Elizabeth's Statement: Meeting Drop Dead Fred
Her pink bedroom was dark and quiet.
Seven year old Elizabeth Cronin lay in bed. She'd finally fallen asleep after being kept awake by her parents' fighting. It was almost a nightly routine at this point. She figured she would be able to fall asleep through the yelling eventually.
She had been asleep for almost an hour when she stirred in her sleep and woke up. Without warning, her bedroom light turned on. The bright light flooded her eyes and she was unable to see. Her eyes slowly adjusted as she stared up at the ceiling, confused why the light had come on by itself.
That's when she felt a hand smack her hard on the head.
Terrified, she gasped and threw the covers over herself.
'If I don't look, maybe it will go away.' she thought. Her little heart was pounding in her chest.
"Shit yourself?" she heard a voice ask. Her heart beat faster as she closed her brown eyes tightly and tried to ignore the speaker.
Several seconds went by before she felt a second smack on her head through the blankets.
"Oi! Did you not hear me the first time I smacked you? What are you, deaf?" said a man's voice.
Elizabeth angrily threw her blankets off to face her attacker. "What are you doing?" she said, throwing a pillow at him. "Stop hitting me!"
"I'll do as I like, you GIRL." he said, throwing the pillow back at her. "I'm not going to be bossed around by you, so you can just PISS OFF."
"But…but you're in MY room!" she squeaked.
"And you should learn to be nicer to people that bother to come and visit you!" he shouted.
Elizabeth cocked her and looked at the strange man in front of her. He was a grown up, a little younger than her parents though. He was taller than her Daddy. She liked his fiery orange hair and the way it stuck out off his head. It made him look crazy, but in a fun way, not dangerous. His eyes were enormous and bluer than she'd ever seen before on anyone else, even bluer than Daddy's. He wore a dark and light green striped sports coat and yellow-green pants. She could see a little bit of a yellow shirt under the jacket. His shoes were red.
She was surprised that she was not afraid of this stranger in her room. She wanted to talk to him more.
"How did you get in my room?" she asked, scratching her nose and sniffling.
"No bother, Snotface! I came to play while your parents fight! Even playing with a boring no-brain like you is better that listening to that disgusting noise! What a pile of shit!" he exclaimed.
"Who are you?" she asked, surprised by his naughty language.
"Oh me? Why, I'm Drop Dead Fred!" he said, thrusting his pelvis for emphasis. "Who are you?"
"Elizabeth!" she said.
"Liz'beth? You still look like a Snotface to me." he said.
"I do not!"
He put a finger up his nose, pulled out a booger, and wiped it on her cheek. He laughed maniacally in her face. "'Fraid so, Snotface! HAHAHAHAHA!"
Elizabeth smiled. "Your accent sounds like my Daddy's. He's from England. Is that where you're from, Fred?"
"Is that where you're from, Fred?" he mimicked. He sighed loudly, exasperated. "All of these questions are so STUPID. I came here to play. Do you want to or not?"
"Yes!" she cried out.
"Then get ready, Liz'beth. Because we're going to play games, and Hide and Seek, and eat Pants Pie until we PUKE and POO ourselves! We're going to treasure hunt in the dark and attack midnight robbers because we're not afraid of anything!"
"Yeah!" she screamed.
"Yeah?" he screamed back.
"YEEEEEAAAAAHHHHH!" they cried out in unison. She grabbed his hands. He wrapped his long fingers around her tiny hands and shook them until she was bouncing and laughing so hard that she could hardly breathe. Elizabeth couldn't remember the last time she felt so happy and laughed as much.
Drop Dead Fred jumped up on the bed and wiped his shoes all over the clean linens.
"First lesson, Snotface," he said. "When the opportunity arises to make something messy, you always take it, because it makes things better." He gave the bottom of his shoes a final swipe across her pillows. "Now…what sort of games do you like to play?"
"How about dolls?" she asked.
Fred exhaled loudly with disgust. "Ohhhh, not DOLLS. Dolls are so STUPID, and for GIRLS."
Elizabeth smiled hopefully at him.
Fred sighed and dropped his arms emphatically. "Well all right. Get your dolls and a cardboard box and meet me in the front yard. We're going to build them a dollhouse!"
"A real dollhouse?! Why are we building it outside, Fred?" Lizzie said, excitedly.
"Just do it, no-brain." he said, impatiently. He opened her bedroom door and ran out.
Elizabeth grabbed her three favorite Barbie dolls and went downstairs as quietly as she could. It was almost 11pm, and she didn't want to wake her parents up. She knew they wouldn't be happy if they saw her playing dolls with Drop Dead Fred outside at night, but it seemed so fun and exciting that she didn't want to miss out on the fun. She had never met anyone like Fred; she didn't even mind that he called her Snotface and no-brain. He was nice to her – her mommy called her much terrible things and wasn't nice at all.
She crept into the living room to see if the cardboard box from daddy's new TV was still there – it wasn't. Elizabeth sighed and wished her mommy didn't throw things out so quickly. She had an idea and scampered to the storage closet. There was a small stack of boxes there. After placing her dolls on the floor, she grabbed the biggest one she could reach and carefully brought it down. She opened it up and peeked inside – it was full, storing her mother's extra yarn and sewing equipment. Elizabeth turned the box upside down and spilled the contents on the floor.
