Run Away: Chapter 5 (Patreon)

Chapter 5

Good news?  I’ve got a new job.  Bad news? Pfffft...it’s in retail.  Worst news?  They put me in the toy section. Would have loved to get behind a cash register.  There’d have been a certain peace with just keeping my head down, running things off a conveyor belt and over a scanner and then hitting buttons as people too bougie for Wal-Mart but not bougie enough for Whole Foods insert their credit cards and whine that everything is chip activated now a days instead of swiping.

If I’m being honest, it’s a miracle I got hired.  Good thing places like this don’t really ask for proof of highschool graduation.  I technically don’t exist anymore. The hiring manager said he “had a good feeling” about me.  That gave me goosebumps, the bad kind...but it’s not like being a truck stop waitress let me get much in the way of savings.

I was basically able to take a day off to freak the fuck out, and then had to take the first job I was offered.

On a gamble, I tried putting in my social security number, down for the documents.  Yesterday, I found out that that’s a fake ID.  But the floor manager said she’d “take care of it”.  My first check is going to be made out to “cash”.   If she had said she’d take care of me, I would have bolted and gone somewhere else.

This is gonna sound weird, but I kind of hope the reason I’m lucking out so hard is because I’m white and I don’t have a foreign accent.  Racism sucks, but there’s something strangely comforting about the idea that biases are responsible instead of the weird mojo that forces me to wear my hair down over my ears.

I should make an infomercial.  White Privilege: Works Like Magic!  At the very least, racism is normal and explainable.  Seriously though, there’s no way I’m getting on T.V.  I feel vulnerable enough being out in the daylight, working in a very public store, where Someone might recognize me.

It’s very possible that I’m being kept on as some kind of good luck charm.  Apparently, I’m oddly good at my job.  It’s exhausting.  From the time I clock in, to the time I check out, there’s always someone needing my “help”.   Yes, that’s my job, but in nearly two weeks, there’s never been a “dead” period.  

You’d think there would be a dead period, at least during school hours, but there’s not.  If it’s not a school aged kid, it’s a parent shopping for one, or one with a preschooler in tow, or it’s some brat’s birthday which means they get to skip school, apparently.  

When it’s an adult by themselves, it’s hit or miss.  I’m a “sales associate” in a dorky store vest and a name tag.  They might buy something, they might look elsewhere.  No big deal.  When they’ve got a kid...that’s when things start getting weird

I’ll be pacing the toy aisles, stocking things- I never seem to have enough time to stock things- it’s always the kids who approach me first.  They’ll say  “Hey, do you know where the Transformers are?” or  “Where can I find the Hatchables?”

As soon as I tell them where, they run off with their parents, only stopping and looking back when they realize I’m not right behind them.  “You coming?”  Of course I come.  The customer is always right…  Two days ago, one boy, who was about twelve, grabbed me by the wrist and dragged me along behind him.  It’s like they think we’re old neighborhood friends and they’re inviting me to play.

When we get to whichever row of toys, we’re...I mean the kid is looking for, he or she will grab one and put it in the cart, not even waiting for their parent to object.  All of this seems normal, but something keeps bugging me.

I’ll feel a twinge or an impulse, and a toy will catch my eye.  I’ll reach out and get it, just to take a look.  It immediately goes in the shopping cart. No matter what I do or don’t say.

Today, a little girl, maybe five, took me to get her a “Puppy Surprise”.  Stuffed dog with smaller stuffed dogs stuffed inside it.  “Puppy Surprise” sounds better than “Pregnant Dog In A Box” I guess.  

Before the kid could even say thank you, my feet were shuffling sideways two and a half steps and I was holding a “Pets Alive Boppi The Booty Shaking Llama”.  It’s exactly what it sounds like.  

“Oh Mommy!” she said.  “Can we get it? Can we get this one too?”

Her mom seemed nonplussed.  “I don’t know.  I think you’ve got enough toys at home. I wasn’t even planning on buying you one today.”

