Thanks to Chris Cook for the art, and the chat room kittens for being an audience for my silliness.
Arc One: Intruder
1
Once upon a time, there was a little boy named Simon. He had a lot of stuffed animals—dozens of them. He kept most of them on a set of display shelves that were decorated with fancy drapes and cushions. Every night, Simon made a big show of selecting which of his stuffed animals he'd take to bed. Even though he often selected the same five or six, he regretted leaving the others behind, because he loved each and every animal he owned, even the scary ones such as William, the black widow.
After he chose his animals he would stay up late, long after his mother and father had said goodnight, given him a kiss on the head, turned off the light, and shuffled down the hall to their own room. During this time Simon would spin all manner of make-believe stories with his animals. Sometimes he would pretend that he was lost in the woods, and that he must cooperate with the woodland animals in order to survive. Sometimes he would be out at sea, or climbing mountains. Always, his stories involved befriending and working together with the animals.
During the day, when Simon had to be in school, the animals who had been chosen the previous night would return to the shelves and recount the night's adventures to the others. Partly, this was to prevent those who were not chosen as frequently from feeling left out. Also, it was boring to sit on a shelf all day, waiting for the boy to return.
One day Simon was invited to sleep over his friend Benjamin’s house. This was a big deal for Simon. He had never spent a night away from home before—at least, not that he could remember, and certainly not without his parents around. He was excited because Benjamin had a brand new video game system. Simon's parents would not allow such a thing into their own house. Simon ran through his room, hastily stuffing items into a satchel—a change of clothes for sleeping, a toothbrush, a candy bar he had hidden in a desk drawer—then the animals let out a collective gasp when he headed out the door and left them all behind.
They chattered amongst themselves. What did it mean? Had he really left them all alone? Was nobody going to be chosen this night? Would there be no stories?
“But it was going to be my turn!” cried Cordelia the peacock. “I'm sure of it!”
“Oh, you say that every night,” commented Xander the hippo. “You just can't accept that he's grown tired of you.”
“Oh, stuff it, chubby.”
“Hey, hey,” interrupted Buffy, a bright white unicorn. “It won't do us any good to bicker about who might have been chosen. We're all left on the shelf tonight. We're all missing out on a story, one way or the other. We're in this together.”
“Together, hm?” muttered William. “Oh, sure. You throw in with this lot now that the boy's not around to remind us all how you're his favorite. Are we supposed to forget all your haughty prancing this last week?”
A murmur rumbled through the crowd, as animals took one side or the other.
~*~
“What's going on down there?” yawned Tara, a faded blue teddy bear. She was one of the boy's first animals, and her edges showed the wear of many years, however full of love and caring they might have been.
“Hm?” A shape moved beside her. Wriggling out from under one of Tara's arms, a fluffy stuffed cat appeared. “Are they arguing again?” asked Willow.
Tara peered down at the squabbling animals one shelf below. “I don't understand why they bicker like this. Can't they tell he loves them equally?”
“Well, you know how the newer ones get,” Willow sighed. “When you've got a price tag stuck on your butt with a number that high, it kind of makes you feel like you're worth more than the others.”
Tara squirmed to check her own backside, but like every other time she'd looked all it sported was a threadbare seam.
Willow nuzzled up to her. “You don't need a tag. Trust me: you're priceless.”
“Oh, Willow, you're the sweetest.” Tara wrapped her baby blue arms around the cat's head and gave her a gentle, stuffing-filled squeeze. Willow wiggled her ears and purred happily.
“At least Dawnie has got her head on straight,” Tara pointed out. She nodded toward a baby kangaroo, who was sighing dramatically and rolling her eyes at the pointless prattling that continued among the other animals.
Willow grumbled. “Well, I guess it's up to us to put things right, hm?” All she wanted to do was nestle closer to her Tara Bear and sleep the night away.
