Possibly the Worst Babysitter Ever by Jody Casella

As soon as my best friend Nancy and I saw the preview for the movie When a Stranger Calls, we knew that we were never going to be able to babysit alone again.

Still we tortured ourselves by seeing the movie. It was just as scary as we'd expected.

When a Stranger Calls, if you're not familiar with it, is about a babysitter being prank-called by a psychopathic monster who keeps asking, "Have you checked the children?"

After lots of taunting and tormenting by the psychopath, the babysitter calls the police and they trace the call, and HOLY CRAP it turns out the guy has been INSIDE THE HOUSE THE ENTIRE TIME.

Also, the kids are dead.

The End.

But unfortunately, not the end of babysitting for Nancy and me. We were twelve and new to the babysitting game and giddy still with the idea of making a dollar an hour for basically doing nothing but playing with bratty kids. So, we made a pact that from then on, whenever either one of us ssecured a babysitting job, the other one would tag along for moral support and protection.

The parent in me winces at what happened next.

I was the one who got the job-- a Friday night at the home of my piano teacher. When Nancy and I arrived, we found that in addition to my piano teacher's three little boys, we'd also be watching the baby of a friend of hers. No worries, they told us, the baby was asleep for the night...

...in the attic, where there was a small apartment that you could only reach by walking up a set of dark, narrow stairs.

Nancy and I got the little boys to bed and settled down ourselves to watch TV when suddenly, the phone rang.

It was a prank call. Whoever it was called several more times and with each ring, Nancy and I grew more and more freaked out and eventually refused to pick it up.

We spent the remainder of the evening clutching steak knives and pacing around the phone.

At one point Nancy asked, "Should one of us go upstairs and check on the kids?"

I shook my head.

"What about the baby?"

We both stared at the ceiling, imagining the infant lying in her crib in the attic.

I am not proud to say that I was the one who decided that if there indeed was a psychopathic monster calling from inside the house, the kids were likely already dead, and there wouldn't be much we could do about it. Oh well.

Finally the evening came to end. When we heard the car in the driveway, we hastily put the steak knives back into the silverware drawer.

My piano teacher seemed a tad anxious when she walked into the kitchen with her friend. "We tried to call," she said. "But you didn't pick up."

Nancy and I looked at each other.

"Huh," I said. "We never heard the phone ring."

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

(Here. For your viewing pleasure. But be warned, you may not want to be alone at night with your kids after watching.)