“But I’ve been super good!”  

I’m not supposed to get involved in this kind of stuff, officially. I’m supposed to be a facilitator and finder.  Nothing else.  I knew I was pushing it by even pointing out a different toy.  “Pleeeeeease Mommy?” The words were out of my mouth before I knew what was happening.  The fucking dancing stuffie hit the ground.  My hands were suddenly busy covering my mouth and hiding my eyes in embarrassment.

Mom...her mom...picked the Llama off the floor and gently put it into the cart.  “Oh, what the heck,” she said.  “I never could say no to you two.” 

There wasn’t another child around us. 

I’ve seen that glazed look in someone’s eyes before. I excused myself and hid in the bathroom for a full fifteen minutes.  Crying, pissing, and making myself vomit and trying for a shit that wasn’t there. I was fucking terrified that at any minute, some unwanted fluid bodily fluid would eject itslef from my body.  I was just beating it all to the punch.

The manager for the entire store took me aside, later, and patted me on the back for what a good job I’ve been doing.  According to them, toy sales were up.  I hadn’t been there two weeks, and the frequency of toy purchases were starting to approach summer fun sales levels.  If things continue the way they are, we could have Christmas level traffic in July.

Also, they’d been hearing compliments from enthusiastic parents about the “Charming Little Lady” working in the toy department.  I’m not quite six foot.  “Little” is not a word that is normally used to describe me...not anymore…

 My managers and coworkers call what I’m doing “Up Selling”.  I call it magic.  Even the stuff that I never get around to stocking, left around on a shelved trolly instead of up in a fancy display or left neatly hanging on a hook, finds a home.  Already there’s talk about some kind of commission bonus for me.  I can’t be promoted without corporate taking a deeper look into my lack of background, but if this keeps up I can get a bigger chunk of change.  In the breakroom, a coworker named Betty joked that I’m a Christmas elf taking a break from the north pole.  Fuck Betty.

I didn’t know this was going to happen.  This kind of thing never happened at the truck stop, but that’s because there were never any children. It has to be some kind of magic. I was never that good with kids.

Looking at it all through this lens, putting it all out here on the screen, makes me think it’s not coincidence. I just wish it was.  Racism working in my favor is just wishful thinking, too.

File that one under things I never thought I’d type ever type or say.  

#NotwhatImeant  #Contextseriouslyneeded #FuckMyLife  #FourthWorldProblems

So yeah.  I hate to admit it, but there’s some fringe benefits to my condition.  Are they worth the trade-off?  Hell no.  Never.  Never in a million years.  But they exist.

There’s just one chink in my armor.  Like Dracula and the sign of the cross, I never go into the Baby Doll Aisle.  Never the dolls.  I can stomach the stuffies, and Barbie is so much of its own brand that it gets its own two rolls of shelves.  Barbie almost counts as its own thing.  It’s not a “doll” it’s a “Barbie”.   But I can’t bear to go into the Baby Doll section.  Sorry wanna be mommies, you’re on your own.  

It’s only come up once so far, and the first grader immediately forgot about the Baby Alive she wanted once I was showing her a Pretty-Pink-Do-It-Yourself Makeup kit; but I absolutely froze when she asked me to take her there.  

I WON’T go near the baby dolls.  There but for the grace of gods go I. Why not?   I’m afraid of what they might say.  

I was taken to Bazaar in the Land Beyond the Real many times during my capture.  As far as I can remember, there was no other place where anything close to traditional shopping happened in the Land.  Part fleamarket, part grocery store, part used car lot, part junkheap, The Bazaar was...bizarre (gods, it feels corny writing that but I don’t have better words to describe it).  

The roads were all made of cobblestone and the sky was perpetually dark purple, with silvery clouds that occasionally sparked fireworks. Don’t ask me why.  Everything else about the Bazaar seemed random to me.  There’d be a booth with piles of junk; old pinball machines, broken toys, and spare IKEA parts.  Next to that would be a tent filled with priceless artifacts, antiques, and gold from the lost city of El Dorado.  Next to that were soda machines that vended canned envy and gluttony in easy to tear plastic wrap with honeyed icing.  

