Her diet was being sabotaged on every side but everyone thought she was crazy. "No willpower", "she’s not really serious about losing weight"," I’ve seen her do this before" were just a few of the comments she heard on a continuing basis. What they did not realize and refused to believe is that she was not paranoid. It truly was happening.

Carla had tried for years to lose weight. While she hadn’t always been this chunky, over the past few years the pounds had really began to add on until she had reached a point where it was affecting the quality of her life. The yo-yo dieting had really begun to take its toll upon her body. Something had to change and so she began the latest effort to lose the pounds and become what could be considered a beautiful person in the eyes of others.

At first it wasn’t too hard. She refused to tell her family and friends this time. This time she wanted to prove it could be done without their "help" and so she tried. Thirty pounds into the loss, everyone was noticing but weren’t convinced it would continue especially after she started talking about how she was being sabotaged.

It started at night. As she would be sitting on her sofa watching tv she would hear a voice. "Carla" it cried, "please help me. I’ve been forgotten". As she looked around she could not see anything. Still periodically through the evening the voice would call to her. After a bit of searching and listening it seemed to be coming from the candy dish on the end table. "well that’s absurd" she thought. Once she took a piece of candy and ate it, the voice would stop.

Soon it was more than the candy dish. Maybe it was the leftover pizza in the refrigerator or the piece of cake left from her friend’s birthday party. But the one that drove her the most insane was the voice that came from the can of Pringle’s. It was the most insistent of all the voices. This was one that she heard no matter what time of the day or night. If she threw the can away it magically seemed to reappear on her counter. There was no disposing of the can that called her name. She couldn’t take a chip and be done. Oh no, the can seemed to follow her throughout the house. If she was in the living room it appeared on the coffee table. In the kitchen it could be found on the counter. While doing yard work she would look up to see it sitting on her picnic table. There was no escaping the can that called her name.

It seemed to never end. Sometimes it was filled with sour cream and onion or the printed trivia chips but the most common was the original Pringles. These were the ones that tormented the most and they were always there. When she visited the grocery, they seemed to fly off the shelf and magically appeared in her grocery cart or in her bags and she found them upon her arrival home. What was she to do?

Finally after much consideration she decided to discuss it with her family. Perhaps they could help her to get rid of this torment Pringles voice. She tried to explain to them how the Pringles kept tormenting her and they laughed at her. This was absurd. She could not let her life be ruled by a can of Pringles.

Her sister Jean came to visit one night and saw for herself just what the Pringles could do. She had laughed at Carla and teased Carla about the possessed diet saboteurs. Carla had even told her of being woken up in the middle of the night by the Pringles longing to be eaten but this was just too much to believe. Carla had used many excuses in the past but this was just too much.

That night she heard for herself the voices from the candy jars that replenished themselves, the never ending cookie jars and the Pringles which magically appeared all over the house, even in the bathroom while taking a shower. There was no escape.

Jean was awakened about midnight by a scraping sound. She cautiously rose to her elbow and looked around. In the darkness it was difficult to see but she could make out the sight of a Pringles can making its way to the side of the bed. "Screech, screech, screech". The sound of the metal as it made its way across the bedroom floor was eerily upsetting. Even more so was the fact the can had seemed to grow. It wasn’t the size of a regular can, no it was closer to the size of the large Tootsie roll banks she had received each year for Christmas from her grandparents. It kept creeping toward the bed. As she watched she began to think she was dreaming. This couldn’t be possible.

The can inched its way to the bedside and slowly began the long crawl up the blankets. Jean was so petrified she was unable to move, but after all this was a dream and what could a can of potato chips do to harm her? It popped its top off and the voice came from deep within it. "You must eat me, you can’t eat just one of me. You fear me? There’s no need to fear me. I want to escape. Eat me. Help me escape this prison I am being held in."

The voice continued each time getting louder and louder. Finally in a desperate attempt to gain relief from the situation, Jean reached to take a chip. "Ah yes. That is it. Please eat all of me. I need to escape." This continued until all were gone from the can. At that the voice stopped and in a very strange way Jean dropped back off to sleep almost immediately.

As she woke the next morning she remembered her dream of the night before. As she threw the blanket back and crawled from the bed she noticed chip crumbs all over the sheets and rolling around on the floor was an empty can of Pringles potato chips.

She ran down the hallway to her sister’s room carrying the can. "Carla, You’re not going to believe this but"