Chapter Text
Slappy couldn’t stand the thought of being alone.
He despised the thought. It made his limbs stiff and sent a chill through his nonexistent spine. He was a ventriloquist dummy. Ventriloquist dummies weren’t meant to be alone. Not meant to be a solo act. Naturally, Slappy would hate being alone. No, hate was the wrong word. He didn’t hate being alone.
He was scared of being alone.
The puppet always joked about how he was only scared of fire and termites. But, in truth, he wasn’t scared of either of those things.
He was scared of being alone. Terrified even.
Being inside that manuscript was the worst kind of torture. Surrounded by darkness, surrounded by silence. Nothing but darkness and silence for nearly ten years. It nearly drove the dummy mad. He could see the world outside. It was bright, full of life and sound. Something that Slappy so desperately craved. He reached out, his wooden fingers coming within mere inches from freedom, only to find that he couldn’t move further. He was trapped. Stuck in this limbo between bright light and endless dark, between overwhelming noise and deafening silence.
What had he done to deserve such horrid treatment? Stine his creator, his friend, had put him here. Put him in a place he knew the puppet hated more than anywhere. The moment he heard the lock click open, Slappy had been terrified. He ran, he fought his creator, desperation making itself evident in his movements and the harshness of his voice. Stine kept insisting that this was what was best. What he had to do to keep everyone safe. As much as the puppet protested, the manuscript continued to pull him inside, swallowing him into the abyss that he despised so much.
“I’m sorry.”
Slappy didn’t believe the writer's apology was genuine. If it were, he wouldn’t be here now. Trapped. Stuck inside another manuscript. Only this time he was far from alone.
Though, in all honesty, he preferred being alone to being cramped between a mass of graveyard ghouls and a pile of lawn gnomes. At least when he was alone he could hear his own thoughts. Between the werewolf, zombies and abominable snowman’s incessant howling and the nonstop chatter of monsters who could speak in coherent sentences, Slappy was considering sawing off his own ears and burning them like he did with the old manuscripts. Being stuck in this new manuscript with his monster accomplices was both a relief, and a curse. He wasn’t alone, but at the same time, he would’ve rather been in the company of someone who he could have a decent conversation with. Listening to Professor Shock’s angry scientific ramblings or listening to the ghost inside the Haunted Car talk about how evil she was, was beginning to wear on the puppet.
As much as Slappy hated to admit it, he missed Stine.
He missed his creator. He missed having long, thoughtful conversations about writing techniques and magical theory. He missed sitting on Stine’s desk acting out scenes so the author could find the perfect adjectives to describe what was happening. He missed performing tricks with the magical abilities given to him by his creator. Even though Stine was the one who gave him these powers, he was always amazed to see Slappy teleport across the room, or telekinetically move the writer's pen without lifting a wooden finger. He missed helping Stine come up with rude insults and jokes to write into his books. He still remembered the writer’s laugh whenever he would suggest a new joke. Slappy was the only monster who could make Stine laugh like that.
What went wrong?
Slappy remembered the day it all began to go downhill. The day when the bullies in Stine’s neighborhood caught the writer outside on a rare summer day when the pollen wasn’t so unbearable. Stine had thought it would be a good idea to go for a quick walk as he was suffering from bad writers block that day and sitting in front of a blank piece of paper wasn’t helping. They teased him, shoved flowers in his face, called him horrible names and pushed him around. Stine begged for them to stop, but between his constant sneezing and the next hard shove he barely got a sound out. Slappy had been watching from the window of the writer’s bedroom, having been told to stay inside and out of sight. He seethed with anger, gripping the window sill so hard he was surprised it didn’t crack under the pressure of his hands. He rushed downstairs, formulating a plan as he reached the front door which was wide open.
“Wasn’t bad enough that you had to be a total nerd,” One of the bullies, a girl with long black hair, grabbed Slappy who was sitting still on the front porch steps. Stine froze with fear, for both the bully and the puppet.
“You play with dummies now too, Stine?” The girl held Slappy up by the arm, his other three limbs dangling lifelessly under his blocky wooden body. The other kids laughed and continued to shove the writer around. Slappy blinked his glassy brown eyes and raised his head.
“Who are you calling a dummy, dummy?” Slappy’s wooden mouth clicked as he spoke. “I think you should leave him alone before you get hurt.”
The bully looked shocked for only a second before laughing.
“You have a remote in here, Stine? Very funny.” She turned the puppet around, inspecting his head and sticking a finger inside his mouth.
