Kelly Hanken
“The Problem with Imaginary Friends”
The day that Jonathan decided to sneak in to an R-rated movie was the day that everything really went downhill for the Jones family. (I can already tell you’re rolling your eyes: who would name their child “Jonathan Jones” after all? The short, simple answer – the one we’ll use here, for simplicity’s sake – is that his parents wanted him to be a superhero.) Jonathan did it with the help of his imaginary friend, a gangly scarecrow-looking creature that only he could see whom everyone referred to as “Doc.” Doc was relatively simple and didn’t think about consequences; he just wanted to have fun with Jonathan.
Jonathan and Doc decided to go see the newest slasher flick – it was the fifteenth in the series, or maybe the sixteenth, but all that mattered was that there was blood, gore and gratuitous nudity. These were the three requirements of a good slasher flick and they were the three things Jonathan, who was thirteen, was not allowed to see. Doc knew this but he didn’t see any problem with it; he talked to a young theater clerk’s imaginary friend (a definite rip-off of Spiderman, but who was Doc to judge?) and together the two distracted the clerk long enough for Jonathan to sneak in.
The movie was just as bloody, gory and raunchy as had been expected, with the killer being five times more menacing than any of the older kids had told Jonathan he would be. He knew, even as he and Doc walked out of the theater and out into the street, that he was going to have a really bad night’s sleep. Doc was particularly quiet, but Jonathan paid it no mind.
The next morning, Jonathan noticed that Doc was a bit taller and broader than he had been the night before, and when he asked about it Doc just snapped that it was none of his business. He also noticed that he hadn’t had any bad dreams about the slasher flick from the night before. Nothing of note happened that day, aside from the next-door neighbor coming over to ask after her poodle, which had gone missing that night. That night, though, Jonathan noticed that Doc wasn’t looking tired as usual, and was more inclined to stand in the corner of the room, wheezing at him. He wrote it off as the imaginary flu – one he wasn’t quite sure existed – and went to bed, again with no bad dreams.
Over the next few days, Jonathan became uncomfortably aware of several things. Firstly, Doc was quieter than normal and a bit more menacing, scaring off quite a few of his friends’ imaginary friends. One of the bullies at school claimed Doc killed his imaginary friend quite brutally, but Doc looked innocent and besides, it wasn’t like the kid couldn’t imagine a new one up. Another thing that became noticeable was the physical transformation; straw was turning to muscle in hunks that made him difficult to look at, and his bright eyes became dull and reptilian like. Finally, it became clearer that animals all over the street were going missing. He hadn’t considered it very strange until he found the collars of three neighborhood dogs under his bed.
By the end of the week, Jonathan was fearful that he would wake up dead, and it was hard for him to get to sleep. Still, when he finally did, he had no bad dreams – though he did occasionally wake up to find Doc looming over him, wheezing.
He brought this problem up with his mother and father, both of whom told him it was probably just a growth spurt and that Doc was bound to change over time – every imaginary friend did, after all.
Three weeks later, Doc was no longer looking like his thin, scarecrow-self. In fact, Jonathan could hardly stand to look at him due to the fact that he would constantly be reminded of that horror movie killer. Jonathan didn’t know, but missing persons reports for his town had grown exponentially in these weeks.
Four weeks later, Doc finally did what Jonathan had been sure he would do from the start. Jonathan awoke to the sound of heavy wheezing and when he rolled over, Doc was standing at his bedside, holding over him a large hatchet. “What are you gonna do with that?” he asked, even as he knew the answer.
Mr. and Mrs. Jones found Jonathan brutally murdered only a few minutes later, having been awoken by the screams of their son and the thick, bloody thuds of an axe hitting flesh. At first, Mrs. Jones had been inconsolable, but after Mr. Jones poured her some chamomile tea and they had an hour to mull things over, she calmed down considerably.
As Mr. Jones led Mrs. Jones past their former son’s room, now neat and clean with only a few marks in the mattress and sheets from where Doc’s very-real hatchet had cut through, he said to her quite calmly:
“Don’t worry, dear. We can imagine up a new one in the morning.”
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