Children Only Contest

For my niece’s sixth birthday I bought her a Barbie doll. She loved dolls and stuffed animals, and loved playing pretend with them even more. Whenever I stopped by my sister’s house I could always hear my niece playing with her toys, speaking to them as if she was having a wonderful conversation and would sometimes make her dolls talk back.

When she unwrapped the doll her eyes lit up and she immediately opened the packaging to play with her new toy. Her eyes lit up and exclaimed proudly that this particular Barbie was one she had never seen before.

I bit my tongue a just smiled. I couldn’t spend too much money on my niece, even though I love her to pieces, I had to rummage through the garage sale next door to find her a gift. The Barbie was at least ten years old and this design was no longer being produced and the man who was running the sale, older in age and set to retire, seemed happy to see it leave. He said he’d had it for so long that he thought no one would have a chance to play with it.

My niece spent all afternoon playing pretend with her toys and having a tea party, so I knew the gift was a hit.

The next day my sister called me and said that she had found the contest entry form tucked inside the Barbie doll’s packaging and was preparing to take my niece to the contest a few cities away.

I laughed and asked her to check the entry form for an expiration date. There was a pause on the other end of the line.

“Hello?” I asked for my sister, thinking maybe the call had been dropped. “Are you still there?”

“Y-yeah.” My sister replied, her voice trembling with fear.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“The entry form doesn’t have an expiration date… Why did you ask me to check?”

“Because…” I didn’t want to say anything that might frighten my already shaken sister. “I found the doll at a garage sale. That’s why it’s older than the dolls you can find in the store.”

I heard my sister stifling a whimper. “I just Googled information about the contest…”

“And?” I waited impatiently for her to tell me what she had discovered.

“And the contest was a scam. A trap for children.”

“WHAT?!” I couldn’t believe what she had just said. “What do you mean a ‘trap’?”

“I found a newspaper article,” she continued. “twelve years ago six little girls disappeared after entering a contest that didn’t officially exist. Three years after the disappearances the girls’ bodies were found in the woods six miles from the backyard of a known pedophile. The police found copies of the contest entry forms and discovered that he had been slipping the forms into the packages used to contain toys for little girls.”

I felt sick. My heart dropped and I couldn’t get the horrible thought of losing my beloved niece to such a disgusting predator. “What happened to that man? Where is he?”

“After he was arrested and set to stand trial, he was released on a technicality. He skipped town and no one has seen him since.”

“That’s not true…” I practically whispered, my voice failing me as dread set in. “I saw him only yesterday. He was right… next door.”

-End