There was no rhyme or reason. Pure dream logic.

“Turd in a golden blender!  Get your turd in a golden blender here!”

The salespeople weren’t “people”, but freakish monstrosities that talked with (sometimes vaguely) human voices.  They were nothing like Mommy.  Even before Peter took the time to tell me the word, Fay, I knew that these things were somehow very different from Them.  

These things lacked that unearthly beauty that the Green Lady or the Blue Maiden possessed.  Even Grandfather Thunder, the hollowed out Cyclops, had a kind of regalness to Him.  Their voices didn’t fill me with that same sense of awe and wonder, or terror, or lust like the voices of the Others did.   Some spoke in low growls, like dogs that had learned to talk.  A few, I swore, sounded like the narrator on every As Seen On Tv style infomercial.

“Baby teeth and shattered dentures! Now YOU TOO can own your very own useless artifact marking the passage of time and someone else’s inevitable mortality! Act quickly! Supplies are running out!”

They didn’t look like Fay.  Mommy Dearest and her...acquaintances...for all their strangeness, could still vaguely pass themselves off as human.  If, gods forbid, a movie were ever made about my life, my captors could still be played by human actors.  The Gaubs, as I later learned they were called, would require Jim Henson level puppetry or massive CGI.

“Missing socks!  Get your missing socks!  Hot from the dryer!  Taste the disappointment and frustration for yourselves!”

The Bazaar Gaubs were coarser, and less symmetrical than Mommy Dearest’s Kin.  As I was carried on Her hip, ugly twisted things with stubby spider legs and human feet scuttled by.  A plucked chicken head on a serpentine neck towered above us, barely mumbling “excuse me” as it stepped over Peter’s stroller on wing-heeled limbs.

Others loped about on their knuckles like chimpanzees, chasing each other and chittering while the lobster claws on top of their head snapped at the air.  I remember boar like tusks and pig snouts.  Wild patches with hair and mottled skin in shades of green, brown and gray.

“Gently used condoms and cactus needles!  Both freshly plucked!  You madam! Do you need a gently used condom with a cactus needle inside?  You do?! Then come right into my office, where we’ll discuss financing.  We’ll have you walking out of here with a gently used condom and a cactus needle TODAY!”

Movement.  That’s something that’s left a lasting impression on me, even now. There was movement at the Bazaar. Always movement. You could tell the shoppers from the Gaub vendors because of the movement. Everything moved with a kind of frantic purpose.  Nothing was still.  A wind was always blowing. Tents constantly flapping and rickety booths shaking.   Even the Gaubs sitting at stalls had a kind of wild eyed manic energy.  Only the shoppers, all Fay, ever stopped to look at anything.

If the Fay were made out of dreams and nightmares, then the Bazaar Gaubs were made out of random fleeting thoughts and half finished ideas.

“Paging Xerxes.  Paging Xerxes.  We found your Eternal Life.  Please come and collect it at the customer service desk.  Paging Xerxes.  Eternal Life.  Customer Service Desk. Thank you.”

There were other sections  where the warm summer breeze turned air conditioning chilly, and I swore I heard the annoying gentle muzak version of the Girl from Ipanima.  Hanging from display hooks, perfectly preserved in plastic wrappings were ripped out centerfolds from old Playboy magazines, the faces all cut out.

“BING BONG BONG!  Attention shoppers!  For the next five haircuts, we’re holding a blue light special on bottled cities: A sentient people whose entire civilization is contained within a 2 liter piece of plastic that used to hold Pepsi .  Be the strange and unknowable deity that they worship and war over, misinterpreting your every casual action as cosmic proclamations.  Great on the mantle of your fireplace, or on your coffee table as a conversation starter.  Bottled Civilization.  Get yours today.”  I swear I remember that one sounding like Martha Stuart.