Tara nodded absentmindedly, for her attention was focused almost entirely on the
rumble-thrum that was coming from Willow's throat. She had noticed that while most of the animals could get a hearty purr from the cat by rubbing her tummy or scratching behind her ears, she could set Willow off merely by proximity. It was the most heartwarming sound Tara knew.
“Say, I think I've got an idea,” Willow piped up after a moment.
“Huh? Sorry, what?” Tara snapped out of it.
“I know what we can do for the other animals.”
“What's that?”
“Well, we could tell a story!”
“You and me? Tell a story?”
Willow nodded, her whiskers bobbing in front of her face. “Yep! It would be the bestest. And since we wouldn't have to select one or two of the animals, it could be a story for all of them.”
“Willow, you're brilliant!” Tara drew the cat into a second hug—or, more accurately because she had never relinquished the first, Tara redoubled her hugging efforts.
2
The animals gathered in a semi-circle around Willow and Tara, who sat side by side on a cushion they had dragged down from the upper shelf. By standing on each other's shoulders, three of the younger animals reached the knob that controlled the brightness of the bedroom light. They set it to a dim glow. It had begun to rain outside soon after Simon had departed, and now falling drops spattered the window panes beside the shelves. Between the mood lighting and weather, Tara thought the perfect atmosphere had been set for the story they planned to tell.
“Before we begin,” she said to the crowd, “I'd like to mention that what you're about to hear isn't just a story.” She shook her head. “No, this really happened. It was originally told to me by Pookums.”
A whisper ran through the audience. Pookums, all the animals knew, had been Simon's first stuffed animal, and it had belonged to his Mother before him. Years earlier, before most of the other animals had been made, Pookums had retired and moved up to a luxury suite in the attic—or so the rumors went. The name carried a lot of weight. Pookums was ageless and had gathered more knowledge than any of the others could fathom. Its stories bordered on legend. The early ideas of Pookums and Simon had laid the groundwork for the later generations of animals. The stories they heard each night, they knew, were often retellings of old Pookums tales.
“This is the story,” Willow chipped in, “of Pookums and the Unstitcher.”
Around the circle, button eyes widened nervously. All of them had heard of the Unstitcher; it was the horrible unknown that lurked in the nightmares of every stuffed animal. If anybody might have known the true legend of the Unstitcher, it would have been Pookums.
“When Pookums was a much younger...uh, Pookums…” Tara faltered. There was still much debate over what type of animal Pookums actually was. When she had met it, and indeed she had, she hadn't been able to identify its species. It had no distinguishing characteristics save for a head and limbs protruding from a roundish torso, and its fur—if it could be called fur at all—was a distant shade from the bright, vibrant colors that surrounded her now.
“...a much younger Pookums,” Willow picked up the story, saving her, “it belonged, as you know, to Momma. In those times humans did not have so many stuffed animals. Momma had only two: Patches, a bear like Tara, here, but with fur you would not even believe...” She took a moment to admire Tara's beautiful baby blue shade. It had been her favorite color as long as she could remember. “...and of course, Pookums itself.”
“Pookums and Patches were inseparable.” Tara continued the story while she idly scratched the tuft of hair between Willow's ears. “Momma refused to play favorites, and she'd take them with her everywhere. Momma's human family traveled a lot, so Pookums and Patches saw a lot more than any of us. They even knew what it was like outside the house!”
Gasps rippled through the crowd. For nearly all of them, thinking about a world outside even the bedroom was fascinating. Some of them knew they had lived on shelves elsewhere, but their memories had begun only when Simon breathed life into them, so they knew of their personal histories only through his stories.
“One fateful night,” Willow whispered, and the audience immediately hushed to listen, “Momma brought Pookums with her when she and her momma had to go to her school, which is where humans learn. Her momma insisted that she bring only one of her animals, and after an agonizing decision Momma picked Pookums to accompany her.”
Tara picked up the story. “When they returned to the house, Momma took Pookums up to her bedroom, where the most grisly sight awaited them. Patches, or what remained of Patches, lay on the bed, torn to itty bitty pieces! Jagged shreds of fur had been sliced apart, the stitches slashed in two. Stuffing covered the bed like snow on the window sill.”