She took the box and her dolls and ran outside to meet Fred. It was dark outside, and the air was crisp. She felt the night air through her nightgown, but was too excited to feel cold. She saw the outline of Fred's hair in the dark.
"Hi Fred!" she cried out.
"What the hell took you so long? I've been waiting out here forever!" he yelled, grabbing the box from her hands. He stood it up so it was a long tower.
"All right, here's the game," he started. "This doll right here, she's at home." Fred threw the doll in the box. "And these other two are jealous, because the woman in the house has been dating BOTH of their husbands. So they're coming over to fight her! They barge into the house," he threw the other dolls in as well. "But the first one knew they were coming, so she waited outside…and then locked the other two girls in. The two saw her outside and said, 'Get back in here and face us!' and then the first one said to them 'I will face you…you're gonna die!'"
Elizabeth looked at Fred dubiously. "Now what?" she asked.
"Well now they die!" he exclaimed.
"How?" she asked.
"She gonna flood the house and drown them!" Fred ran over to the garden hose and tried to turn it on. No water came out.
Elizabeth shook her head. "The hose is broken, Fred." she said, sadly.
"Don't give up, Snotface!" he glanced down the street. "Bring the dollhouse over here!" Fred ran off.
Elizabeth picked up the dollhouse and the dolls and followed Fred. He had parked himself in front of the fire hydrant in front of her house.
"Da-da-da-daaaaahhhhh" he sang, gesturing his hands toward it.
"This is perfect!" she squealed. "How do we turn it on?"
Drop Dead Fred smiled and pulled a hammer out from the inside of his jacket. He placed the dollhouse on top of the hydrant.
"Stand back!" he said. Elizabeth ran back onto her front lawn.
She watched Fred, this strange man with bright blue eyes and an English accent, this man that wanted to play with her and make her laugh, this man who behaved as though she was smart and important smash a hammer into the top of the fire hydrant, over and over again until the smashing sound became a song in the night. She knew that she never wanted to forget this moment as long as she lived.
And then the top of the hydrant came off. Water roared up, louder than Elizabeth could have imagined it would be. The dollhouse was shot up into the air; the pressure of the water snapped her Barbie dolls into pieces. Elizabeth was squealing, and laughing, and dancing in the water in her nightgown as it rained down upon her. Fred laughed maniacally and hysterically as the water from the hydrant began to flood the street.
"Do you see it, Snotface? It's brilliant! Now the dolls have drowned and she can have as many affairs as she wishes!" Fred shouted over the water.
Elizabeth could hardly hear him over the roaring rush of the water, but she didn't care. She was laughing happier than she had ever been. She was outside, playing dolls at night with her new best friend. She never wanted to lose this feeling…this life…this spirit…this FRED feeling inside of her. It was power! Fred looked at her and nodded, and brought up his pinky to her. She hooked her pinky through his as the water continued to dance upon them.
One by one, various neighbors began to come outside to inspect the commotion, including Polly and Nigel Cronin, Elizabeth's parents. All they saw was their seven ear old daughter outside, alone in the dark, dancing in the water from a busted fire hydrant. Their mouths dropped open as they looked at each other.
"Elizabeth!" Polly shouted to her daughter. "Get back in here this instance! What did you DO?"
Elizabeth stopped dancing and looked over to the blank space next to her and smiled. She marched up to the doorstep where her parents stood.
"Are you crazy, Elizabeth? What is the meaning of this? You're making a fool of yourself in front of the entire neighborhood!" Polly continued.
Elizabeth puffed up her chest and wiped the dripping hair from her eyes.
"Piss off!" she exclaimed, and she went inside the house and up the stairs.
Polly's stomach dropped when she saw her daughter's face. There was something different about her – a change. It wasn't just defiance…or anger…it was an even bigger change than that.
Her eyes had turned blue.
"It's so vivid," Elizabeth said to Doctor Ryland. "I can remember that night better than anything else in my life. The night I met Drop Dead Fred…that's the first time I felt important…powerful…wanted. That was the night I'd met my best friend. The greatest person I had in my life for a long time."
The doctor looked up from his notepad. "Now Lizzie, you say that was the night you "met" Drop Dead Fred. But if he was in fact your Imaginary Friend, wasn't that the night you made him up? Now, the mind makes up images out of necessity. Sometimes these images are so powerful that they can affect us physically, such as your eyes turning blue that night in your childhood. In your case, it seems as though you needed a friend to block out the sounds of your parents' fighting. I took some notes here, and I see that you gave Fred traits that overlapped with your father's, such as blue eyes and an English accent. Perhaps we've made a small breakthrough and Fred was a replacement for the lack of attention you felt from your father." The doctor was pleased with his connections.
Lizzie sighed. "Yes, of course, doctor. You're probably right."
Doctor Ryland smiled. "Good work, good work. Now, if Drop Dead Fred was a replacement for the love you didn't feel from your parents, namely your father, do you think this continue on in your future relationships? Tell me about the time you met Charles."
Lizzie cleared her throat. "Yeah…sure…"