Mommy Dearest walked lazily through all of this.  Bored.  Browsing.  She paused by a bin filled with Stephen King’s as of yet unwritten works and gave Peter the same white ring that I’d chewed on.  As Peter tasted his own bleeding gums,  I watched Her rifle through the piles of pages like they were the five dollar DVDs at a gas station.

“Hmmm? ”  She said, reading the inside flap.  “A Maine dive bar’s jukebox starts playing prophetic songs...what do the county’s pesticides have to do with this strange occurrence?”  Then the thing turned to ash in Her hands.  “Oh bother...published it after all.”

Peter finished regrowing his teeth and handed the ring back to Her without comment beyond “Thankyou Mommy.” Me?  I was awestruck.  Imagine going to an amusement park for the first time, the real first time, before you got bitter and jaded.  It was like but also being high on meth with a hint of ecstasy and a LOT of LSD. Yet somehow feeling completely sober.

We were taken down more zigzagging pathways, each with more outlandish products than the last: a buffet that sold misfortune cookies; empty cages with the words “Lost Souls. Free to a Good Home,”;   and old fashioned execution...weapons? Devices?  Stuff used to kill people.

“Little Orphan Antoinette says Be Sure to Use Your Guillotine!”  

We passed a door...no wall...just a door, a glass door standing up out of nowhere. “Back in five nightmares”, the sign hanging on it said.

Across from the door to nowhere, around a hill made of old rusty cans, dingeys, buoys, dog collars, and plastic six pack rings, a red scaled lizard man wearing a tunic stalked around on two long hind legs.  It growled at passersby, as if it were protecting its eggs from poachers.  Every few moments it would climb to the top and shout “Best me and claim my hoard!  Fail and add to the pile of treasure!” 

Finally we came a cluster of stalls and tents, all made of a quilted patchwork. The patches were all colors of the rainbow; red, yellow, orange, yada yada yada.  If you’re reading this I can safely assume you know what colors are. But all of them were faded or muted.  Baby blue and baby yellow.  Pastel I think it’s called.

Gentle Colors.

Baby colors.

There had been Fay all along the endless rows of the Bazaar, shoppers and browsers. Pink skinned men with turbans and pot belly’s that belched fire shopping along side leopard spotted cat women, but there was something distinctly different about this group milling about.

Almost all the Others here carried or toted around human men and women.  Some, like me, rode on the hips of their alien-like captors.  A few rode around in strollers or cots like Peter.  Some were still being swaddled and breastfed out in the open.  One was getting changed on a flying carpet.  The ones who weren’t completely zonked out of it looked confused and frightened as all hell.

Shit.  We were in the baby aisle.

With Peter’s stroller quietly coasting along beside us, the Green Lady took me to a tent manned by a literal Elephant Woman.  Her skin was patchwork pastel, just like the tent, and her eyes were glassy.  A heffalump from Winnie the Pooh made giant and alive.

“Green Lady,” the Heffa-woman said.  “You look particularly matronly today.”  She had a strange, almost fake Russian accent.  Looking back on it, I almost wish I’d been brave enough to ask her to say “Moose and Squirrel”.

“That’s become I am particularly matronly this day, Babushka Slon,” Mommy Dearest said.

A quilted trunk wormed towards me and pinched me on the cheek.  “And who is this?”

“This is Alice,” She said.  “Say hello, Alice.”

Her words overpowered me.“Hello Alice…” Her laughter infected me, and I felt good hearing the elephant chuckle good naturedly.  I felt cute.  It was good to be cute.

“Very nice to meet you, Alice.”  Her trunk snaked over the counter and patted Peter on the end.  “And it is good to be seeing you as well, little Peter.  Glad you did not get thrown away.”

“Fankyou…” Peter called up.  

“Is pronounced ‘Spasibo’” Babushka Slon said before looking up.  “You are here because you have new ward, yes.  Need supplies.”

Mommy Dearest nodded.  “I am and I do.”