“Patches' eyes were gone,” Willow added. “They were never found.”
A tiny voice issued from the circle of animals. “It…it was the Unstitcher, wasn't it?”
Tara blinked, then scanned the faces carefully. She identified the speaker. “Dawnie! What are you doing?”
The baby kangaroo looked suitably ashamed. “I wanted to hear it, too.”
“But sweetie, you'll have nightmares, and you know how that upsets your tummy.”
“But I
never get a story,” Dawn complained. She presented Tara with a practiced-and-perfected pout.
Buffy heaved a heartfelt sigh and nudged Dawn with her sparkling horn. “Okay, you. Come on, I'll tell you a story. Let's go down to the lower shelf so we're not interfering.”
After they departed, Willow and Tara whispered between each other to remember where they had been in the story before the interruption. “Oh, right,” Willow spoke up, “so Patches was in pieces. Momma ran crying to her momma, carrying two handfuls of the tattered remains. She left poor Pookums alone on the bed amid the scraps and stuffing.”
“Pookums swore it changed everything,” Tara said. “After that, they stopped sharing so much. Momma put Pookums on shelf much higher than our highest, and she only took it down when she traveled. Without Patches, things were never the same. It was only when Momma gave Pookums to Simon that it began to open up, again.”
“Simon wanted to know all about Pookums' adventures with Patches, and Pookums was happy enough to share. They became the best of friends right away, and the rest is history,” Willow finished.
The audience was silent.
Outside the window, several cars passed by the house. Each one rattled the loose window pane.
“But what about the Unstitcher?” one animal asked.
“Yeah, what happened?”
“What was it?”
“Did they ever find out?”
More voices joined in, each demanding resolution.
“That's the scariest part of the story,” Willow told them. “They never discovered exactly what happened.”
“It's true,” Tara agreed. “Not even Pookums knows what the Unstitcher is, or what it looks like. But it’s rumored to be able come and go as it pleases; it can enter the bedroom without anyone even noticing.”
This explanation did not sit well with the animals. Unease settled over them, and they nervously stood and shook the stuffing back into their legs. They spread back out to their favored shelves, and as they departed Willow and Tara shared a knowing smile, for they noticed quite a few of the animals cautiously checking behind their backs every few steps.
They all settled down on the shelves, snuggling up against each other in pairs and piles, and listened to the sounds of the growing storm outside. Tara took Willow's paw in her own and retreated to the upper shelf. She
fwumped down on their favorite cushion and shifted some extra padding to her left side, chuckling as she brushed a few red whiskers from her fur. Rain began to pelt the window in earnest as Willow curled up in her usual spot beneath Tara's arm. Tara listened to the arrhythmic drumming and let it lull her toward slumber.
As the animals fell asleep one by one, a final audience member yawned mightily from his hiding place beneath the bed. His jaw snapped down, teeth clamping together. Pale yellow eyes drifted shut. What a lovely story, he thought. Simba loved happy endings.
3
Downstairs, a grandfather clock chimed quarter past the hour. Which hour, none of the animals knew, for they were dozing peacefully in fuzzy piles on Simon's shelves. Amid the sleeping bodies, one set of button eyes remained wide open, however. Dawn couldn't sleep. For the past three hours she'd been lying against Buffy's flank. Each time she began to drift off, thoughts of the Unstitcher jolted her awake. She knew she shouldn't have listened to that story.
She was tired, and the longer sleep eluded her the more easily her senses played tricks. Shadows flickered at the edges of her vision. It became harder to distinguish normal house sounds from Horrible Unknowns creeping about. Every time a car passed the house, a stream of light would enter the window and cause terrifying shadows to dance about the room. Dawn's overactive imagination morphed the dark patches into scissors-toting ghouls.
