastic.
Her greyscale pet didn’t seem phased. The creature stared back at her, moving slowly up and down as it waited for her to interact with it somehow. At this rate, her pet would die in the same way as all the others. She sighed, running out of creative ideas to murder her Tamogotchis and tossed the dismantled toy aside.
The girl came back from school the next day, expecting to find her pet dead behind a screen of its own feces. But, instead, the pet was still bouncing in the middle of the screen, still chipper and not slugged down by starvation or lack of cleanliness.
The girl examined the toy carefully. Only the screen and the small circular casing remained, making her powerless in caring for her pet. She shrugged and sat the toy down on her dresser, believing the pet to be more durable than most.
A week later the pet was still bouncing happily in the middle of the screen. It was impossible for the pet who hadn’t eaten for a week to survive.
The girl ripped at the outside plastic, her fingernails eventually slipping beneath the seam of the hardened plastic. She continually lost her grip, her fingertips stained red from the strain. Eventually, the two plastic pieces broke apart, sending each in separate directions. The screen still attached to the front rounded piece of plastic.
The pet was still in the center of the screen. The girl huffed and threw the screen at the wall, the screen disconnecting from it’s plastic casing. Despite being separated from it’s power source, the pet continued to bounce. Up and down. Up and down.
It should be impossible with the pet’s power source—a two small circular batteries—inserted in the back plastic piece which had landed on the floor on the other side of the room.
The girl looked down at the screen and angrily threw it against the carpet of her bedroom floor, hoping that it would eventually shatter. But, the pet just kept bouncing every time she picked the small screen off the floor.
She left the screen on her dresser—hoping that without its power source—the pet would die. Even as the girl attempted to sleep, she could see the faint light emitted from the screen and the continued jumping of the pet. Up and down. Up and down.
The girl became desperate. She snuck into the garage and stole one of her dad’s hammers from his toolbox. The tool felt heavy in the girl’s small hands. The weight of the metal head clunking against her thigh as she walked to her bedroom.
The girl took the screen off her dresser and swung the hammer two-handed over her head. She brought it down on the screen. It cracked slightly—sturdier it looked. The creature seemed taken aback, pushing away from the middle of the screen, folding its ears downward.
The girl repeated the motion, the hammer landing with a satisfying thwap! The creature recoiled into the corner of the screen, the tips of its head just barely visible. One large crack running from the upper left corner to the bottom right.
The hammer came down another time with all the force the girl could muster. The screen split in two and finally, the light dulled.
The girl breathing heavy set down the hammer and gathered the remaining pieces of her toy. She examined it, glad to finally have finished the pet off for good.
Alisan Keesee 