Evie spent almost two hours yesterday making up a story about the Little Mermaid. This is pretty standard around here. The problem is, this story entirely centered around patricide.

The main part of the story involved Ariel first stuffing Triton in a hole, then tearing him apart with her bare hands, then putting the pieces into a gun and shooting them, and then collecting the pieces, cooking them, and serving them to her sisters. Not satisfied with this, Ariel proceeds to go on a psychopathic rampage, applying for new daddies and killing and eating them one by one. Finally, Ariel decides to keep one of the new fathers, and is forced to calm her bloodthirsty sisters who are clamoring for his death (and his flesh).

Of course I summarized it into a paragraph, but her rendition involved great detail and storytelling craft. The daddies weren’t just “cooked”. There were recipes (One daddy was served with pumpkin pancakes, a daddy recipe to be sure. Oh the irony!). There were discussions with the chef. There were details, like which sister helped Ariel lift the pot. There were descriptions of the sound it made as Triton “sizzled” in the pan.

I didn’t try to dissuade her from talking about these things. I’m not worried about it in the sense that I know all kids go through phases like this, and it’s not personal. Still, after hours of hearing the gory details of how and why Ariel killed her daddy (“he was mean and he did mean things to Ariel”), and given the fact that she makes me pretend to be Triton pretty much every day, I couldn’t help but take it a little personally. The story was pretty specific and very…thorough.

I think I’ll be sleeping with one eye open from now on.