Learns-A-Lot -A TG story-

For a three bedroom house in the middle of a packed suburb on Halloween night, 318 Plymouth Lane was eerily quiet.

Not that Joshua noticed this.  His parents had taken Trisha out trick-or-treating in her princess costume while he, at the bold age of 13, was allowed out until 9pm with his friends.

It was 7:30 and he and his friends had run out of shaving cream, eggs and toilet paper. His mother being the prodigious bargain shopper, he had been the one elected by his friends to go home and raid the stockpiles of extras that his mother had surely acquired.

His first stop had been the basement where two 36-packs of toilet paper yielded him a ten roll bounty he was sure would not be noticed as it was on the back of the shelves in the laundry room.

Clomping back up the basement stairs to the kitchen in his black boots and skeleton costume, he put the rolls of paper onto the table in the kitchen and found plastic grocery bags in broom closet to put the rolls in.

His mother didn't keep extra eggs, but he knew there would be a stock pile of shaving cream, purchased on sale, in the linen closet upstairs.  One foot the first riser to head upstairs, Joshua stopped as he thought he heard something.  He paused to listen.

"Trish-a."

Joshua heard the tiny voice float down from upstairs and it took him a moment recognize the voice of Trisha's Baby-Learns-A-Lot doll.  The memory chip learned words Trisha said to the doll often.  

"Josh-u-a"

Joshua sighed at the thought of having that doll repeat his name until the batteries ran out.  He hurried up the stairs to the linen closet.

"Jackpot," He said to quietly to himself.  There were ten cans of shaving cream in the closet and he was sure they wouldn't notice four missing.  He loaded them into the grocery bags thinking about how they had used two whole cans on Janelle and Jodelle from science class who had gone trick-or-treating as twin Pikachus.  He smiled at how they had creamed, egged and toilet papered the three kids who were the only boys in the middle school chorus after they made them surrender their candy.

"Jack-pot Josh-u-a."

He whirled on the open door to Trisha's room, but saw very little in the dim light.  He hit the hall light switch, and the 60-watt bulb in the frosted fixture overhead threw enough light onto Trisha's pink carpeting to show that Learns-A-Lot was not standing there looking at him.

He laughed a little as part of him started to think that maybe one of the guys was playing a joke on him, but they couldn't have gotten into the house without him knowing.

"Josh-u-a. Trish-a."

He stepped into Trisha's room and surveyed it with the light from the hall.  Her room was as it always seemed to him: Pink carpeting with pink wallpaper that had little tiny white flowers on it and white molding all around the edges.  Her furniture was his mother's childhood furniture that his dad had refinished in white and repainted the small detail work on it in gold-leaf.   Spilling out of the almost-closed closet door were dress-up clothes that she played with, and her bed, bookshelves, nightstand and dresser top were all covered in dolls.  Baby-Learns-A-Lot was on the bed, resting against a teddy bear, facing the doorway.

One of her little plastic eyes that were counter-weighted to rotate closed when you put her down to sleep seemed to wink at him slowly from the bed.

"Jack-pot Josh-u-a"

Part of him wanted to be creeped out, but he figured after four years of Trisha dragging the doll almost everywhere that the eyes probably didn't work right anymore.

"Josh-u-a.  Love me."

He stepped to the bed and picked up Learns-A-Lot.  He flipped her over and opened the battery cover.  There were two double A batteries in the compartment which he picked out with a fingernail and then closed the plastic cover.  He flipped the doll back over and was going to put her back where he found her.

"Josh-u-a learns-a-lot."

He dropped the batteries first, the doll second.  When Baby-Learns-A-Lot hit the floor, the hall light blinked out.

His heart now pounding, he turned to run toward the doorway but one booted foot landed squarely on a battery and it rolled just enough to throw him off balance.  He put his hands out to grab something and caught part of the bookshelf.  For a second he thought he had a chance, but then the bookshelf came with him down to the floor, knocking the wind out of him as it landed on his back.

Trying to regain air with a bookcase on him and being surrounded by an army of stuffed animals and dolls was impossible.  Joshua felt nothing but light-headed: his heart struggling to survive in his chest, his back on fire from where the shelves were pinning him to the floor.

"Josh-u-a learns-a-lot," filtered through everything piled on top of him.  He was starting to regain some air, but not enough to keep his head from swimming.

"Josh-u-a.  Trish-a."  The doll voice was different, but still a doll voice and closer to him.  He struggled to remember if Trisha had another talking doll.  He still felt dizzy, but he was sure that things around him were moving.  

"Josh-u-a learns-a-lot."  He was sure that Baby-Learns-A-Lot was now closer to him, and he was convinced the dolls around him were moving and starting to surround his body, pushing against him and trying to burrow into him.

"Jack-pot Josh-u-a," came a third doll voice somewhere down by his legs.  The panic was back as he was sure he felt the dolls under his clothes and moving all over him.  The lightheadedness strengthened and he felt a tingling in his arms, his legs and even the tip of his nose.

"Josh-u-a. Trish-a."
"Josh-u-a learns-a-lot."
"Josh-u-a. Trish-a."
"Jack-pot Josh-u-a."
"Josh-u-a. Trish-a."

His head felt funny, and now he was convinced that all the dolls were now talking as they nuzzled him into some sort of plushy, stuffed cocoon.  

"Josh-u-a. Trish-a."
"Josh-u-a learns-a-lot."

His eyes were closing and the pressure of the bookshelf seemed further away from his consciousness and he began to close his eyes.  He yearned for the oxygen to regain control of himself.

"Josh-u-a. Trish-a."
"Josh-u-a learns-a-lot."
"Josh-u-a. Trish-a."

There was no pressure any more, no cocoon, just a darkness behind his eyes filled with voices.

"Josh-u-a. Trish-a."
"Josh-u-a. Trish-a."
"Josh-u-a learns-a-lot."
"Josh-u-a. Trish-a."
"Josh-u-a. Trish-a."
"Jack-pot Josh-u-a."
"Josh-u-a. Trish-a."
"Josh-u-a. Trish-a."
"Josh-u-a. Trish-a."

The hall light flicked on, and Joshua found himself awake, and not under a book shelf, on the pink carpeted floor and hearing only the sounds of someone coming in the front door at the bottom of the stairs.

"Anybody home?"  His mom's voice rang up the stairwell.  Joshua bolted out of Trisha's room and made it halfway down the stairs before several things stopped him dead in his tracks.

His mother poked her head into the stairway from the doorway to kitchen, "Oh, sweetie, did some boys shaving cream you and your friends?  You three looked so cute in your matching Pikachu outfits.  Are Janelle and Jodelle here with you?"

Standing at the base of stairs, in front of the plate glass storm door, in a little skeleton costume, was a six year old Joshua holding a plastic pumpkin loaded to the gills with candy.

In the plate glass, Joshua noticed himself, dressed in a shaving cream covered Pikachu outfit, with an older Trisha's long dark tresses and blue eyes staring out from under the Pikachu hood.

Through the plate glass he saw Janelle and Jodelle standing outside, halfway up the brick walkway, waving at him.

He took two deep breaths.  

He screamed.  

The girls laughed and pointed.

Little Joshua dropped his pumpkin and started to cry.