Soul Bears

An unknown force created four souls for 4 dolls out of thin air. A panda named peter Panda, a Black bear named Artie, a polar bear named May, and a red panda action figure named Red, were all suddenly alive but with translucent bodies, looking at their own actual, inanimate bodies on a hospital bed next to a girl they quickly recognized as their best friend. "Hi," uttered a seemingly sad humanoid resembling a generic angel as she approached the dolls from behind. "I understand that none of you can speak, so let me explain since you are all able to understand my words." The four bears gathered closer to the angel as she tears up from the sight of the girl in the bed. "That girl, your best friend, is named Bridgette, and she is not okay. She's been in a bus crash. She was going home from school when the breaks went out and the bus hit a bunch of other cars," the angel explains. "She's the only survivor in the wreck." May the polar bear immediately spins towards the girl before rushing to try to shake her wrist to wake her up. May has been the bear that protected Bridgette from nightmares for all 8 years of her life. Despite the inability to move Bridgette's arm, May kept trying because she doesn't wanna lose her to this nightmare, the first one to set May herself on edge. The angel approaches with a snow globe formed from the top of her halo. The snow globe displays Bridgette's soul, lost and crying while balled up in a trench in the middle of what appears to be Limbo. "I need your help," the Angel announces, regaining May's attention. "She's stuck here, in those trenches. I'm going to transport you all exactly one mile north from where she's at, it's as far as I can get you guys in an instant. Once you find her, bring her back to this room and get her to lay in this bed." All four bears nodded, May even takes a kneel to pledge her undying loyalty to Bridgette. "Before I send you, I must let you all know that she's on life support," the Angel says, pointing directly at the ventilator behind the bears, on their right. "Exactly five minutes ago, Her doctors told her family that they're gonna pull the plug on Christmas, which.." the Angel begins choking up once more. ".. is in 2 days." The bears approach the Angel to provide her with a group hug. "Thank you, I needed that," the Angel responds, voice still trembly from crying. The Angel guides The bears to the edge of the bed to transport them outside. She tosses her halo over the edge, at which point it forms a golden portal mid-fall, exposing their destination through the center. "Go! I'll be right here for when you return. I'm counting on you, all of you." Says the Angel. As the Angel waves goodbye, the bears connect their paws against each other as they all leap off the bed and into the portal to save their best friend in time for Christmas.

  Worried but patient, Bridgette's mother remains in the mostly vacant waiting room, silently praying on her knees in front of her leather seat. She's joined by Bridgette's grandparents and aunt, who are also anticipating updates from the doctors on Bridgette's condition. Not long after Mom's prayer, Bridgette's father rushes into the waiting room from the elevator. "What happened?" Father asks, visibly terrified. "Why are you here?" Mother responds angrily. "She's my daughter, why wouldn't I be here?" "You haven't seen her much in the year we've been split up!" Mother snaps, charging Father as The Grandmother steps in the middle to break up the feud. "Both of you needa quit! I'm about to lose my grandbaby in there, and all you two are doin' is acting like whiny babies," Grandmother yells, shutting the parents up immediately. The Father walks over to the elevators to chill out for a moment, while the mother sits back in her seat. The Grandmother approaches Father to speak to him while they all wait for a doctor to update them on their little girl. "I don't mean to cause any trouble. What happened? I had no clue you guys broke it off with each other," Grandmother tells Father. "She thinks I cheated on her," Father admits. "An old friend of her's sent her a screenshot of a conversation between me and some girl I don't even know."

  "Did you?" Grandmother asks. "Absolutely not," Father claims. "I even showed her that the chat doesn't exist on my phone, but she accused me of deleting the chat and kicked me out of the house."

  Before Grandmother could ask who the friend was, an unknown man enters the waiting room from an elevator, walking towards Mother with a big smile. "... that's the friend. Isaac." Father reveals as Isaac gives the Mother a kiss on the cheek. "Why's he here?" Isaac asks, visibly annoyed. "Don't worry about it, hun," says Mother. The Father looks at the two hugging with a depressed look on his face, trying his hardest not to either lash out or cry as Grandmother suddenly realizes she can't do much to aid in the situation between the parents.

  "HMPH!" the bears grunt in sync as they all land face-first into the grass below where the portal used to shine. The bears rise up from the grass to see an abandoned, colorless version of their hometown around them, with the giant hospital so far away that it's almost completely invisible from the excessive amount of fog. The bears carefully explore the parking lot of a nearby pharmacy. As they become more submerged into the fog, Red mistakenly steps on a random rock that's wrapped up in a piece of paper. The bears surround Red while he's freeing the rock from the paper to see if the paper says anything. Artie carefully takes the sheet of paper from Red, but notices that it does say something after flipping it around; 

"In any second now, you guys should be able to See a purple orb of light a few inches away from Where you four are standing. It will guide you to Bridgette, regardless of where she's at. DO NOT MOVE FROM YOUR SPOT UNTIL THE ORB ARRIVES! IT WILL DISAPPEAR AND YOU WON'T FIND BRIDGETTE! That's all. ♡

~Lillibelle, the Angel from the Hospital".

