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piarou-neelix · 7 years

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I want to share a story written by a good friend of mine

Teddy Bear || Original Short Story By Priscilla Kint

I remember the day I was new.

Bought in a commercial toy store with three floors where I was seated next to the pogo sticks and the window decoration stickers for not much more than a day before I was picked up and taken to the counter. I was quite excited, unbothered by the wrapping paper that smothered my mouth or the shop assistant, who unapologetically shoved my leg up to my ear in order to make the package smaller. She was new, like me, so it wasn’t very hard to forgive her.

Hours later, the tearing of paper was followed by a small gasp, and then I saw his face for the first time. It was as new to me as I was to him, and it smiled with the few teeth it had grown. Seeing me brought him joy, that much was clear, but I do wonder whether it would have mattered if I had been some other toy. Would the same excitement have lit up his eyes had I been a wooden miniature train or a painted X-men doll instead? I think so. It wasn’t about me or what I represented – not yet. It was about getting a present and opening it and discovering what was inside. Excitement. A new possession. I wasn’t much more than that.

I remember the day I was playtime.

Hours were not yet filled with school, but there was a time for television, a time for dinner, multiple times for bed, and one horrid, horrid time for bath. I was playtime and we both loved it. I became a knight in shining armour, a peaceful monster that destroyed a city of Lego before helping to build it up again. I was named Jenny, after his favourite aunt who always brought him pieces of fruit that were somehow so much tastier than his mother’s carefully cut up apple slices. I was called Poo, because that was a word that was always followed by giggles and a small smile on his father’s face that we had learnt to spot through the scruff on his cheeks and chin.

He held me, my boneless paws leaning on top of the kitchen table, where I would drink tea that was merely air. He dropped me on the ground when the dragon – a green pillow smudged with that morning’s strawberries – almost defeated me, and he raised me up on his shoulders after I saved the city and became the hero. He ran around the living room, nearly tripping over the folded corner of carpet his mother had warned him about three times already. His roars of laughter found their way into my being like silk threads being sewn into the rims of my heart. I wondered whether it was that way for humans as well, that they could feel more whole, more themselves, as they were being built by others.

I remember the day I was home.

When his mother had other places to be that weren’t by his side – food needed money, and money needed to be earned, but what proper kid would really understand that, anyway? – she handed me to him as a renewed gift. Of course, this was not the day I was new, so he didn’t crack that same surprised smile. Instead he cried. He cried when the car drew to a halt in front of the crèche and the tires squeaked and crunched the gravel. He cried as he took his dinosaur-decorated backpack in his one hand and me in the other. He cried even when Miss Lola, a woman with a youthfulness that didn’t match her age but was wonderfully extraordinary, took his hand and promised him he would have fun that day and all the days to come.

On that first day, he sat on a yellow plastic chair in a corner of the room. He watched the other children play and draw and laugh and fight amongst each other without feeling the slightest urge to join them. I was in his lap, his one hand clutched around my arm, the other on top of my head. It was quite nice, being the only thing in the room that interested him. I was what was familiar. I was what was known. It didn’t matter that I couldn’t be new again. New was not what he needed.

He needed home, if only for a little while. Because the next day, from where I sat, leaning against his backpack with my head tilted to the right, I saw him ask a girl called Alexa whether she wanted to share her tin soldiers with him.

I remember the day I was comfort.

When daddy arrived home from work early with his phone in his hand, the shoulder strap of his leather bag dangling down, dragging over the dusty floor. It was the first time we met Death, and he didn’t understand why Aunt Jenny couldn’t simply visit and give him her pieces of fresh fruit and make his parents smile again.

There was never a real goodbye for him. The funeral was on a school day, and Lola made sure to keep him occupied. He made a puzzle, sixteen pieces, and was proud of himself for finishing the image of a spaceship that seemed to come to life once he’d pressed the final piece in place. Still, he felt lonely at night, when his mother didn’t spent as long reading him a bedtime story. When she didn’t tuck him in as tightly as usual. So he wrapped his arms around me, pressed me to his chest, which was getting broader than I was, and cried his tears into my coat of hair, where they solidified the strings of laughter.