“Come on, Dawn,” she whispered to herself. “You know there's not really anything there. It's just light from the window. See?” She forced herself to stare at the window as the next car passed. When it did, the light briefly illuminated a hulking shape just outside the panel of glass. Dawn's heart clenched, and she became lightheaded. A second later she fainted, crumpling back against Buffy with a soft
paff.
~*~
“Mrrgmrn...” Willow shifted restlessly, and her whiskers tickled Tara's arm, which was draped over her head.
Tara stirred. “Nnngh? Wha..?” She blinked several times, letting her eyes adjust to the darkness. “Will, did you say something?” When she received no reply, she shimmied her backside to even out her stuffing, then nestled back into Willow and stroked the fine hairs atop her head.
“Only after you grumble, or the silver…”
Tara chuckled quietly. Willow was talking in her sleep, again.
She nearly jumped from the cushion when a spot of light appeared at the window not two feet from her head.
Willow, she said, only no words escaped her mouth. Something heavy seemed to be caught in her throat. She shook Willow forcefully.
“Hey, wh—” Willow's objection was cut short when Tara's paw
thwumped over her mouth. She stared confusedly at Tara, who pointed with her other paw at the window. Willow saw the light, then. It was an eerie yellow-orange circle, the size of a button, and it cast a pale beam of light into the room. The beam swept back and forth over the bed and other furniture. Willow's gaze flew to the lever atop the window. Unlocked. The window began to slide up.
Willow huddled closer to Tara. “It's coming inside,” she whispered, her voice thin with terror. Tara hugged her tightly. If it was a human, maybe it would ignore them. Willow had realized soon after she arrived at the house that most people ignored the animals unless Simon was making a big deal out of them.
The intruder swung one leg over the windowsill, then the other. Willow peered through the darkness at it. It was a human—a skinny man with harsh features. He carried a light in one hand and a bag in the other.
“What is it?” Tara whispered to her. Willow knew she could see better than Tara, so she described the scene in a hushed voice. First the intruder looked back out the window, left and right. Then he crept to the bedroom door and scanned the hallway. He eased open Simon's dresser and looked through the contents. When he was done, Simon's clothes were a mess. He didn't bother closing the drawers, but moved instead to the closet.
Nothing inside appeared to interest him. He turned and spied the shelf. Willow and Tara held their breath as he ducked down and searched through the lower shelf first, then tackled their own. He roughly shoved Tara out of the way, and she toppled from the cushion to the bedroom floor, where she sprawled out flat. Willow choked back a hiss and remained rigid.
The moment he turned away from the shelves, Willow tiptoed to the edge and peered down at the crumpled heap of Tara. She had landed awkwardly; one of her legs was caught under her body, and the other extended to the side. Her nose was pressed to the floor, and she was motionless.
That's my girl, Willow thought.
Just stay still. It won't even notice you.
The human knelt beside her and flattened himself to the floor, shining his light underneath the bed. Willow heard a snarl, then a fuzzy bolt shot out from one side of the bed toward the door. Simba had made his escape. The human was surprised by the cat, and he leaped backward, his sneaker narrowly missing Tara's head. With a final sweep of the light, the man moved to the doorway, hesitated, then entered the hallway.
“Tara!” Willow called down as loudly as she dared. “Are you all right?”
“Mrrfle,” said Tara.
Willow crouched, then leaped effortlessly to the floor. She padded over to Tara's side and nudged her gently with her forehead. Tara rolled onto her back.
“Just had the wind knocked out of me,” Tara gasped.
Willow helped Tara sit, and the bear pulled her into an embrace. “Oh, Willow. I've never been so frightened. What should we do? It’s still in the house!”
“Don't you worry,” Willow said calmly. “We'll stick together, and we'll be okay. We should get to a phone and call the...uh...the emergency people. Like Momma always tells the babysitters to do.”
“You mean...we have to go out there?” Tara asked, wide-eyed. She looked at the doorway and shivered.
“I’ll go,” Willow said bravely. “I'm not scared of it.”
