Blondie

If you strain your ears you could hear daycare man’s blond-haired pig-tailed little girl shattering her xylophone. How straitlaced can a place of rainbows and sugar highs be, you remember asking before you took the job. You can’t take it, the little girl always bothers your lunchtime, hearing her playacting rottenly. Pink-eyed, you look nothing like your parents, you told her; she ripped her hair out and cried. The background soothes the mind, he told you, but it tasted like being seasick and fuzzy. Every channel in the TV had that flower child boasting bed sheets as skin; it had no eyes, yet it was so po-faced. It would always hitch at the end, burning the VHS tape; the girl would stare at the stained wall for two minutes, hearing it crackle. You turn on your present TV, no more shifts, and you see daycare man branded as a blondes kidnapper.