The next morning, when I still tasted salt that now mixed with morning sweat, his father sat at the breakfast table with his head in his hands, nothing but a cup of black coffee in front of him. And his son, my dear human, walked up to him and handed me over. The Dutch word for hug is knuffel, as is the Dutch word for a stuffed toy. Perhaps he saw more similarities between the two than most adults do.

I remember the day I was broken.

It started out as a minor tear at the base of my belly, but quickly grew to a disaster that made me snow all over the house. His mother told him I was old, and I felt another one of my stitches snap as I realised what that might mean. I was not old. I didn’t want to be discarded, exchanged for another new.

But that never happened. He clasped me to his chest, refusing his mother and her calls to let me go. He sat in the corner underneath the ironing board, where he would always make tents with the cleanly washed duvet covers and bedsheets. Hiding in plain sight.

It shouldn’t have worked, but it did. Although I was getting slimmer every day, his mother promised to fix me. She spent an entire evening, her feet up on the couch as she watched three different crime series with similar names and the same fake blood, pricking the tips of her fingers with a needle. She wasn’t very good at sewing, but that didn’t stop her. She’d even bought special thread, metallic, so that, afterwards, there was a shimmering line across my stomach whenever I was out in the sun. A line that was a promise, a quick-fix that was not quite beautiful but beautifully loveable.

Three weeks, it took, before I ruptured once more. There was a puff of stuffing onto the kitchen table, a fight, tears that stuck to his cheeks instead of dripping onto my coat, and then his dad took me away.

It took his grandmother little more than fifteen minutes to fix me up with a thread that matched my chestnut brown and a knot that made me feel confident as my life was in her hands.

I remember the day I was shame.

I’m not sure how it happened, and why it happened so quickly, but I’m pretty sure that Andy was at least partly to blame. He was a short boy in year five that looked like a mouse, with ears as big and protruding teeth. He was good at football, and he always spoke up first in class and made jokes, so all the other boys liked him.

And he told us that only babies carry around stuffed animals.

That evening, my human let his carrots grow cold and his chocolate ice cream grow warm. He did his homework without trying to trick his mother into letting him watch an episode of the Power Rangers. She asked him what was wrong, and he told her that he didn’t need me anymore.

It stung, and I am pretty sure the couch swallowed me ever so slightly as those words travelled around the room.

His mother asked him why, and whether he really meant it, whether he needed to think on it. He sucked his lip and bit the skin around it until it was cherry red. His cheeks and eyes reddened as well, and once more his tears didn’t find a safe haven in my coat.

The following morning I was left at the foot of his bed, where hours felt like centuries when he wasn’t there. His mother came to open the window, and later to close it and make the bed. I could’ve sworn she cast me a pitiful smile that I wasn’t sure I liked.

Once he returned from school, he rushed up the stairs, the thomp-thomp of his feet muffled by the carpet on the steps, and let himself fall onto the bed, onto me, as he hugged me fiercely. He told me he wouldn’t leave me alone again. He told me he’d missed me. He told me he didn’t mind being a baby, as long as the other boys wouldn’t see.

From then on, I travelled with him in the bottom of his backpack, where his bottle of milk and his apple and his lunch box took turns flattening my legs and creasing my ears.

I remember the day I was forgotten.

When the bedroom cupboard and the LEGO helicopters were exchanged for a desk with a lamp too bright for sleeping. There had been a lot of nerves in the weeks before, and he’d held me close every night. He wondered about the new friends he’d make, the different classrooms he’d be seeing, all in one day. He was afraid he’d end up taking the bus alone, since most of his friends would go to other schools. I comforted him as best I could – and then I was stuffed in the back of a drawer. The words he told his mother when she asked him where I was were ‘I don’t need it anymore’.

Nights were spent alone, by him and by me. He changed his breakfast from bread to cereal. He ate dinner someplace else every other day. His voice deepened, and for the first time I felt my biggest fear wasn’t that I was going to grow old, but that he was going to grow up. I could handle needle and thread and the tumbling round and round in the washing machine. But if he could not find the time – would not find the time – to cuddle me and miss me and think of me, then I had no purpose.

