If I Ever Have Children

If I ever have children I'm going to make it my life's work to mislead and deceive them. I want to go down in history as the man who produced the most fucked up kids the world ever saw.

I will tell them that mummy is a killbot who's death circuit is activated by the tears of children. They will learn that if they want to cry, they must always cry alone. Her arms, I will say, transform into scythes for chopping off childrens' legs and fingers, and that that's why the garden is so well fertilised - with human blood.

I will tell them that father christmas is a grey, wet man with nails for teeth and eyes like gimlets, who crawls down the chimney on sticky fingers like his limbs are broken, and who leaves presents but takes teeth in payment from one child in five with his tiny christmas hammer - and then skitters away leaving traces of smeared wet soot and a lingering odour of damp and gum disease.

I will teach them the alphabet in the wrong order, and when their teacher tries to correct the damage I have done, I will tell them that their teacher is a murderer. I will say that she knows that children are ripe for harvesting when they do the alphabet her way, and then she wraps them up in carrier bags and leaves them in her crawlspace to die of thirst.

I will tell them that stepping on cracks in the pavement gives them cancer, that chewing pencils causes their skin to become scaly and weep grease, and that eating vegetables will make their eyes swivel so they can only see their brain. I will tell them that all other children are controlled by brain parasites put in their ears by their parents under government instruction, and that I'm not going to put one in them but if the government finds out they will send people to cut them open without anaesthetic and see what makes them tick.

I will tell them that cats carry a flesh-eating plague that will make their noses fall off, before slowly demolishing their faces and spiralling them into dementia as it feasts on their brains. They will be made aware that cats try to spread this disease because they are the natural enemy of the human race, and that people who keep cats are their zombie slaves.

I will tell them that there is a race of cannibal creatures at large in the world, who love to feast on the bones of sleeping young. The cannibals sneak into bedrooms during the day and hide in mattresses, waiting for a child to fall asleep, then tear their way out to snatch with their bony, clawed fingers and sink their snaggled, uneven teeth into soft, yielding child-flesh. I will tell my children that the only way to be sure they won't fall prey to the cannibals is to stay awake as long as they can.

I will tell them all this and more. It's a good job I'm not a parent.