Chapter Text
The silence at Home Sweet Home had never been so heavy.
Eleven-year-old Elijah Reeves, sitting on the edge of the lower bunk, watched the shadows dance across the claw-marked walls. The lingering scent of red smoke still hung in the air—not enough to put them to sleep, just enough to make them lethargic, complacent. All around, twenty-three other orphans waited, some clutching pillows, others staring into the void with eyes that had seen far too much for children.
The Hour of Joy had ended three days ago. Three days since the screams had stopped. Three days since the staff had disappeared. Three days since their world had shrunk to the sky-blue walls of that underground orphanage.
“They’re cleaning up out there,” whispered Sarah, eight years old, clutching a faded teddy bear. “I heard them. They’re… dragging things.”
Elijah didn’t answer. He knew what Sarah meant. Everyone did. The silence had a different weight when it carried the echo of wet footsteps, of heavy dragging, of something being deposited in the depths.
The door creaked.
Eight figures entered. Elijah recognized them from the statues in the center of Playcare, from the cartoons that aired on Saturday mornings, from the days when the children played with each of them, ate beside them—some even had stuffed animals on their beds, drawings in worn notebooks made with broken crayons. But those versions were... bigger. Disproportionate. Alive in a way that flesh shouldn’t be.
DogDay led the way. The yellow dog, with its sun pendant, maintained the posture Elijah associated with the counselors—those who tried to look confident before taking them to “special sessions.” But there was something broken in the way it moved. A mechanical stiffness. Memories of human muscles struggling against plastic bones.
"Kids." DogDay’s voice came out distorted, tinged with something not quite right. He’d faltered. As if he were struggling with his own voice. "We need to talk."
CatNap stood in the back, pale and motionless, his white eyes fixed on Elijah. The boy felt a familiar chill—not from fear, but from recognition. He knew that look. It was the same one he saw in the mirror when he woke up screaming, when he remembered his mother, the fire, his first night at Playcare.
“Why are you guys different?” asked Marcus, ten years old, his voice steady despite his trembling hands. “You used to be… happier. Before.”
Bobby BearHug—or what was left of her beneath the red and pink plush—stepped forward. Her arms opened in a gesture that was meant to be comforting, but the seams at her elbows were stained with something Elijah preferred not to identify.
“We used to be like you,” he said, and there was something terribly wrong with how kindness lingered in that voice, even when it was obvious he was barely managing to speak. “We are like you. Orphans. Children that Playtime Co. thought they could… improve.”
KickinChicken laughed. A high-pitched, broken sound, like a cassette tape rewinding.
“Improve,” he repeated, flapping a wing against the wall. Something snapped. Whether it was the wood or the wing, Chicken didn’t show it, and no one looked closely enough. “That’s what they call it. Improve. Transform. Repurpose.”
"Enough." DogDay raised a paw. The gesture was all too human. A reflex. "It’s not about that. It’s about..." he hesitated, the sun pendant catching light that wasn’t there. "The Prototype ordered it. He said you deserved to know. Before... before we decide what to do with you."
Elijah felt his stomach churn. Decide what to do. As if they were objects. As if they were...
"...experiments," he whispered.
Eight pairs of eyes turned to him. CatNap tilted his head, almost curious.
"You’re smart, Elijah," said DogDay. "You always have been. That’s why you understand. We were taken. Theodore, who is now what you call CatNap. I was... another name. Another child. All of us. Bubba was a boy who liked math. PickyPiggy... she just wanted her sister to be alive. CraftyCorn used to draw on the cell walls before going to sleep."
"That's a lie," Sarah whined, but without conviction. "You're toys. Magic toys."
"Toys don't bleed inside," Hoppy Hopscotch spoke for the first time, his bouncy voice unrecognizable, crackling with static. "Toys don't remember their mothers when they smell lavender. We do. We remember everything.”
Elijah studied the seams on their necks. Zippers. Openings. He watched CatNap move—not like a cat, but like someone who had learned to walk on legs that weren’t his own, with a body that rejected the consciousness inhabiting it.
"Why did you kill them all?" The question slipped out before I could stop it. "If they were like us. If they knew what it was like."
The silence stretched like skin over an inadequate skeletal frame.