My coat became greyer and dirtier more quickly than it used to when I shared his bed. A spider passed me by once, not minding me while it spun its web and waited and waited. Much like I did. I quickly feared that the chance of a fly finding its way into that drawer was as equally slim as him opening it and taking me out. He was done with me. He was a growing boy who did his history and math homework – or didn’t – and considered buying coins to be able to spend more time on that week’s most popular app.

I barely slept, even though I did little other than rest in the back of that drawer. What kept me awake was the fear that I was being selfish. Was it egocentric, pathetic, to think it unfair that my life was over while his was changing and expanding so much without me?

I remember the day I was a memory.

A meek morning sun that caught my eye as the drawer opened. A small intake of breath, and I was being pulled out by my hind paw. Remember this one, his mother asked with a smile in her voice. He stood next to her, taller than she was, although I didn’t recall having seen that happen. He smiled a sad happy smile, his hand almost completely enclosing my belly, and placed me in a cardboard box.

His room at college was a small one, but there was a place for me on the top shelf of his bookcase, where my feet dangled just above the works of Derrida and Said. I leaned against his favourite science-fiction novels, sitting back leisurely as I took my time taking in the double bed – black frame with red covers – and the desk that was flooded with printed articles covered in orange and yellow marker. I smiled as I realised that the pots and pans in his small kitchen spent more time being dirty in the sink than being clean in the cupboard.

And I liked her the moment she entered.

She had long dark blonde hair that was up in a bun. Occasionally, it spilled her locks like a waterfall. There were dimples in her cheeks that showed more clearly when she laughed, which was nearly every second she spent with him. She wore a sweater – his sweater? – when she visited the first time. It took her less than five minutes to notice me, as he was doing his best to calculate the right amount of pasta for two.

What’s that, she asked. He turned, his glasses fogged up from the cooking water on the stove. He’s a childhood toy, he told her. She nodded, then tilted her head. He’s adorable.

I felt elated. I enjoyed being taken off the plank and looked at for real for the first time in years. I liked being part of his life again, especially since I suspected that that particular part of it was going to become quite important quite quickly. But the best thing of all was that he had seen me as a ‘he’ again after years of being thrown aside as an ‘it’.

Of all those days I do remember, I don’t quite remember the day I was love.

Perhaps it is my faulty memory or my cotton brain. Still, it must’ve been there, that day. It must have.

Could it have been one of the moments he crushed me in his hugs until I could hear my fibres groan? Or one of those times when the family would go out for the day and he had thought he’d packed me into his bag, but hadn’t, and then his mother would turn the car around to pick me up? Perhaps it was the day he put me on that top shelf, seeing some worth in me when I thought he never would again.

Or maybe – just maybe – it didn’t matter. Maybe it was a whole life of small moments that spelled it out in a language like that of the Ents he used to be such a fan of; slow, all-encompassing, and simple.

By Priscilla Kint

#love #short story #coming of age #writing

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nemesisbinxartifactseries · 5 years