“True to Her word the Green Lady is.  Always true.  Babushka always gets first pitch of the ball game.”  The elephant woman bent over behind her counter and pulled out an ornate Piggy Bank. Green.  The same shade as the Fay holding me.  “So where do we begin?”

An ivy green hand rubbed my back and patted it gently.  “Clothes, I think.”

“Very good place to start!” the elephant said.  “Dapper and playful clothes for the boy, and baby girl’s pretty and lacy ruffles.  Best of both worlds.”  Mommy Dearest made no comment.  “How about this?” I can’t quite describe what it’s like having clothes magically appear and disappear on your body.  It’s less “poof” sensation and more of a strange fast forward.

I felt the light blue pinafore dress slide over my head.  Felt my arms being guided through holes and then the material smoothed and straightened out.  I felt the white tights being yanked up legs and over my diaper; even felt Mommy’s hand purposefully snap into place so that the diapers paper thin waist wasn’t peaking out. I felt the shiny black patent leather shoes being slid over my feet and strapped on.  I even saw blinks and flashes of colors, like the world going away as the top was pulled over my eyes and down over my head.  But it was kind of like an echo or an after image on my skin.  Everything was already on.  I had the feeling of having been dressed without the time consumed.

“Gods, no!  That’s hideous.” Mommy Dearest said.  I frowned, feeling like it was a failing on my part for some reason.  “And let’s avoid tights altogether, shall we?”

“Tights are pretty and ladylike,” Babushka Slon said.  The Green Lady just stood there.  Unflinching.  “Buuut it makes it harder to check and change her.  Babushka knows.  Modern mother has to be practical sometimes.”

Yellow cats eyes glanced at my legs.  “Hmmm…for formal occasions, perhaps.  We’ll come back to them.”
 

“Fair enough.”  The clothes slipped off me in a blink.  If I was naked, it wasn’t long enough to fully register.  Because as now I was in a much looser red number, a sundress with white polka dots on it.   “How about this?” the talking stuffie asked.  “Easy to take on and off.  Good for playtime. And still protects modesty.”  For the first time since I’d been unswaddled, my diaper was completely covered.  

The Green Lady cocked her head to the side, as if thinking.  “Modesty is not something my wards need overmuch of.”  It wasn’t an insult.  Just a statement of fact, like the sky is purple and the clouds are shooting rainbow explosions.  She looked at the dress. Looked at me in it. “It’s a very good dress, however.  How much?” 

“That’ll be one first kiss.”

Mommy Dearest was not amused. “You’re joking.”  

“Not if you can afford it...”

“This is good work, but not first kiss good.  I’ll give you a bi-curious masturbation fantasy.”

“Done.”

A sparkle shot out from the Green Lady’s finger tips.  It went into the piggy bank with a tinkling little sound, like a quarter being dropped in.  KA-CHINK!

The dress vanished off me.  I was naked again.  But not for long.  A sparkling pink onesie appeared.  I felt the snaps between my thighs click before I knew it was on me.  “This one is two tone.” the vending heffalump said.  “Pink OR blue.”

The strange Monster holding me approved.  “A highschool crush.”

“Done.”

KA-CHINK!

And so it went on for a bit.

Rompers.

“The feeling of finding a gift wrapped puppy on Christmas morning.”

“Done.”

KA-CHINK!

Jammies.

“Getting away with cheating on a math test in tenth grade.”

KA-CHINK!

Done.

Dresses with frills and lace and diaper covers that could only be called “panties” by the loosest of definitions.

KA-CHINK!

“The knowledge that your mother has cancer.”

“Oooooo....done.

KA-CHINK!

Bonnets. Pacifiers. Booties.  Mittens.

“A nail biting habit.”

“Eh...okay, done.”

KA-CHINK!

Mommy Dearest glanced at the piggy bank.  “That’s enough clothes for now.  What about strollers?”  The red sundress was back on me.  I guess I was wearing this out.