Tara raised a felt eyebrow.
“What?” Willow asked. Tara pointed at Willow's tail, which had fluffed up to twice its normal volume. “Okay,” she confessed, “maybe a little scared.”
“We'll go together,” Tara decided.
4
“Where did he go?” Tara whispered. She was leaning out just enough so that one button eye could see around the door frame. She edged forward.
A feline head nudged under her legs, and between them Willow's glowing eyes peered down the hallway. “I don't see him. Maybe he's in one of the other bedrooms?”
Tara shuddered. “What if he's in Momma and Dad's room?” she asked. “They could be in danger.”
“Let's get to that phone.” Willow slithered the rest of the way between Tara's legs and darted the length of the hallway with stealthy leaps. She paused atop the stairs, coiled and ready to strike should Tara be noticed.
Together they descended the staircase. Willow nimbly hopped from step to step while Tara eased herself down by sliding backward on her tummy. Several times, she ended up squarely on her rump, and once Willow had to clamp down on her paw to keep her from tumbling down the remaining stairs.
“Sorry,” she apologized, “we're not great climbers.”
“I thought bears were usually
good climbers,” Willow said.
“Uh...well, maybe
I'm not a great climber.”
“Too many cupcakes,” Willow teased.
When they reached the cold tile floor of the downstairs hallway, they paused to consider their route. “Do you remember the way to the kitchen?” Willow asked.
Tara frowned. “Isn't it on the other side of the room with all the chairs?”
Willow peeked into one of the rooms. “Well, there's chairs in here.”
They crept into the room, using the table and chairs as cover. When a shadow fell across the far doorway, they froze in place. “I think he's in the kitchen!” Willow hissed.
Moments later, a band of light swept across the doorway, then it shined directly into their room. Unable to look away, they stared into the terrifying light while clutching each other tightly. Behind it a dark shape moved to the side, and then the figure was gone, its footsteps retreating deeper into the house.
Willow released her breath, then jumped two feet into the air when something tickled the back of her neck. She winced as her arched back collided with the underside of the table. Tara gasped at the sudden motion. When Willow landed, they looked above to see Simba stretching lazily on one of the chairs, his tail hanging off the cushion and swishing from side to side. He seemed utterly unimpressed by Willow's acrobatics. He stood, circled several times, and
fwomped back down on the cushion, presenting them with his better side.
While Willow waited for her nerves, and her fur, to settle, Tara stroked the fine, ruddy hairs atop her head. She chuckled, remembering a time when Willow's fur was a pristine white. One day, Simon had taken her outside and gotten dirt caked in her hair, and Momma had insisted she be run through the laundry. Ever since, Willow's fur had been a stunning shade of red.
The kitchen was empty by the time they finally gathered the courage to press onward. While Tara stood guard at the base of the counter, Willow scouted out the room. She hopped from the floor to a low shelf, then to the counter top.
Tara tried to follow her progress. She craned her neck to look straight up. When Willow's face came into view, nose and whiskers first, it was grinning broadly. “I think I found the phone,” she said. “There’s a thing on the wall up here with lots of buttons on it.”
“Great!” whispered Tara. “Can you use it?”
“I can't quite reach it. I'm going to need your help.”
“Okay.” Tara nodded, then looked around. “Uh, Willow...how am I going to get up there?”
The smile on Willow's face slowly morphed into a frown. “Huh. I hadn't thought of that. I'm...I'm not exactly sure.”
“Well, where's the phone?”
“It's pretty high up on the wall here. I might be able to reach it from your shoulders if you were up here, but...hey! Maybe I could jump out and knock it down to you, then we could use it down there!”
“Be careful.”
While Tara stood underneath, ready to assist in any way she could, Willow stepped up to the very edge of the counter. She hunched her shoulders and contracted her body into a tightly coiled ball. When she leaped, she extended her paws. From underneath, it looked like she was truly flying. Her aim was spot on, and her front paws connected solidly with the phone, jarring it from the cradle. Tara suddenly realized the phone looked rather heavy.