Artie gently puts the rock on the paper and sets both on the ground while Peter drags a small cardboard box out of the mist for them to camp in until the purple orb shows up. May, seemingly upset with them slouching around even though they were told to, walks over to the cardboard box and repeatedly kicks it in a fit of rage. Artie and Red shoves her away from the box while Peter rushes in to try to diffuse the fight, but May runs off into the mist before the fight could escalate. After running for what feels like hours, May finds and picks up a rubber mallet she found on a sidewalk, intending to use it as a weapon in case any hostile entities lurk within the foggy, uncanny realm that is Limbo.

The next day, the Father decides to kill time by exploring the gift shop at the main floor of the hospital. The idea of him being easily replaced by a friend of his ex had been eating him up inside for a while, especially one that's caused him so much trouble back in school. He hears very faint foot steps entering the shop. Father slowly turns his head over his shoulder to see who it is. Surely enough, it's the last person he wanted to see. "I was wondering where you ran off too," Isaac says sarcastically. "It must suck, the falling out between you and her. I wasn't meaning for it to go that far, but hey, you never know-" "What are you on about?" Father asks, becoming more and more angry with Isaac as another faint footstep is heard outside the gift shop. "So, you did fake the chat? That wasn't a real woman, was it?" Isaac laughs at the Father for a long minute, hand grasping at the top of the doll shelf next to him. "And so what if I did? All those times you bested me at things like sports, quizes, and everything else. I mean, you knew I had a thing for your ex wife, but you go and win her heart before I could. How dare you, sir?! I was so happy to tell you all about her, but I guess you couldn't help it, right? You ruined so much for me! At least you couldn't ruin my dream of becoming a doctor." Isaac steps back before admitting one last thing. "Speaking of doctor, my shift here starts in a few hours, so I better get out of here. Before I go, I just wanna let you know somethin'; I'll be unplugging that girl's ventilator at Midnight." Father's face becomes bright red, heartbeat racing faster than ever. "Don't feel too bad, you brought this on yourself for trying to be better than everyone" Isaac utters with a completely different, much calmer tone in voice than he was already speaking. "YOU AREN'T GONNA DO A THING TO MY DAUGHTER'S VENTILATOR! YOU HEAR ME! NOTHING!" Father had every right to beat Isaac black and blue right there in that shop, but shoving him out of the way and running to the Mother was all he could think to do as Isaac picks up his phone. "Hello? Yeah, this is Isaac. I'm gonna be a few minutes late, is that alright?" Isaac drops the call and slides his phone back inside his pocket.

"Merry Christmas, Steven," Isaac mumbles to himself, looking at the gift shop entrance while soft Christmas music plays faintly on the radio.

An entire day goes by, and not a single orb has been located anywhere nearby. However, Peter, Artie, and Red remain crammed inside the cardboard box as the Angel instructed them to. Peter looks up at a massive billboard that displays the date; "DECEMBER 24th, 2022 | 11:30PM". Peter gets the other bears to look up at the sign, unintentionally causing them to lose hope. The whole reason they were animated by an angel in the first place was to guide their best friend back to her body before midnight, but with the way things are going, it feels hopeless to them now. They all silently fall over in a curled up position, moving their bodies the same way a human does when sobbing uncontrollably. Finally, after several more hours of silent crying go by, the formation of a purple light occurs in front of the bears plastic, round eyes. The three quickly bolt out of the carboard box to get near it, but the orb dashes away from them. Without a moment to spare, they advanced into the thick fog in pursuit of the orb. 

Within a dark, decrepit school hallway, Bridgette slowly treks past each destroyed classroom with a purple orb of her own, which she's been using to get through the darkness and fog of Limbo since she showed up inside the abandoned bus she woke up in, seemingly at random. "I wish I had my May with me," she whispers to herself, shivering somewhat violently. Upon entering the cafeteria from the hallway, a giant bang could be heard on Bridgette's left side. She quickly steps back into the hallway and slowly peaks over the side to see that the entire ceiling fell through in the left hallway. As soon as she turned around to see the south hallway, located across from her, Bridgette noticed a few gigantic shadows growing bigger as if they were getting closer to her. Then the shadows grew faster, and before she knew it, pitch black figures were running at her. Bridgette span towards the hallway she came from and made a run for it, but the shadows began to catch up to her faster than she could make it halfway through the hallway. One of her shoe's lace comes undone, causing her to step on it and tripping onto the carpet floor. "PLEASE DON'T HURT ME!" Bridgette cries loudly as the shadows close in on her. Suddenly, the shadows stop moving. One of the shadows tosses an orb, much like Bridgette's, into the air, at which point it shines as bright as it can, revealing Artie, Peter, and Red. "MY BESTIES!!" Bridgette shouts, rushing in to hug all three of them, not caring one bit that they're now as big as her. When she steps back from the group hug, Peter gives her a letter that reads;

"We are here get you home."