Peter wriggled and let out a little yelp as his single stroller turned into a double.  From his point of view, he must have felt the phantom of being picked unbuckled picked up and rebuckled into a new adult stroller in less than a breath.   

This new stroller had a sensible tan coating instead of the hot red paintjob, and the roar of its engine had been muffled.  Peter’s baby racecar had turned into a kind of minivan.  “Mommy…” he whined.  “Why can’t Alith get her own sthroller?”

The Green Lady laughed lightly through her nose.  “Peter, darling, I can assure you.  Wherever you go, Alice will be coming with you and vice versa. It makes no sense to have two strollers when there’s only one of me.”

“But I liked my rathecar…” he lisped. “It made me feel...it made me feel-” Whatever word Peter was looking for, he didn’t want to finish the thought. 

“I offered to get you a doll.  You begged me for a baby sister, now.  Or  did you think there wouldn’t be a price of some sort?”

Peter nodded his head, showing the dead leaves still tangled in his curls.  “Yeth Mommy Dearetht.  Thorry Mommy Dearetht.”

I felt a weight in my guts, a low grade cramp.  Whatever strange Thanksgiving feeling foods I’d been fed were working their way through me.  I was starting to feel bloated, and a little gassy.

Confession time:  I don’t know if that one “writer” is still copying and pasting my tumblr and facebook posts to his smut site, but I’ve done my research since then.

This is usually the part in these kinds of stories where I’m supposed to tell you how awful it was, or how humiliating it was.  How I held on and did everything I could until my body gave up and the big mushy poo-poo went all into my diapee and I cried and cried like a little baby blah-blah-blah.

Nope.  DIdn’t go down that way.  I pooped my pants.  No hesitation.  No real embarrassment.  I think I might’ve grunted, but in all the times I pooped my pants over There, I never really paid attention.  Only reason I think I make a sound is sometimes I still groan a little bit when I’m on the toilet now.

It was easy.  Whatever weird ass food had been shoved into my gut was easy to get out.  And Newsflash: Diapers are comfortable.  If they weren’t, the people who need them would do more to avoid them.  

There.

I fucking said it.

Grow Up.

Mommy Dearest sniffed and lifted the hem of my dress.  “Excuse me, Babushka.”

She laid me down in the double stroller.  The seat laid back like it had for Peter.  Peter, still human and in his right mind was kind enough to turn his head and not look as Mommy Dearest lifted up the sun dress to my belly button.  

She reached into the diaper bag and took out a bottle filled with pale green juice. “Drink this, baby girl,” She said. I obeyed.  “It wouldn’t do to have you dehydrate yourself.”  I sucked on the bottle as she wiped and powdered me.

I didn’t blush.  I didn’t cry.  I might have flinched from the coldness of the wipes or wriggled when she drew the fresh diaper up and taped it into place, but other than that I was a perfectly good baby.

It was easy to be a baby There.  Everyone else who looked remotely like me was dressed and acting the same way.  Whenever everyone else is sucking on bottles and peeing themselves and getting burped and changed, it’s really not so bad. 

Babies don’t really mind being babies until they discover the existence of big kids and all that entails.  But in this Land, there were only Grown-Ups that looked nothing like you, and babies who did.

The Green Lady, terror that she was, didn’t go out of her way to remind me that I was a baby or humiliate me, that would have had the opposite effect.  It was super easy to be a baby in the Land Beyond the Real.  That’s why it’s so embarrassing now that I’m around normal people again.  To keep my freedom I’ve had to re-learn all the little intricacies of independent life that used to be second nature to me but got ZOTTED out or whatever.  

“All done,” She pronounced, as if it needed to be said, before pulling my dress back down over my new diaper righting the seat and buckling me in, next to Peter.  Apparently, Mommy Dearest had grown tired of holding me.  She turned to Babushka Slon. “Where were we?”

“You were paying for the stroller.  You’re buying it by the way.”

“Agreed” the Green Lady nodded. “I’ll give you a twenty-first birthday party.”

