She should have stopped there.
Marla had watched the first five videos from DreamStudio’s Foxy-World at least a dozen times each. On the surface, they were harmless: a grinning, orange-furred fox named Jangle teaching shapes, colors, and “happy claps” to a silent puppet crow. The animation was jerky—deliberately so, she thought—and the audio had a vinyl crackle, as if broadcast from 1987.
She didn’t click it. She didn’t have to. Because when she looked out her window, the streetlight was flickering like a broken cartoon frame—and someone had drawn a rainbow tree in chalk on her driveway.