You Know the Real Story

“H-hello everyone. My name is Liz Landers. And goodness, there sure are a lot of you. I’ll try to make this quick but as my mama always says when I get started nothing can shut me up again.Like one time at my Granny’s I–

“Okay, I see that look you're giving me ma’am. I’ll stay on track. So about five months ago I came home from my first year of college and I was broke poor. My parents said they were gonna kick me out if I didn’t start making some money and the streets didn’t sound too comfy so I went around town looking for work.

“It took a while but I eventually wrangled an interview for the toy store downtown. I’m sure you know the place I’m talking about, ma’am. But if you haven’t then callin’ it a toy store may be misleading. It was really more of a kingdom. It was two floors and then there was a basement for employees only, but all it had was a boiler and cleaning supplies. It was so big all the other stores around it looked like itty-bitty fairy houses. The store was called Gadgets&Gizmos’ Toys but everyone just called it G&G’s. 

“When I first walked in for my interview I thought I was walking into little-kid-wonderland. It was colorful and had rows and rows of every toy you can think of.Everything was popping lights and laughter. I went to the lady at the desk and told her I was there for an interview. I thought maybe she would be impressed by me since I was in my fancy orange blouse and dress pants but she was not. Orange must not be my color, which I keep telling you, ma’am, but–

“Right, right, sorry. Back to what I was saying. The lady at the desk looked me over and said: 

‘You can wait upstairs.’

“So I walked up the stairs (they were nice stairs too) and sat in a chair right outside the manager's office. It had a big red door and it was plenty intimidating. I remember feeling sweat slide down my back in a long drip and hoping I remembered to put on some strong perfume. You see, I really needed this job and there weren’t a lot of places looking to hire at the time, so I was just sitting there shaking when the door opened.

“Now, I hate to be rude but the manager was ding-dong if ever I knew one. He was old, a little smelly, and large. He sat me down and asked a lot of boring questions before confessing that they were desperately in need of someone who could clean. I told him my mama had taught me how to clean my whole life and this was the job for me. He didn’t look all that convinced but he hired me anyway. I think he might regret that now.

“Anyways, I started the next day. And I liked it at first. Because in the beginning I only worked when we were open, and working during open hours was buckets of fun. The kids would run around rampant and the adults would argue over prices but I’d just clean and sometimes ask a few questions.

“One afternoon this little boy who looked about eight or nine walked up to me. He was wearing a Transformers shirt so I automatically gestured to the aisle three rows down. I’d been working there for a while and had gotten pretty good at guessing what a customer asked. But this time the kid just looked confused and said, ‘Miss? My mommy says I need to tell you that I knocked down some stuffies. Even though I didn’t!’ He pointed to a pile of Elmo's lying in a heap. 

“‘Oh,’ I said. ‘That’s ok, buddy. They fall all the time.’ I patted his head but something was eating at me. A weird feeling in my gut that something wasn’t right. The Elmo stuffed animals had never fallen before. I shrugged it off as an accident and cleaned the mess. Except that wasn’t the last incident. And they got stranger. 

“The next day a girl in pigtails told me that the toy trains and turned on and zoomed all across the floor. A week after that the lady who works as a cashier (I learned that her name was Marge) said I’d stocked the stuffed animals wrong and they were all mixed together. I told her I wouldn’t do that but sure enough when I got to the stuffed animals row the dogs were intermixed with toy birds and the horses with pigs and so on. The ding-dong manager said kids must be messing with the toys, or maybe ruffian teenagers. Which seemed unlikely to me.

“After a little while of this nonsense my manager told me he was proud of how I was dealing with all of it and gave me a promotion. Higher pay and more hours. Now I cleaned at night too. I was ecstatic, even after Mr. Ding-Dong rudely interrupted my celebratory dance to ask me to leave his office.

“The happy feeling faded fast. There are few things creepier than dusting a bunch of dolls alone at night. I was getting ready to dust the china dolls (which no one ever bought because as I said; they're terrifying) when I heard someone say, ‘Oh! Everyone hush! It’s her!’ Remember when I said there are few things more terrifying than dolls at night? Well, hearing a doll talk alone at night is one of those few things.

“Okay, ma’am, I can see I’m losing you. And yes, at that point in time I didn’t know if it was actually the dolls that had spoken. But it was pretty freaky since I thought I was alone. So I called out ‘hello?’ a couple of times and when no one responded I walked into the aisle with the dolls and–I’m not kidding when I say this, Ma’am–but they were all turned, not towards me thank heavens, but to each other. Each doll was positioned like it was having a little chat with its neighbor. At that point I was too freaked out and I ran, barely remembering to lock the doors behind me.

