Anne wakes up, wipes the sleep from her eyes, stretches out her adorable arms and yawns herself wide awake. She then snuggles back into bed wondering what she will eat this morning. She is hoping for a soft boiled egg with mandarin orange slices on the side and a cup of rich, warm cocoa. She then turns and notices on her bedside table a green glass bottle with a bottle opener next to it.
She picks it up wondering if her mother had placed it there in the early morning. It was a queer bottle, it clearly wasn’t perfume yet you wouldn’t feel so foolish to think it was because the bottle was so beautiful. There are no markings on the bottle to explain it’s contents so the only option is to take the bottle opener and examine it’s contents.
She gently smells it to make sure it is something one would drink. It smells like the holidays and all the best movies put together. So she sits up and takes a sip and it tastes oh so ever good; an unusual carbonated beverage. It it so refreshing and delightful that she takes another sip. Then another. She sets the bottle down and then starts to feel rather odd.
She puts her hand to her forehead to check for fever but it isn’t that. She then goes to pick up the bottle again to make sure she hasn’t missed any small print and that’s when she notices her hand is larger than the bottle. She then hears a creaking, cracking sound and her bed crashes to the floor because she is now three times larger than she was a few moments ago.
She scrambles to get up but at this point it is just impossible. She is growing so large and so quickly that she feels her shoulders straining against her bedroom ceiling. Before she can say, “Dear Kitty” she has grown so large that her arms are hanging out of the Secret Annex’s window and she’s sitting cross-legged on the pavement after an unpleasant window-smashing experience.
Her huge head looks out the window and she sees all the Brown Goblins who had stopped doing Brown Goblin activities, which are too unpleasant to go into detail for fear that the reader may faint. “Well”, she thinks. “I’ve done it now. The Brown Goblins know where I’m hiding and there’s no way to get out of it. This is an absolutely unpleasant morning!”
At this point the Brown Goblins start pointing at her, barking, grunting and hissing. It was also at this moment Anne hears a bicycle bell ringing in the distance. The Brown Goblins stop their hideous Brown Goblin sound when they hear the bell ringing and slowly a bicycle wheels itself in front of her.
A strange, crooked man with black hair flopping in his face and a square, little mustache looks up at her, frowns and then reaches into his filthy, brown leather jacket and pulls out her red and white checkered diary. He waves his fist at her and shouts in a course tongue,
“Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house.”
The little jerky, angry man puts the red and white checkered diary back into his brown leather jacket and frowning, pedals away. After a little silence the Brown Goblins start to shriek and howl and advance on the Secret Annex which isn’t a secret anymore, thank you very much.
Anne looks through the window at the Brown Goblins wondering how the man was in possession of her diary. She then says, “Dear, Kitty today I finally understand the meaning behind “Silence is Golden”. But I dare say I’d rather write a candle for all to read than hide and never see the flame truly speak.”
“Electric Diary” movie poster (1967) by: Whale Song Partridge
Script by: The Partridge in the Pear Tree
