It was a moist, foggy morning when Mr. Malevolent left his mansion for the first time in a week. Furtively, he meandered by a parked car with his key running along it, making a deep scratch. It made him feel happy to create terror and misery. He kept walking around the neighborhood, flattening his neighbors’ tires, stealing their newspapers, and looking in people’s mailboxes and throwing a match inside. He giggled inscrutably as he slowly snuck back to his mansion and down the back steps into his secret underground lair. He grabbed a cup of hot, black coffee and, as he took his first sip, he thought he heard the giggling of neighborhood children. He considered going to yell at them, but he was so excited to continue building one of his sinister inventions that he decided to ignore it. His goal was to create total destruction. He was working on inventions that were designed to destroy the earth. He created a lava cannon to shoot hot lava and set things on fire. He sometimes shot it at banks and museums, but he really liked to set forests on fire. He also created a new invention that could freeze people into ice. This morning he started working on an invention that would destroy all the money in banks and cause inflation.
Suddenly, Mr. Malevolent heard the clamor of breaking glass and quick footsteps upstairs. He was shocked. His only interaction with other living things was with his cat and dog. He never took them to the park, but instead, they just stayed by his side all day. The dog and cat always fought with each other, and he enjoyed this because their misery and pain made him happy. He had plants too, but he never watered them because he liked to see them die. No one dared to enter his house before; they were all too scared.
Feeling belligerent, he quickly ran upstairs, ready to fight. He saw a little girl wearing a gaudy pink shirt with a rainbow and a unicorn on it. Shocked and in disbelief, he tried to act scary and pretend he was a ghost, but the girl was not scared. She just smiled and said, “Sorry! My ball flew through your window.” She noticed his dog and cat clambering down the stairs. She giggled and quickly followed them. Mr. Malevolent scrambled behind her downstairs, terrified that she would see his earth-destroying inventions.
The girl screamed with excitement, “Cool! What are these?” He locked the door behind himself, scared she’d tell people what she saw, that he would be revealed to the public. Everyone in town thought he was a ghost. They didn’t realize a person lived in the spooky dwelling, making evil things in his basement. He decided he needed to destroy her with his ice-cube freezing machine. He went to grab the ice gun to freeze her, deciding to choose one of his kinder inventions. Right as he was about to freeze her, she complimented him, telling him how smart he was to be able to create all of these inventions. She told him he looked sad and that he needed to be cheered up. She handed him her unicorn stuffed animal and a rainbow lollipop from her backpack.
Mr. Malevolent stopped. No one in his life had ever been kind to him, since his mother. He started to flashback to when he was growing up with his mom and how much she loved him. When she died, he went to live in an orphanage. The rest of his childhood had been horrible. He was lonely and distraught, and eventually he became so angry that he turned really mean. But now, Patricia reminds him of his mom, and as he looks at her and her smiling, happy face, he actually begins to smile too. He and Patricia sit down, and she pulls some colored pencils out of her backpack. Together they make plans for a new invention – an invention that will help the earth! “I’m going to call you Mr Magnificent!” says Patricia, and they continue their drawing.
The End