“Because we were weak,” DogDay finally replied. “Because the pain… the pain changes you. And when He offered a way out… when He said we could make them feel what we feel…” his voice faltered. “We couldn’t resist. Not all of us. Some tried. Bubba. CraftyCorn. They didn’t want to. But his influence… the gas… you don’t understand until you feel his mind invading yours, telling you it’s justice, that it’s necessary, that it’s joy.”
CatNap approached. Elijah didn’t back away. He was tired of backing away. Tired of waking up in strange bunk beds, of being evaluated, of being processed as raw material for the ambition of adults who didn’t need to look him in the eye.
"Theodore," Elijah said, testing the name.
CatNap paused. For a moment—just one—something flickered in his white eyes. Sadness. Recognition. A twelve-year-old who had believed in metallic saviors.
"He saved you," Elijah continued, not a question. "You remember being saved, don’t you? That’s why you follow him. Because when you were dying, he was the only one who came."
CatNap didn’t answer. But his posture shifted. Shoulders bearing the guilt of a hundred murders slumped, just a little.
“We don’t want to be saved like that,” Elijah said, looking at the other orphans; twenty-three souls stared back at him. “We don’t want to become… that. What you did… what they did to you… isn’t justice. It’s just… a continuation. Of the same thing. With another name.”
DogDay laughed. A horrible, wet sound.
"Do you think we don't know? Do you think we don't live through this every day? Waking up in these bodies, feeling human flesh fighting against plastic, remembering our mothers' touch and knowing that our hands are now claws? We are monsters, Elijah. Monsters who were once children who just wanted to be loved. And now..." he looked at the children. "Now you have the chance to know. To not be deceived. To understand that when they come for you—and they will—it’s not for a home. It’s for this. For us."
Bobby BearHug moved first. He crossed the space between the monsters and the children, and before anyone could step back, he knelt down. The red and pink stuffed animal, stained and soiled with ashes that weren’t ashes, opened up.
"We can’t undo it," she—he?—whispered, and there were tears in that synthetic voice. Tears from someone who still knew how to cry, even without tear glands. "But we can choose not to repeat it. The Prototype wants you to become the next army. For the factory to continue. We… we don’t want that. That’s why we’re telling you. That’s why we’re showing you."
Elijah looked at Bobby’s hands. Stitched together. Making gestures that were all too human. He thought of the employees who had disappeared. Of the board members who smiled as they jotted notes on clipboards. Of the doctors who called what was theft a “donation.”
And then he did something he hadn’t expected.
He stepped closer.
Marcus held her arm. Sarah sobbed. But Elijah kept going, until he stood before that thing that had once been a girl named Beatrice, or Talia, or whatever name had been erased from the records.
“You smell like strawberries,” he said, remembering the cartoon. “Before. You used to smell like strawberries.”
Bobby BearHug shuddered. A tremor ran through his entire disproportionate frame.
“I did,” the voice was almost inaudible. “Before… before they changed. I liked strawberries. My grandmother… she used to make pie.”
Elijah reached out. He touched the stuffed animal. It was warm. Alive in a way that flesh should be, but wasn’t.
"I had a grandmother, too. She used to make strawberry pie, too," he said. "She died in the same fire that took my parents. Sometimes I dream that she’s making pie for me. But when I wake up, all I can smell is the red smoke."
One by one, the orphans approached. Not out of courage, but out of exhaustion. Because when you lose everything, even the company of monsters becomes tolerable. Because in that blue basement, they were all survivors of the same system that devoured children and spat out nightmares.
CatNap was the last. He knelt among them, the giant cat among small children, and for the first time since the transformation, he felt something that wasn’t anger, wasn’t programmed obedience, wasn’t the metallic voice of the Prototype echoing in his plastic bones.
It was forgiveness. Or something close enough to the mark.
“We can’t protect you,” he promised, knowing it was a lie, knowing they had no power, knowing that the Prototype would come and do to them what it had done to him, to the others. “But we’ll try, as long as we can.”
Elijah nodded. He didn’t believe it would last. But he needed the moment. He needed the illusion of safety, even if only for a few minutes, before the reality of their situations—children in an orphanage of experiments, protected by monsters who had once been children themselves—came crashing down on them again.
They hugged each other there, in that profane space. Children and creatures, victims and tormentors, all products of the same machine that turned trauma into merchandise. The hug didn’t fix anything. It didn’t bring back the dead, didn’t reverse the transformations, didn’t erase the Hour of Joy.
