Teddy (Complete)

Teddy

They were not hallucinations. Mara's doctor had called them "visual distortions." They made things seem to be other than what they were, but she knew the changes weren't real, and if she took her medication tonight, it would all be okay by morning. Mara kept repeating this silent mantra, because now was not the time to break down. Her three-year-old daughter Rachel was holding out a second bedtime book, and Mara had to focus on each word so as not to frighten either one of them.

Rachel's eyes were growing heavy as Mara read the familiar story, trying not to watch as the strawberries on her daughter's wallpaper slithered up and down their vines. Unfortunately, as she grew more agitated, the decorative plastic framing around the window slowly transformed into metal bars. Rachel finally fell asleep. For a moment, Mara lounged next to her child on the twin bed.

She looked up at the bookshelf where Rachel kept a line of dolls. Some were porcelain dears dressed in Victorian garb, others were typical fashion dolls, whose clothing had been lost long ago. There were a few of the battery-operated kind that crawled when you pressed their feet or laughed when you tickled their stomachs, including an old mechanical teddy bear Mara had played with as a child.

A few weeks ago, in a moment of nostalgia, Mara had taken the toy off of the shelf. Teddy looked like a simple stuffed animal, but he had a tape player in his back, wired so that as the tape played, his mouth moved, as if he were telling a story. Mara had run her hands over his back, noticing that the old taped story was still in place. She then pressed play and listened to Teddy talk. For a brief moment, her troubles had dissipated as she was transported back to her childhood.

Then her daughter had come into the room, eating a half melted Popsicle. Licking her purple fingers, she had looked up at Mara in a stubbornly childish way and said, "Mommy, put Teddy back. He's the Maskman."

"Maskman," Rachel had said, all in one word, and with a strange accent, as if she had grown up in rural Georgia instead of the suburbs of Cleveland.

Mara felt chilled at this, and asked, "Maskman?"

Rachel sighed, exasperated with her mother, "Those are the Watchin' People," she pointed to the rest of the dolls and toys. "Teddy's the Maskman. Chiefking. Silly, Mommy," Then Rachel rolled her eyes, as if everyone should know this fact.

Mara had been so disturbed by this conversation, she had discussed it with her shrink, who chuckled and said, "Children say the oddest things sometimes. My Julia had an invisible friend who transformed into a cat until she was six."

Mara had laughed along, thinking it was another case of the paranoia, which sometimes accompanied the hallucinations. Now, as she looked at her daughter's bookshelf, Mara remembered that strange, childish title, "The Watchin' People," and shuddered. The wallpaper strawberries were jumping, and the faces of Rachel's dolls melted, their mouths twisting angrily. Slowly, Mara tried to extricate herself from Rachel's bed. When her mind was this bad, all she could do was take her medication and hope that things would be better in the morning.

But as Mara shifted her attention to the blanket beneath her, she heard a strange, overly friendly voice say, "My name's Teddy! Can you and I be friends?"

She looked up toward the shelf. Teddy sat there smiling. The dolls surrounding him began to whisper in low mumbles. Mara froze. She had not had aural distortions in over ten years, and even then, they had been short spurts of music, beeping, and buzzing, nothing like this. She began to hyperventilate. Closing her eyes, Mara practiced her breathing exercises, counting slowly backward from ten to one.

After a few moments, she looked up at the bookshelf again. "This is not real. This is not happening," she chanted, eyes squeezed shut, fingers gripping her daughter's blanket.

Calmed for the moment, Mara opened her eyes, planning to run to the bathroom for her medication. She looked to the shelf, and her chest tightened in fear once more. Rachel's dolls moved in perfect synchronization. Their glassy watching eyes rolled dizzyingly, and even though the voices were still indistinct, their mumbles grew louder. Then, Teddy's head slowly bent toward Mara.

He chirped, "My name's Teddy! Would you like to come with me on adventure?" Mara covered her ears, shaking her head wildly. "No, no, no," she muttered. "This cannot happen. My daughter will not wake up to her mother having a complete nervous breakdown. She will not go through what I did."

At the thought of one final meltdown with no one to take care of her daughter, Mara leapt to her feet, reaching out for Teddy to rip the tape out of his back and throw him out the window, where he would certainly smash on the ground six floors below their apartment.

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"I wouldn't do that, bitch," the teddy bear said.

Mara held back a scream, trying again to stay calm for her daughter's sake. Rachel woke up anyway, and pulled on her mother's sleeve. Mara turned to her child, blinking back tears while thinking of the foster homes in which her daughter would surely be placed.

Rachel clapped her hands and laughed. "Mommy, the Maskman said a swear."

Mara closed her eyes grasped Rachel to her chest, hoping she had imagined her daughter's words. After counting to three, Mara opened her eyes again.

The strawberries had stopped swimming up their vines, and the bars on the window had vanished. But on the shelf, Rachel's baby dolls began to laugh. The computer in the corner hummed to life, the lights flickered, and Teddy–Maskman, Chiefking of the Watchin' People–stepped toward the bed. The scream clawing at Mara's throat burst forth, filling the room. She grabbed for her daughter, but Rachel was looking intently at her baby dolls and giggling madly. Mara stared at the dolls, dropping down to the floor one by one as Rachel laughed and danced among them.

Mara was so entranced by the mad scene, she didn't see the glint of Teddy's knife at her throat until it was too late. And then Mara's scream was ripped from her throat as the world went black.