While Bridgette's smiling in relief, Artie takes the note back to write another thing on it;

"Can open door behind?"

After a moment of wondering what Artie wrote, Bridgette turns around to see that the door behind her has been mysteriously locked. Upon unlocking and pushing the door open, Bridgette sees her nightmare hunting bestie, May, with another letter that reads;

"Monster knows we here, lets go."

Behind May, rests a golf cart they'll use to get her back to the hospital in time, or vanish trying.

"Let's go! Wait.. am I dead?" Bridgette asks, suddenly sad and afraid all over again.

Gunning for the waiting room, Father approaches the Mother with a very distressed and panicked look on his face with the disturbing news of his encounter with Isaac. "PLEASE LISTEN TO ME VERY CAREFULLY! ISAAC WORKS HERE!" "I knew that, why are you shouting at me about it?" Mother responds, stepping back to keep her distance. "HE TOLD ME IN THE GIFT SHOP THAT HE PLANS TO TAKE OUR DAUGHGTER OFF LIFE SUPPORT!" The wife lunges forward and slaps the Father across the face for his unsettling claim about Isaac. "I don't know what's gotten in your head for you to make up such a lie, but you better get out of here before I assign you a room here myself- GET OUT OF MY FACE!" suddenly, Bridgette's grandmother barges in and pulls Mother aside by her right arm, pressing a phone to her ear. "Listen, and listen really well," she tells Mother, visibly terrified. On speaker at high volume, Isaac can be heard telling Father about his plan when he clocks into work any minute now. "No, this can't be-" the three of them slowly turn around to see Isaac, fully dressed for work, enter the corridor through the doors behind them. "WAIT, WAIT!" The parents shout, dashing for the doors, but an unknown doctor prevents them from entree. "NO VISITORS! DON'T TRY THAT AGAIN!" The doctor demands before closing the doors and locking them.

The bears escort Bridgette into the golf cart, May quickly hops in the driver's seat and the group immediately drive off, on route to the hospital. "oh my go- WHAT IS THAT THING?!" Peter, Artie, and Red turn around to see a giant nightmarish monster made up of millions of tiny shadowed beings as it crawls towards them as such a fast pace that the May can't keep their distance from the monster at top speed. Suddenly without warning, the monster's hands begin slamming down on both sides of the golf cart, but May tries to get the golf cart to go faster than it already is. May, being the nightmare hunter that she's always been, signals Red to take over the wheel so she can jump out the golf cart and fight the monster. Knowing the type of mission they're all on, Red takes over the wheel without question, and May rolls off the golf cart. "NO! MAY!" Bridgette cries out as Red aims the golf cart at a massive hill, intending to jump it directly into the hospital window. "WHY ARE WE GOING FOR A HILL? TURN AROUND!!" Bridgette loudly cries before Red gives her a thumbs up, silently asking that she trust him on this. As the group make a run for the hill, May looks back at the group one last time before unclamping the rubber mallet from her right side and running towards the monster without a care in the world for whether or not she'd win against it.

The golf cart begins to make contact with the hill when Peter sets off gigantic fireworks behind the golf cart, causing the golf cart to reach extremely fast speeds up the hill. Just as every bear on board keeps Bridgette safe in her seat in the back, the golf cart flies off the top of the hill and rams through the hospital window. Upon landing inside, the golf cart dies from impact, but Bridgette remained unharmed due to the bears' group hug to protect her from impact. They alert the Angel, who uses her halo to give them a lift onto the bed. As the group make their way back onto the bed, Bridgette looks back at the windows once more to see a pitch black explosion beyond the horizon. "Whenever you're ready, just lay down, and fall asleep," The angel tells Bridgette, waving goodbye at everyone while Bridgette lays down.

Although still sluggish from the coma, Bridgette's eyes begin to slowly open, shocking the nurse next to her. Before she could run out to tell her parents, the nurse's excitement turned into panic. "I need medical personnel immediately," the nurse hollers across the corridor outside Bridgette's room. "Doctor Isaac Warner's not breathing!"