It was the little ones birthday pretty recently. My housemate Patryk, having spent much time with him and developed some affinity, wanted to get him something he would like and so opted for something a bit dark. A little cartoonish vinyl of a character from the show Deathnote. The character being a demonic God of Death who oversees the killing of a bunch of kids for his own amusement.

Just in from work, whilst I was giving the boy his nightly dose of Dahl, Patryk knocked on his door and explained how, as a fan of anime and manga himself, he wanted to give him a gift that would combine their interests. To introduce him to something new, but keep it a bit freakish and weird.

Seeing the black lipped wide smile and the deranged look on it’s face he pulled it close and sat it on his lap whilst I finished our chapter. And as I was turning off the light to wish him goodnight, he stopped me so that he could carefully lay Ryuk under the bed to sleep.

Not checking to make sure there are no monsters, putting one there so that he could be certain.

Mortality is a pretty tough nut to crack with a three year old.

It was last year that he picked up on the cat’s sudden absence and since it was our first brush with death we decided not to sugar-coat and instead explain with obvious care and sensitivity. At that point in time however the scope of his curiosity was too large and attention span too small.

In the intervening months he has watched films that deal with the subject in a poetic form that has caught his attention and captured his imagination. Mine too for that matter. The Red Turtle is a notable example that gave him plenty of questions that I would try my best to answer.

Now, add to this the fact that he is open to the darker and more macabre stories. The Nightmare Before Christmas was a fast favourite, a film not watched much anymore, the soundtrack listened to on occasion but the book still read often. Other works of Tim Burton float around but the one dark obsession that has proved itself rather divisive amongst company is The Gashlycrumb Tinies by Edward Gorey.

An A-Z compendium, or abecedarian, that describes the bizarre deaths of a bunch of kids accompanied by Gorey’s sometimes graphic illustrations. My boy likes the rhyming couplets (the page above following the demise of April who fell down the stairs), and as it’s a quick read he often pulls it down of a night and has me read the name for him to respond with how they perished. (There is one page that I’m careful to avoid, the illustration at least, which is very graphic: K is for Kate who was struck with an axe.) It might seem like I’m training a sociopath but I don’t believe it to have had any negative affect on him at all.

The sentences are worded carefully and humorously, and none are disturbing save for Kate. He is familiar with all of the words (save for ‘ennui’ maybe, the reason behind ol’ Neville’s passing). We are protective of him in a sense but believe we have a good grip on his understanding and compassion, of what could unsettle or disturb, and it is from certain television shows and films that seem otherwise innocuous that he has picked up certain words and ideas that can appear… worrying?

Fond of creating stories, or: artfully lying, the boy was telling me a few days ago how a torch had gone missing earlier in the day, most definitely covering for the fact that he had taken it and been caught.

“A strange man came in and took the torch from upstairs”

Did you see him?

“No. I was in my bedroom”

How do you know it was him?

“Because he came in and took the torch”

Oh right. Do we have the torch now?

“Yeah I got it from him”

How do you think we should stop it from going missing?

“We hit him with a hammer and kill him”

…

I am stunned silent.

It seems we had missed the opportunity to talk about Kevin and will have to let the medical professionals take it from here.

That’s when a small semantic flourish restored all hope.

…

“We hit him in his head. All made of slime”

…

Oh thank the lord.

Still a bit worrying, but less worrying for sure.

Turns out children are a pretty complex species, which I’m sure I’ll learn to accept soon enough. But craving consistency I keep thinking the child has locked into a certain way of being, his personality decided – for better or worse.

There was a patch where he was pure evil. And what I mean by that is that he was curious to the point of defying instruction. Perfectly normal it turns out. So when he would see his bowl full of cereal and think about what reaction it would have, that I would have, if he were to swipe it off the table and proceed to splash around the milk whilst holding eye contact with me, I’m sure he was just seeing what would happen, and that it wasn’t a demon taking residence in the body of my child. Ahh the rosey tint of retrospect.

So it was with welcomed surprise last week that I could stop thinking about moving house as he turned to pure gold. We had our day together – Daddy Dave (the ‘v’ fell into the pronunciation and we haven’t corrected it just yet) – and he was full of love and energy, reminding me constantly of how I’m his best friend and that he loves me. Later I asked what he wanted to do and he proposed that he go to bed, stopping to brush his teeth en route. I follow to read a few him his bedtime stories and he has already tucked himself in. Perfect, if not suspicious, child. Almost more unsettling than when he went full Damian.

So there goes me, smugly reassured of this new angelic child. Until Fathers Day just passed.

We had tried potty training a little while back and it was just to difficult to keep up with the amount of washing when there were accidents. But now, in his newly perfect mode he seemed to be taking to it just fine. Well. Fathers Day. Nico asks the boy if he needs the potty: he looks down at his dry trousers, back up at her and presents his growing piss patch with a stage magician’s “tadaaa” adding a little leg kick as a flourish. At least he’s a showman about it. But all I can think to do is hold him down whilst Nico fetches the bible.

Update: Daddy Dave just passed and the pendulum has once again swung in the other direction. Fully aware and using the potty his ownself, no accidents for four days straight now. Lovely as ever, but I keep my bags packed and holy water handy on the off-chance.