Green… green is a wretched color… an awful color…  green was the color of my Furby. A gift from a limp-wristed aunt who smelled of stale ash and hard taffy, my Furby sat under the Christmas tree in starlight wrapping paper and a green bow covered in greener, meaner glitter (it got everywhere and caused an itchy, wet rash). 

I didn’t love my Furby at first sight nor second sight nor third sight. Not even seventeenth sight. I never loved him. But on that Christmas morning, I forced a smile, rickety and awkward like haphazard dominos ready to fall, and thanked my aunt for my Furby. She petted my hair with her green-painted nails.

I named him Spinach. 

Six months later, I smashed Spinach with my brother’s baseball bat. There are only so many options when you’re eight and your toy starts telling you to kill your cat. To kill your family. To kill yourself. So, I sat him in the green grass and smashed and smashed and smashed until I could see his green little innards. They smelled like garbage and rotten fish, like sulfur and cigarette smoke, like burning sugar, vinegar, and vomit.

My cat watched, pissing on Spinach’s remains when I finished. Six months later, we buried my cat in same spot where I smashed, and she pissed, and where Spinach didn’t die. Green grass doesn’t grow there anymore. 

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Hayley McCullough exists in a near-constant state of sleep deprivation.