Stine heard the snap of a wooden jaw and the vile sound of cracking bones. The girl screamed as Slappy brought his wooden teeth down on her finger, crushing the bone in his jaw. She yanked and swung the dummy in a panicked attempt to get him to let go. His limbs flailed but his jaw remained locked around her finger, which was beginning to visibly swell and turn an ugly shade of purple. Two of the other kids, twins, ran away quickly. The other three attempted to help the girl pry the dummy off her finger.
“STINE GET IT OFF!” She shrieked. Stine grabbed Slappy’s waist and pulled.
“Slappy stop it! Let her go!” Stine’s eyes began to water, not only from allergies but from tears. Slappy unlocked his jaw with a click and released his grip on the girl's finger. She cradled the swollen purple appendage in her other hand. A small stream of blood trickled down her arm.
“I-I don’t know how you did that, Stine. B-But I’ll get you back!” She yelled as she ran away with the other kids down the street. Stine could feel Slappy struggling in his grip. He noticed the small amount of blood staining the wood around Slappy’s mouth. His hands tightened around the puppet’s waist as he quickly ran inside and upstairs to his room. The writer dropped Slappy on the floor as he ran to close his curtains and lock his bedroom door.
“Are you even listening to me?!” Stine only now realized that Slappy had been talking to him. The writer sat down in his desk chair, running his hands through his short brown hair and wiping the sweat from his forehead.
“Slappy, I told you to stay inside.” Slappy stopped rambling, seeing now that Stine was on the verge of tears. The puppet put his hand on his creator's leg.
“They were hurting you. I couldn’t just sit there! Isn’t that why you made me?” Slappy was confused. He hadn’t done anything wrong. He was just doing what he was made for. That was why Stine wrote about him, to get back at those bullies for everything they had done to him. Slappy recognized the girl with the long black hair, Stine had described her perfectly. Amy Kramer.
“I didn’t make you to break people’s fingers! It’s not supposed to be real! None of it is supposed to be real!” Stine gripped his hair in his fists.
“You’re not real!”
Those words hurt Slappy more than any other scolding the writer had given him that day. If he wasn’t real then why was he here? If he wasn’t real, then why was Stine here talking to him, chastising him like a parent would their child. If he wasn’t real, he wouldn’t be able to hear Stine yelling at him. He wouldn’t be able to see Stine’s expression of exasperation.
If he wasn’t real, he wouldn’t be able to feel that feeling of dread boiling in his nonexistent gut.
The writer and the puppet argued for nearly an hour, with Stine telling Slappy that he couldn’t go around breaking peoples fingers, and Slappy insisting that he was acting in self defense on his creators behalf. Slappy had heard Stine raise his voice before to yell at bullies or even his mother sometimes. But this was the first time the harsh comments were directed at him, and as much as he didn’t want to admit it, he was afraid. That was the first time he had truly been scared.
But now the feeling had become much more frequent.
The puppet growled in frustration as he felt the elbow of a ghoul dig into his side. A gross rotting hand placed itself on his head and pushed, supposedly trying to get a better angle in the pile. Slappy considered pushing back against the hands but the thought was short lived as he remembered what happened last time he started a fight with the graveyard ghouls.
“Stop pushing me!” He demanded, his eyebrows moving downward into an angry expression. The ghouls moaned and groaned as they moved their hands away from him. Slappy huffed as he straightened his bowtie and tugged on the lapels of his jacket to remove the creases from his suit.
“Finally you stupid ghouls can follow orders.” Slappy couldn’t help the insult as he scooted over to make some space between himself and the squirming mass of rotting flesh. Squirming his way through the crowd of monsters, he finally made it to the Haunted Car, revving its engine tiredly. The puppet climbed inside through the open window, his magic powers being rendered useless inside the pages of the manuscript. He sat in the driver's seat, leaning against the worn black leather. He felt a presence beside him.
“Becky, I’m not in the mood today.” He groaned as the ghost moved her hands towards the air conditioning switch on the dashboard. Her rotting face twisted into a frown. The engine of the car revved.
“No Becky!” Slappy snapped. He rubbed the bridge of his nose with his wooden fingers, the scraping sound of wood on wood filling the car. Becky reached her hand out toward the puppet, her rotting green flesh nearly falling off the yellowing bone.
“I said no! What don’t you understand you stupid kid!” Slappy didn’t mean for the comment to be so harsh, but these monsters were getting on his last nerve. Becky pulled her hand back. She pouted and huffed, slumping down in the passenger's seat of the car. Slappy wondered how ventriloquist dummies could even get headaches.
Stine rubbed his temples as he laid in bed. It was nearly eleven at night and the author had been woken up by a terrible headache. He had been debating whether to go downstairs and grab a pain pill for about fifteen minutes. The warm embrace of his pillows begged him to stay in bed, but the throbbing in his forehead and temples constantly reminded him of the Advil waiting in the medicine cabinet in the kitchen.