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Artifact Series P

Paavo Nurmi’s Stopwatch

Pablo Escobar's Speedboat

Pablo Fanque's Riding Boots

Pablo Picasso's Chisel

Pablo Picasso's Paint Brush

Pacal the Great's Sarcophagus

Pachycrocuta Jawbone *

Paddy Barrie’s Stove and Brushes

Paddy Roy Bate's Nautical Compass

Padlock Charm

Padlock from Alcatraz

Painless Parker’s Tooth Necklace

Paintbrush from a Radium Watch Factory

Paintings from Island Farm

Pair of Fertility Statues

Pamela L. Traver's Umbrella

Pancho Villa's Boots *

Pandora's Box *

Pan Twardowski's Mirror

Pappus of Alexandria’s Hexagon

Paracelsus' Medicine Bag

Paragon 3-D Glasses

Paris' Bow

Parmenides of Elea's Tunic

Paschal Beverly Randolph's Crystal Ball

Past-Seeing Alarm Clock

Patient 16 (Athens Asylum)'s Toy Car

Patsy Ann Campbell's Tanning Bed

Patty Hearst's M1 Carbine

Patrick Bohan’s Locker

Patrick Henry's Letter Opener

Patrick Sherrill's Letter Bag

Patrick Skene Catling's Divider

Patrick Suskind's Bottle of Perfume

Paul Bunyan Fiberglass Statue

Paul Bunyan's Axe *

Paul Broca's Surgical Scissors

Paul Charles Dozsa's Chopsticks

Paul Dukas’ Broom

Paul Ekman's Nesting Dolls

Paul-Émile Botta's Alabaster Bas-Reliefs

Paul McNulty's Piano Tuning Hammer

Paul Morphy's Chess Piece

Paul Reubens' Rouge

Paul Revere's Lantern *

Paul Rusesabagina's Telephone

Paul Tibbet's Binoculars *

Paul Vasquez's Camera

Paul W. Fairman's Office Chair

Paving Stone from Tiananmen Square

Pax's Cornucopia

P-body Android Test Subject

'Peace for Our Time' from "Heil Honey I'm Home!"

Pearl Harbor Tool Box

Pearl Hart's Stolen Stagecoach

Pearl of Wisdom *

The Pearl of the World

Pedro Álvares Cabral's Naval Map

Pedro Menéndez de Avilés’ Patache

Pellegrino Ernetti's Chronovisor

Penetrating Cake Tester

Penguin's Hat and Umbrella *

Penthesilea's Spear

Pepsi Bottle and Cap

Perceval Camper Carbon Fiber Knife

Percival's Grail Sword

Percy Bysshe Shelley's Note to his Wife

Percy Fawcett's Machete

Percy Spencer's Microwave Oven

Perdita's Fardel

Père Fouettard's Whip

Perk-a-Cola Machines

Perpetually Burning Torch

Perry Como's Gold Record *

Persephone's Pomegranate Seeds

Persian Amulet

Persian Spear

Perun's Axe

Pete Conrad's Space Boots

Peter Carl Faberge's Caliper

Peter III of Russia's Toy Soldiers

Peter Abelard's Letter Stamp

Peter Francisco’s Cannon

Peter Henlein's Nuremberg Egg *

Peter Kollwitz’s Boots

Peter Kropotkin's Bread Knife

Peter Kurten's Skeleton Key

Peter Laurie's Eyeglasses

Peter Lawford's Shot Glass

Peter Minuit’s Wampum

Peter Pan's Tunic

Peter Piper's Jar of Pickled Peppers

Peter Shellem's Paper Weight

Peter Stumpp's Wolf Skin

Peter Stuyvesant’s Pegleg

Peter Sutcliffe's Vehicle Registration Plate

Peter the Great's Cape

Peter the Hermit’s Pilgrim Badge

Peter Tripp’s Glass Booth

Peter Wright's Earpiece

Peterson's Armored Personnel Carrier

Phan Đình Phùng's Mandarin Square

Phar Lap’s Blinders

Pharaoh Pen-abw's Twin Caskets

Phineas Gage's Tamping Iron

Phidias' Hammer and Chisel

Phil Connor's Radio Alarm Clock

Philibert Aspairt's Chartreuse-Glass Googles *

Philip Astley's Circus Tent

Philip Griebel's Original Garden Gnome

Philipe Pinel's Quill Pen

Philip K. Dick's I Ching

Philip K. Dick's Journal

Philip Reid’s Block and Tackle

Philip Van Doren Stern's Upholstery Brush *

Philosopher's Stone *

Philo Farnsworth's Alpha-Wave Form Sender *

Phoebe Snetsinger's Binoculars

Phoenician Idol

Phone Booth from the Mojave Desert

The Phoenix *

Phoenix Wright's Magatama

Pickens County Courthouse Window

Pickled Dragon

Piece of Halley's Comet *

Piece of the Antikythera Mechanism

Pieces of Yolanda Saldivar's Gun

Pied Piper's Flute *

Pier Gerlofs Donia's Compass

Pier Giorgio Perotto's Programma 101

Pierre-Auguste Renoir's Easel *

Pierre-Auguste Renoir's Two Girls Playing the Piano *

Pierre Batcheff's Bicycle

Pierre Charles L'Enfant's Compass

Pierre Desloges' Dining Table

Pierre Fauchard’s Needle Nose Pliers

Pierre-Joseph Desault’s Culottes

Pierre le Grand's Galleons

Pierre Benjamin Montuex's Conductor Baton

Pierre-Simon Laplace's Telescope (canon)

