I published this on my website a while ago, but I think it deserves a new round of readership... I know this probably happen to pretty much everybody, but I thought I'd tell you about it anyway. I had by mistake put my portal to hell - the Lemarchand's box - on the coffee table and Freya, being a normal curious 14 month old little girl, grabbed hold of it as soon as she could. I mean, who wouldn't?
At first she just sat in the couch patting it whilst watching some educational children TV about some strange creatures with TV's surgically operated into their fat bellies (did Clive Barker come up with Teletubbies by any chance?). After a while she got bored with the TV show and started investigating the box and - as anyone knows that has seen a Hellraiser movie - they are surprisingly easy to open. An over-cautious parent my have taken it away from her then, but I'm of the firm belief that children needs to learn from their mistakes and if those mistakes include opening doorways to hell, then so be it!
She soon got quite obsessed with the box and started giggling like a little mad baby, which qould have been quite frightening if it wasn't so cute. At this point both Jennifer (her mom) and I (her dad) started to think that perhaps she'd had enough of playing with this particular toy. We tried to tempt her with less dangerous items, such as Alladin's lamp, the grail and a fun little novelty nuclear bomb that she'd gotten for her first birthday, but to no avail.
Then it happened. The room darkened and Freya let out one of the few discernable baby noises that we've come to recognize: "Uh-oh"! The box did what it always does. It started to open up and we soon had a pack of Cenobites – led by Pinhead himself – in the room. They took Freya from us and the gateway was again closed. I remember thinking that my parental theory about learning from your mistakes perhaps was due for a serious review, but it was too late for regrets now. We did get her back, sort of. We now have a little baby Cenobite which wasn't exactly what we hoped for.
When you hold that innocent little bundle in the maternity ward you imagine how they'll grow up to become a doctor or a great artist of some kind. "Pinhead Jr, Lord of Hell in training" just isn't in the top ten on that particular wish-list. We told her that she wasn't allowed to play with any portals to hell again until she'd started school. Freya got quite infuriated with us about that and told us to "Da-Da-Gogaga", which is never nice to hear from the mouth of such a sweet and innocent thing.
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