CONTEST ENTRY: Madness Maddy

*EEP* This is my entry for the OC Madness mascot contest!

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Madness Maddy
AGE: 10
HOBBIES: Using her imagination to come up with original characters to use as imaginary friends. So absorbed she is in her character creating that she often sat alone and talked to her "friends". I knew her once, long ago, when I was a youngster of 10 also. I don't know where she is now, but I only succeeded in getting her to talk to me once.


It was at a park, she was sitting under a tree just talking to herself while all the other children were playing tag. I didn't have any friends at the time either, so I thought to go over and try to make one.
She introduced me to her "friends". I told her they weren't real and she said "Yes they are! I talk to them all the time."
She proceeded to tell me all about what jobs her friends had, what color their hair was, what type of personalities they had. Her friends also had friends of their own. They had parents, special skills, favorite foods.
They were described so vividly that I pictured them easily in my head and, if only for that moment, I actually began to believe that they were real people too.
It was also at that moment that I realized the girl was insane. I don't know how I grasped that concept at 10 years old, but it just creepily came to me.
And it saddened me too. Her friends were just illusions. And I think that she knew this too, deep down. If only I could make them real, make them exist somehow...
Then-
"Hey!" I had said in excitement. "Would you like pictures of your friends? I could draw them for you if you like!"
The girl smiled and said that it would be the best, she'd always wanted others to see what her friends looked like.
"Then people will stop telling me they aren't real.."she told me sadly.
I told her I'd bring the pictures tomorrow and she said ok.

But the next day, she wasn't there. She never came back.
I asked about her around my block, the packet of poorly drawn pictures in my arms, but people said they'd never seen her before.
I even heard my mom talking to my aunts about how she saw me mumbling to myself at the park.
"I wasn't talking to myself! I was talking to my friend!" I had yelled at her.
"Your imaginary friend?" she had asked. I still remember how angry that had made me.
"She's not imaginary, she's REAL!"
I never found my friend again and eventually I just let the whole thing go. Or so my family thinks.
My friend and her friends were real. And I draw them so people can see what they look like...

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SHaZZAM! Plz tell me what you think of the picture and the little story I put with it! Got kinda carried away typing, but the creative juices were unstoppably roaring within me!