“Manager ding-dong told me the next day that he thought it was ‘sweet’ how I’d positioned the dolls and I should do it more. I did. Well, that's not exactly what I mean. Every morning the dolls would be in some new pose, and not just the dolls. Soon Elmo and his buddies were in on it too. I had to come early in the mornings and put the stuffed animals back in their places. I had to get the trains off the race car track and take down those monkey chain things from almost every shelf. There was even one morning when I came in to find a stuffed tiger and lion resting on the counter above the remnants of what looked like all the stuffed bunnies in G&G’s. Their stuffing littered across the floor and the predators lounging out like they were resting after a hunt. Now, I know, I know. Lions and tigers don’t eat rabbits but that's what I saw, ma’am.

“The mornings were nothing compared to the nights though. I’d come in to the sound of a thousand tiny whispers which would suddenly go quiet. One night around three months after I’d been hired I went to the block shelves and saw all the construction toys, and I mean all the mini tractors, craines, and Bob the Builders we had were making towers as tall as me. But they were frozen. Like they hadn’t been moving at all. But I know if I’d gotten there just a second earlier they would be buzzing around like bees.

“After a few weeks they started to turn on me. I guess they didn’t like me putting them back in their places and cleaning them so much. Before I’d worked here they kinda had free reign so I guess they saw me as the enemy.

“I’d come in to see barbies holding little signs that read ‘Get rid of her!’ and ‘Down with the cleaner!’ but my personal favorite was: ‘She-devil begone!’ The lions and other predators would use all the prey’s stuffing to try and block the doorway so I couldn’t come in. The army figures would place tacks on the ground so it was like a landmine field over by the figurine section. And the dolls whispered about me every night. I think it was them who turned all the toys against me.

“At first I thought somehow Marge was doing this since she didn’t seem to like me much. But she was too professional for all of that and she seemed just as annoyed by it as me. When I told the manager he just told me to stop being stupid and get back to cleaning.

“All that tension was building up, I could feel it in my stomach and I wanted to quit. But it was almost time for me to go back to school. All I had to do was last a few more weeks and I was free. But something happened. I think you know what I’m getting too, ma’am.

“It was late, past midnight, and I had just come in. It was eerily quiet, there wasn’t loud music or the sounds of balls bouncing or trains rolling on their tracks. Nothing but the slightest whispers in the air. It seemed to be coming from the doll shelves, not surprisingly. I edged closer, step by step and I was even more nervous then than I had been when I came for my interview. As I crept closer I noticed toys were missing from their shelves. A few here and there. The closer I got to the dolls the clearer the whispering became. Soon I was so close I could make out exactly what they were saying.

“‘She scrubs and scrubs and ruins all our fun!’ A Thomas the Train cried. I know it was him because I used to watch that show as a kid. 

“‘Exactly,’ squealed a stuffed bunny (we’d gone through a lot of those recently ever since the predators went on a hunting spree). ‘I’m sick of being so careful! Nights used to be fun.’

“‘We have to do something. Something real,’ announced an army figurine. ‘Enough of this petty revenge.’

“The toys started to argue with each other and listening to all my childhood friends yell and call each other bad words was scarier than dusting dolls and hearing them talk.

“‘Enough,’ said a china doll. The toys lapsed into silence. The doll had a quiet, stent kind of voice. But it was strangely sweet too. The kind of sweet that made you sick inside.

“‘We agree,’ said another doll, her voice higher and sweeter than the first one. ‘It's time we did something about her. But what can we do?’

“Then a doll with a voice even higher and sweeter than the first two spoke, her voice was a creepy squeak, ‘We should kill her!’ And she laughed and then the other dolls laughed and soon the whole store was laughing so hard I thought for sure even astronauts in space could hear it! The ground almost shook with the force of it all and remember when I said there were few things scarier than dolls and whatever? Well, this took the cake for the scariest thing in the history of the planet. I ran forward a few steps, I had to know if this was really happening and the whole store went dead quiet. But every doll, every Elmo, every army figure and every train was pointed to me. Staring at me, holding stock still, with their wide eyes. And I swear to this day that I saw one of the dolls wink at me, ma’am. I really did.

“So ma’am you see, I did what I had to do. I could have run, but what would happen to the children who took one of these toys home? It was my duty, ma’am. It honestly was. 

“So I guess I’ll plead guilty to all charges of arson and destruction of property, Mrs. Judge, ma’am. But you know the real story.”