Pike Carousel Horse

Pike River Mine Hardhat

Pilot Episode of 'America's Funniest Home Videos'

Piltdown Man Skull

Pimp Cane

Pink Floyd's Remaster of 'Another Brick in the Wall'

The Pink Panther

Pinkamena's Cupcake Tin

Pinto Colvig's Clown Shoes and Nose

Pipe from the Children’s Crusades

Pipe Organ from Diana's Funeral

Piri Reis Map

Pistol from the USS Maine

Pitch from Tutankhamun’s Tomb

The Pius Device *

Placido Domingo's Strawbery Handkerchief

Plaek Phibunsongkhram’s Niello Scarf Clip

Plane Sabotaging Oil Can

Plaque from the Kunta Kinte Memorial

Plastic Mannequin Arm

Platinum Rings from Poland’s Wedding to the Sea

Plato's Tablets *

Plinko Board & Chips

Pliny the Elder’s Sea Chart

Pliny the Elder's Scroll *

Pluto's Toga

Pocketknife from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Art Theft

Podgórski Sisters' Cottage

Poe Toaster's Roses and Cognac

Poké Ball

Poker Alice's Playing Cards

Police Car from the MOVE Bombing

Police Sketch Artist Sketchpad

Pol Pot's Copy of "The Communist Manifesto"

Pol Pot's Punji Sticks

'Polybius' Arcade Cabinet

Polybius' Scytale

Polycrates’ Ring

Polonus Vorstius' Wine

Pompeii Bread

Pompeii Amphora *

Pompeii Pithos

Pompey the Great's Shield

Pony Express Mail Bag

Pontiac Firebird Trans Am 1976

Pont-Saint-Esprit Bread Knife

Pop-Down Book

Pope Clement VI’s Papal Bulls

Pope Clement VII’s Zucchetto

Pope John Paul II's Assassination Bullet

Pope John Paul II's Papal Tiara

Pope Leo XIII's Rosary

Pope Urban II's Stole Vestment

Poppa Neutrino's Oar

Portal Gun

Portobello Pin-Cushion

Portrait of Katherine FitzGerald, Countess of Desmond

Portraits Used in The Original Production of Ruddigore

Porygon Statue

Poseidon's Conch

Post-It Notes from the Lennon Wall

Potatoes from the Great Irish Famine

Prada Mannequins

Predatory 1950's Refrigerator

Prehistoric Plant Pollen *

Preston Brooks' Cane

Preserved Apple Pie

Preserved Hardtack from the Civil War

Preserved Head of Medusa

Preserved Shark Fin

Prester John's Silver Grail

Preston Brooks' Cane

Primo Levi's Scarf *

Primordial Tar from Pitch Lake, Trinidad *

Prince Hussain's Flying Carpet *

Princes in the Tower's Red Rose Petal

Prince's Keyboard

Printing Press Handle from Ettela'at Newspaper Printing Press

Primo di Castello’s Siege Engine

Priscilla Dunstan's Playskool Tape Recorder

Private John Williams' Diver Helmet *

Prize Generating Cracker Jack Box

Procrustean Bed *

Professor Layton's Hat

Prokop Diviš' Cross

Prop Bomb from the Batman Series

Protective Safe Deposit Box

Prototype NERF Maverick

The Proverbial Apple

Prudence Laverlong's China Dolls *

Pryderi's Golden Bowl

PS3 Wireless Controller

Psychic Penny

Psy's Tuxedo Jacket

P.T. Barnum's Spinning Top *

P.T. Barnum's Top Hat & Walking Stick

P. T. Selbit's Box and Saw

P. T. Selbit's Cheese Wheel

Ptolemy's Refracting Mirror Lens

Ptolemy XII Auletes' Ankh Charm

Puckle Gun

Pulley Block form the Mary Celeste *

Pupa the Haunted Doll

Puyi’s Headdress

Pwyll's Bag

Pykrete Destroyer

Pyotr Kapitsa’s Turbine

Pyotr Potemkin’s and Frederick the Third's Beds

Pyotr Tchaikovsky's Music Box

Pyrrhus of Epirus' Helmet

Pytheas’ Tin Ingots

Pythia's Tripod

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