“What country?”

“America.  Middle-Class.”

“Upper or lower middle?”

“Middle-middle, but VERY splurgy.  Oldest child.”

“How drunk?”

“VERY drunk.  Almost blackout but not hospital.  Most memories buried in the subconscious or purposefully repressed to avoid embarrassment.”

“Deal.”

KA-CHINK.

The elephant looked down at me in my new minivan stroller.  “Should we talk about food and diapers?”

“Why?” Mommy Dearest asked.  “I’ve already got a lifetime supply.”

“You’ve got ONE liftime supply,” Babushka Slon said, Holding up a blunted foreleg.  The other came up.  “Now you have TWO.  Wouldn’t want to reach into your bag and come up with nothing, would you?  Very embarrassing to come back here then, with deti having empty bellies and sagging bottoms.”

My captor paused.  “A fair point.  Double my stock.  I’ll offer you College graduation.”  

“Ceremony or knowledge base?”

“Ceremony.  Much sentimental value.  Whole family was there.  Hung a banner from the stands and everything.”

The elephant stroked her chin with her trunk  “Throw in High School and you’ve got a deal.”

“A deal it is.”

“Done.”

KA-CHINK!

“Now check out this,” the vendor said.  “Time for big ticket items.” A highchair clip clopped out from behind the counter.  Pure white with lavender and gold trim.  The attached bib silken.  If Peter’s was for a cowboy, mine was going to be a dainty steed, fit for a Princess.

“Oh, very nice,” Mommy.  “See Peter?  You can keep your own high chair at least.”

“Yeth Mommy.”  Peter said.  He turned his head and looked at me.  Shrugged.  He liked what he liked.  Peter was another thing that made things easier over There.

As another prisoner of the Fay cried out and complained, saying something about kidnapping, human trafficking, and natural rights, only so that their “Parent” could yank down their diaper and start spanking them in public, the bargaining continued.

“Loss of virginity,”  Mommy said.

“How many partners since?”

“Two...no...three.”

“Since first time, or total?”

“Total.”

“Not bad...not bad...okay.  I normally prefer either one and only or too many to remember.  But I like you, so I’ll make an exception”

“That is a lie, Babushka.  You do not like me. But that lie will earn me that discount and make up for all the other ridiculous prices you’ve charged me in the past.”

I didn’t know it was possible for an elephant to smile.  Babushka Slon found a way.  Out rolled a baby walker.  Big enough to fit me in.  Even I gasped.  It looked like a scaled up version of something from my memories.   

“That walker…”

“Yes?”

“That is something I MUST have!”

“Then THAT will be one first kiss.”

KA-CHINK!

After all my new clothes had been bought, Peter and I were wheeled further into the baby section of the Bazaar.  It was the first real sign of rhyme or reason I can remember seeing in the place.  Brahms lullaby followed us everywhere we went, and even the piles of broken shit were all fisher price.  At least there was a theme, now.

“Peter?  Are you sure you don’t want a doll?”  I looked over to Peter and saw him go white beneath the stroller’s canopy.  

“No, Mommy Dearetht.  I love my new baby thithter.”

Butterflies flapped as She laughed.  “Oh no no.  I’m not giving her up.  Not after everything I just bought her, silly boy.  This would be in addition to her.”

“No thankth,” he said.  He was staring straight ahead, his lips tight and his fingers clenched.

“Alice, what about you?  Would you like a Doll?”

Peter was already looking at me, shaking his head making the “don’t” gesture with his hand, sliding it back and forth over his throat.  “No thank you, Mommy Dearest.” I called out.

“Oh let’s look anyways. It can be fun to window shop.” Peter sighed and slumped down.  No longer scared. Just resigned.  There were times when Mommy Dearest could be very cruel.  The times that were the cruelest were when you couldn’t actually read her intentions.

