He was the first to share my bed

He was the first to share my bed. I held him close against my body. In the dead of night I would whisper... "I love you".

He kept me warm.

And then one morning, he was gone.

I rose from the bed and ran screaming down the corridor. I knew what had happened before I heard the dreaded sound... the whirring of the machine.

"BLUEY! NOOOOO!" My scream pierced the air and echoed throughout the tiled laundry.

"I had to." My mother said calmly. "He was so dirty. Now don't get hysterical."

But I was beyond hysterical.

"I HATE YOU! He's going to get hurt in there! He's going to drown! He'll be all cold and wet!"

She tried to restrain me, but I kicked her, biting and scratching until she let me go.

"He can't swim!" I wept. "How could you? He can't swim!"

My mother gazed at me, her eyes wet yet expressionless. She left the room.

I crawled down beside the Westinghouse front loader and searched for his furry blue face with the red stitches for lips and brown beads for eyes.

And then I saw it.

Hideous, matted and bloated.

Mashed up against the glass, frothy with white suds it appeared nightmarish.

I recoiled in horror and ran back to my bed.

Later I saw it pegged up by its ears on the line, dripping. Its damp, limp body swayed eerily in the wind.


My mother put it back on my pillow that night.

Her eyes searched my face keenly. She smiled hopefully and stroked my hair.

"Look! He's all clean!" She exclaimed. "I even put him in the dryer for a little while."

She snuggled the thing in beside me and revolted, I turned away.

Bluey may have been clean, but he was a shrunken, knotted and ugly version of his former self.

A Frankenstein bear.

His fur was matted. A brown thread dangled where one of his eyes should have been.

My mother stared down at my face, the light in her eyes now gone.

"You don't think he's cute anymore?" She demanded. "Well you should have thought of that before you put your sticky jam fingers all over him."

She kissed my forehead, but it felt more like a hard collision of lips and skin.

"Goodnight." She snapped off the lights and left me in the dark.

I kicked the bear to the foot of the bed.

I slept better without all that fur in my face anyway.