Reluctantly, Stine sat up and left the warmth of his pillows and quilted blankets. He left his room and began to walk down the hallway towards the staircase.
He stopped when he heard the noise coming from his study.
He turned his head towards the closed doors, the thought of relieving his pain suddenly the last thing on his mind. He turned on his heel and slowly stepped towards the study doors, listening for the noise again. He didn’t have to wait long before the rattling happened again, the single manuscript on his bookshelf moving ever so slightly. Stine quickly grabbed the manuscript off the shelf and inspected it, turning it over in his hands. The title ‘Slappy’s Revenge’ was written on the white label in crude sharpie.
“... Slappy.” The writer barely managed to utter the name of his creation when the book rattled again, the golden lock making a small clinking sound. His fingers instinctively gripped the book tighter.
“Slappy… I wish I could talk to you.” The author sighed and placed the book back on the shelf, running his hand over the leather cover again. His headache mysteriously gone, Stine sat in his chair and stared at the book on the shelf, the golden lock tantalizing, almost begging him to unlock it.
“No…” Stine said to no one in particular as he got up out of his study chair, the energy and jitter in his legs not quite gone. He rubbed the bridge of his nose and cleaned his glasses on his pajama shirt.
The book rattled again. Stine forced himself to look away.
“Come on Robert, this is crazy.” The author tried to convince himself that this thought was a bad one. A bad idea. An awful idea that should be pushed back into the darkest recesses of his mind never to be thought of again.
But his mind did think about it. He thought about releasing Slappy. The thought was quickly and naturally followed by the events that happened nearly a year ago. The sickening sound of his fingers being broken under the cover of the typewriter being pressed down on by the puppets ungodly strength, Slappy’s insane laughter while being drop kicked like a football and sucked into the inky hell he hated so much. Stine held his hands to his chest, curling his fingers around the fabric of his shirt. It hurt to think about it, to think about what Slappy had said and what he’d done. He remembered being swallowed by the blob monster, seeing the insane look in his creations' glassy brown eyes as he watched his creator struggle.
“Slappy.” Stine opened his typewriter, which was sitting on his desk. After the invisible boy had escaped, Stine thought it best to keep his typewriter instead of putting it on display in the highschool. But now the author half wished his typewriter wasn’t here in front of him, open and ready to write the next best seller. Typing paper sat in the desk drawer to the left, prim and crisp, ready to be filled with the newest addition to the Goosebumps family.
“I cannot believe I’m doing this.” Stine quickly opened the minifridge under his desk and pulled out a small can of diet Coca Cola. Hannah always made fun of him for liking what she called “the gross soda”.
Stine pulled out a sheet of paper and placed it neatly into the roller of the typewriter. The familiar sounds and mechanics of the outdated machine had become muscle memory to him over the years. This typewriter held so many memories within it’s keys, so many demons, inner demons as well as actual ones. This was the author's first, and only, writing device besides the small notebook he kept with him to jot down ideas. Hannah tried to convince him to buy a new laptop so he could write stories without risking them coming to life. But as much as he wanted to move on from that darn Smith Corona, he could never quite get used to the sound of computer keys the way he had gotten used to the loud clicking of the typewriter keys.
“This is idiotic.” He continued mumbling to himself as he cracked open the can of soda and took a small sip. Staring at the blank page in front of him, glancing over at the closed rattling book every now and then, the author began to write. He spent nearly four hours concocting yet another horror story, filling the blank pages in front of him with terrifying images and scenes that even his long time editors would’ve grimaced at the thought of. It was another Night of The Living Dummy story. Stine’s fingers ached as he typed the final words of the final paragraph of the final chapter, the ever present carpal tunnel coming back to plague him.
“I hope you appreciate all I’m going through for you, Slappy.” Stine quickly placed the pages inside a fresh manuscript cover. Taking a sharpie out from a small pen holder on his desk, he quickly scribbled a title, “Night of The Living Dummy 4: Slappy’s Return”.
The author set the new book down on his desk, next to the rattling manuscript titled “Slappy’s Revenge”. Stine cracked his knuckles and sighed in relief that the pain in his hands was beginning to dissipate. Looking at the clock he saw the time: 3:34 am. He should’ve been in bed hours ago. He should’ve gotten the pain pills for his headache and crawled back under the safety of his quilted blankets, where no monster could ever reach him. But here he was, staring down at his two newest books, contemplating the morality of his next choice. Stine could feel Slappy’s rage pouring from the manuscript like smoke from a witch's cauldron. He took off his glasses and cleaned them on his pajama shirt, placing them delicately back on his face he spoke softly.
“I’m gonna let you out now…”