The Legendary Mrs.Tuggle

So many childhood characters have been long lost and forgotten, but one few who knew about her has forgotten her despite the fact that she is actually not the original character of the make-believe story creation that my cousins and I played.  The original character who started it all was originally not our creation at all, but the main star of a Broadway musical: Annie.  One of my cousins had a "thing" for the story, more specifically the younger orphan Molly.  It was a story we played over and over again, and for some reason they became big fans of me playing the part of Miss Hannigan. 

A person can only play Annie so many times before it gets old, and as time went on, I started adding characters to the story even to the point that Annie no longer played a roll, though Miss Hannigan did.  Go figure.  We added an orphanage keeper who came before her who was nice and a wonderful woman, but she ended up getting killed in a car accident.  Gradually from there the story grew, but then came the day when Mrs. Tuggle entered the scene.

Ah, Mrs. Tuggle, the terror of the neighborhood!  Her name was given to me by my cousins one day as a new character in the story and the story of Mrs. Tuggle grew from there.  She was the original orphanage keeper, but prior to running the orphanage, she was a witch to boot.  She was ugly and had an ugly daughter names Dorcas (who took her mother's role later under the name Dorcas Dorkle).  The woman was a serious child abductor and kidnapped girls to enslave them, particularly if they were attractive and beautiful little things.  The woman was misery defined.  I'm not sure if my cousins remember, but part of Mrs. Tuggle's magical masterpieces was that of the cursed bed.  As part of the curse, if a girl happened to be on the bed when the light is turned off, she died (temporarily), and came back to life when it is turned back on.  If the light goes out and she's on the bed, but gets rolled off on to the floor, she is permanently dead.  This was one of two ways Mrs. Tuggle controlled things around the place.  Another means of control came through the control pills she stuck in their mouths (in reality a bunch of Fruit Loops).

I'm not sure why the family specifically caught on to her, but there it is.  Once we figured out who she was, no one ever forgot her, and that's what she would have wanted: to be legendary.

There is a writing about Mrs. Tuggle, but it's not well developed.  Perhaps I'll decide to share it at some point.

A sample of the story I attempted when I was about 11 or 12 years old.