A wall of dolls greeted our stroller.  Wrapped in boxes with clear hard plastic fronts, unblinking eyes stared back at Peter and me.  Like so much of everything else I’d already seen that day, these weren’t ordinary dolls.  

They were huge.  Literally life size.  The packaging alone was big enough that I could have fit in one of them.  Something was off about the skin tone though.  The white ones had almost porcelain like skin. The black ones might have been black face.  Supposedly asian baby dolls were yellow to the point of jaundice.  Their skin all had that kind of semi-reflective plastic sheen.  It was like an alien who had never seen real flesh and blood humans had painted them based on the loosest descriptions.

Their clothes were cartoonish and cheap. There were cowboys and doctors and pilots and soldiers and construction workers and nurses and princesses and teachers.  But the thread was hotel bed sheet thin.  I could see the nipples poking through one of the nurses’ scrubs.

No pants though. They all had diapers on like me.  Same pattern, too.  A strange horse on landing zone and a mushroom motif. There’s seemed cheaper though...less real.  Just like how the baby doll clothes seem like poor imitation.  No insulation needed for the clothes.  No real absorbency for the diapers.  Dolls didn’t need the comfort.

And yeah.  Surprise surprise.  None of them actually looked like babies. All adults.  All just like me. 

There were holes in the packaging, little slots where the dolls’ right hands could poke out.  “Try Me, I talk!’ The sticker around the hole said.

The Green Lady walked over and gave a palm a squeeze.  “Help me!” The doll said.  But it’s lips didn’t move. It’s voice sounded grainy and pre-recorded.  “What’s going on?”  

She squeezed another one.  “This is a dream.  This is just a dream.  I’m gonna wake up any second now.

Another.  “Our Father. Lord in Heaven. Hallowed be thy name.”

My memory stretched back a full day in this Place. Remembering that not every swaddled abductee was taken home. Some of the dolls were suddenly looking very familiar.  Peter was tearing up.
 

“Kill me…” It’s voice was weak and weary.  “I can’t eat or sleep or move…”  “Just let me die...please”

Mommy went to the far corner.  “Oh this one’s been here a while,” She said.  Another pilot.  This one with goggles and a leather flight cap and a jaunty scarf flung over her shoulders.  Her diaper was cloth, held together with safety pins.  Mommy turned the box around and pulled a string on the back.

“...”  Just blank grainy silence.  The Green Lady tried it again.  Silence.  Third time was the charm.   “Why me?”  it said.  “I just wanted to fly.”  The name on the box read “Amelia”.

The Fay Woman paused, reading something on the back of the box.  “Antique, it says,” “Not for sale.  Display purposes only. Hmmm...so not this one, then.”  She bent over, smiling at me. “What do you say, Alice?  Do you want to give one of these dolls a home?”  I shook my head.  I couldn’t talk. I couldn’t find the words.  

“Alice? What’s wrong? Why are you and Peter crying?”  I just shook my head.  Gods forgive me.  I couldn’t.  I just couldn’t.  A lump in my throat.  Those poor people.  That could have been me!
The Green Lady was frowning again.  Unhappy.  Annoyed.  The firework stormcloud above us sounded off.

It was Peter who saved us that time.  “We’re cranky, Mommy,” he said.  “Futhy…We need ta go home.  Quiet time.  Leth thtimulating...leth noithy…”

A switch turned back on and the Green Lady was Mommy Dearest again.  “Awww, you poor thing.  It has been a bit of a morning for you both, hasn’t it?” That was the end of that particular shopping trip.

Even now I can’t go down into the doll aisle of any toy department.  Part of me is scared.  Afraid that if the dolls talk, I’ll hear those same cries for help.  Add onto that, questions and accusations:  “Why didn’t you take at least one of us home?  Why didn’t you try to save at least one of us?”

Just imagining that changes me. I stop being myself and start being who I was. I’m working myself back up to being who I was before There.  I’m a grown woman again.  Or close to it.   But right Then, I was just a scared little girl.  And I’m that same scared little girl every time I come anywhere close to a baby doll.