“
Booof!” she coughed when Willow landed less-than-gracefully on her retreating back. They scampered out of the way as the phone plummeted to the floor beside them. It smacked the tiles solidly before springing back up into the air on its cord.
The crash was loud, and they managed to duck behind the counter seconds before the man’s light reappeared in the doorway. His footsteps grew louder, and they heard him whisper, “...the hell?” Willow peeked around the counter just in time to see him put him ear to the receiver for a moment, then hang the phone back up on the wall. He opened several of the nearby drawers, and withdrew a large knife from one.
After one final sweep of the room with his flashlight, the human exited the kitchen and headed back toward the stairs.
“He’s going back upstairs,” Willow said, urgency evident despite her hushed tone, “and he’s got a knife!”
“Momma...but we'll never catch him,” Tara whimpered.
“The phone's back up there.”
“We don’t have time to...oh! Come on, follow me!”
Not wasting any time with questions, Willow tiptoed after the bear, who lead her toward another room. In it was a plush armchair with a matching ottoman, many book-covered shelves, and a strange rectangular contraption. “What's that?” Willow asked.
“See that plastic thing up on the arm of the chair?” Tara instructed. “Can you get up there and push the button with the circle on it? Should be near the top, somewhere.”
“Circle's the round one, right?”
“Yeah. It's red.”
“It's what?”
“Red. The color red.”
Willow blinked confusedly. “What's red?”
“Your fur is red!” Tara's impatience was growing.
“It most certainly is not,” Willow harrumphed. “My fur happens to be gray.”
“Well, it's the circle the same color as your fur. Hurry! I've got to find the other one.”
Willow hopped up to the arm of the chair in two quick leaps, studied the device for a minute, then prodded one of the buttons with her nose. Behind the glass of the strange contraption, moving images of a bikini-clad woman appeared. They changed every few seconds. Willow stared, bewildered.
Tara made a circuit of the room. “Willow! I can't find it! Is there another one of those devices up there on the chair?”
“No, just the...oh, hold on, yeah, it's pushed down next to the cushion, here. Let me just
gnrrgt innt orrt mrrf hnrrrgh wrrf mrr trrf. Arrmrrst...Nrkrr gnnt it! Now what?”
Tara peered at the screen, which now showed some kind of space capsule crashing into a beach. There was a purple circle with a line through it at the bottom left of the image. “Uh...is there a pair of buttons with arrows on them?”
“Arrows...arrows...yep! Arrows.”
“Somewhere near there is a skinny, flat one. Push it.”
“Okay. Here goes!”
A yellow 9 appeared at the top of the screen. “Lower! Lower!” Tara squeaked.
The purple symbol disappeared, and now sound was pouring out of the box. It was a catchy tune, but too soft. “Now the top arrow button!” Tara said.
“Done.”
“Again...hold it down.”
The music got louder and louder, and Willow had to stuff her paws into her ears. “IT'S TOO LOUD,” she complained to Tara, who was also plugging her ears.
“It's perfect,” Tara mouthed back.
She beckoned Willow to hop down, and the two of them huddled under the chair and waited. Moments later they heard heavy footsteps descending the stairs, then the front door swinging open. More footsteps on the stairs. A pair of bare feet appeared in the room. Dad's feet. The television was shut off, and both animals instantly appreciated the silence.
Willow poked her nose out from under the chair to see what was going on. Dad had his back to her, examining the television. He shook his head, and spied her when he turned around. He gathered up Willow in his arms, peered under the chair, and lifted Tara, too. He was breathing heavily, and Willow couldn't remember ever seeing him look so frightened. He squeezed the stuffed animals gently, then headed toward the kitchen.
They sat on the counter while he picked up the phone and dialed for help. Huddled together, fuzzy arms wrapped around each other, they watched as the police came and went, and when they were finally toted back upstairs they knew they'd have an exciting story for the other animals.
~*~
The End
