I’m currently working on the section of The Demon Wore Stilettos where our protagonist (I’m not even going to try to get anyone on board with thinking of Lilith as a heroine at this point) has discovered that she’s pregnant. It’s what she’s always wanted, but now she’s faced with figuring out how she, a single demon whose job requires extensive travel, can raise a child on her own.
As she comes to terms with this reality, she visits Hell’s daycare center, where things are just as topsy-turvy as they are everywhere else in the underworld. I had some initial ideas about what such a nursery would look like–kids running with scissors, kids playing with matches–but I wanted a broader range of ideas, so I put out a call for suggestions in my September newsletter.
(Don’t get my newsletter, but you’d love to, along with a free short story just for signing up? Click here)
I won’t be able to use all of the great ideas people submitted, but they made me laugh, so I’ll share them with you:
- Projectile vomiting–complete with 180 degree head turns.
- Running around on the ceiling
- Playing mean pranks on the teachers
- Biting
- Playing with cleaning solutions and chemicals
- Clogging toilets
- Sniffing glue
- Cutting each other’s hair
- Watching porn
- Stealing the teacher’s wallet
- Cursing
- Putting goo on things
- Grabbing toys from each other and banging each other over the head with them
- TV on 24 x 7
- Junk food and caffeine all day
- Peanuts everywhere
- Classes in bullying, lying, stealing and manipulation
Some of these ideas remind me of early Dennis the Menace cartoons, back when they were a lot edgier than the sanitized version that made it to the big and little screens. (I remember a D the M cartoon where Dennis has placed matches between the bare toes of his sleeping father and, with a grin of pure devilment on this face, is about to light the first match.)
Or Charles Addams cartoons like this one.
Do you have any other ideas you’d like to throw out?
Eight Ladies Writing 
I always thought the childcare scene from Toy Story 3 was pretty funny. Of course, it’s from the perspective of toys, but there are plenty of crazy things happening.
Other things that would terrify me, the parent: kids clogging the sink and letting the water run, uncapping a container of glitter and letting it fly, painting each other, eating paint, squirting paint, throwing crayons, using them as projectiles, painting/drawing on the walls, using toys as weapons, eating dirt, urinating/defecating in the corner, hiding things under rugs, tearing the pages out of books (gasp!), and screaming like banshees.
Sounds like it will be a fun scene to write!
I’ll have to check out that TS3 daycare scene again. And I’ll add your suggestion to.my list.
Have fun with that story line, Jeanne. Ex-Lax in the candy jar! 🙂
Lol–I’ll add it to my list!
Black satin sheets? Or with Satanic superheroes? I really liked the pediatric nuns of Satan in Good Omens. Very good with babies and just what they should be, but looking forward to Satan on earth and the apocalypse.
This diverges from your vision, but a Montessori nursery where the little monsters are encouraged to work on their own projects, which are full of devilment? Like the Addams family kids, but in project groups! And being demons, they might be all precocious. Remember when Robin Williams did an impression of a toddler? “And then we did Mourning becomes Electra for the school play,” he’d playfully lisp.
Starting to think this should be its own book–or at least a short story!
Pingback: Jeanne: Demonic Party Games – Eight Ladies Writing