But for a few seconds, in that blue basement beneath a factory that made deadly toys, it was enough.
It was all they had.
And then the lights went out.
Not gradually. Not with flickering. They went out as if someone had ripped the very existence of the lighting away. The embrace dissolved into absolute silence, and when the emergency lights—red, always red—flared on, Elijah saw that the Smiling Critters were no longer smiling; their permanent grins seemed to have drained the faint glow.
CatNap stood motionless, head tilted, listening to something only he could hear. The rest followed suit, bodies tense, plush fur bristling at impossible angles.
“He heard it,” whispered DogDay, and for the first time, Elijah heard genuine fear in that distorted voice. “The Prototype. He heard everything.”
The back wall shifted.
It wasn’t a wall. It never had been. It was a door in disguise, and behind it, the darkness breathed. Something metallic scraped across the concrete—not with footsteps, but with the relentless clatter of many mechanical legs. The sound filled the space, occupying the air that should have been breathable.
“You have FAILED.” The voice came from everywhere and nowhere. Modulated. Patient. Infinitely familiar to anyone who had grown up listening to Playtime Co. commercials. “I gave you purpose. I gave you form. And you… try to betray me with SENTIMENTALITY?”
CatNap fell to his knees. The gesture was wrong—a toy body shouldn’t bend like that, shouldn’t tremble with sobs that had no voice.
“No,” he choked out. “It’s not betrayal. It’s just… they’re children. We were children. Please, Sir. Please don’t do to them what you did to us.”
The darkness shifted.
Elijah didn’t see what happened. He just felt it. The air was sucked out, the pressure changed, and suddenly Sarah was no longer holding his arm. There was only… emptiness. A space where she had been, and the sound of something being pulled into the shadows—too fast, too wet.
Marcus’s scream was cut short.
Not by a human hand. Nor by a toy claw. By something that existed between the walls, that lived in the ventilation ducts, that watched through every electrical outlet. The Prototype didn’t need to enter. It was already there. It had always been there.
“Did you want to tell the TRUTH?” the voice echoed, now coming from CatNap’s mouth, who was writhing on the floor, speaking words that weren’t his own. “Then tell it. Tell how Theodore begged while trapped inside that body. Tell how he thanked you afterward. Like everyone THANKS, when they understand that flesh is weak, but plastic... plastic is FOREVER."
Bobby BearHug threw herself at the remaining orphans. A futile, desperate, maternal gesture from a body that shouldn’t have been capable of motherhood.
“Run,” she shouted, her voice distorted by static and panic. “Through the fire chute. Now. NOW.”
But Elijah didn’t run.
He looked at DogDay, who hadn’t moved. At KickinChicken, who had laughed one last time—that broken sound, like a cassette tape rewinding—before his legs buckled beneath him. At the Smiling Critters, who had tried, truly tried, to be something other than what they were made to be.
And he understood.
There was no escape. There never had been. The embrace, the confession, the promise of protection—it had all been permitted. Observed. Orchestrated. The Prototype didn’t need more soldiers. He needed to see if his experiments still had… that. That human weakness. That hope.
“You knew,” Elijah said, not to the darkness, but to DogDay. “From the start. He ordered them to tell the truth because he wanted to see if you still cared. If you were still… were still…”
“Children,” DogDay finished, his voice hollow. “He wanted to know if we were still children enough to believe in redemption.”
The wall moved again.
This time, Elijah saw it. Not the complete Prototype—no one who saw that survived—but enough. Eyes that seemed to glow in a strange way, reflecting the yellow light. Hands that were claws that were tools that were weapons. And teeth. So many teeth, white and jagged, mass-produced, smiling in a strange, unmoving way.
“Elijah Reeves.” The voice sounded almost affectionate. “Orphan number 1173. House fire. Stable psychology, above-average IQ, excellent ADAPTATION profile. You will be… PERFECT.”
“No.” DogDay moved, finally. Slowly, brokenly, but he moved. “Take me. Again. I didn’t resist the first time, I won’t resist now. Leave them. They’re… they’re just kids.”
"You were all just CHILDREN," the Prototype replied, and there was something almost like boredom in his voice. "And look what you’ve BECOME. Look at what I SAVED YOU from becoming. Flesh rots, THEODORE. Flesh forgets. But we… we endure. We smile. FOREVER."
The darkness closed in.
Elijah closed his eyes. Not to escape, but to remember. His grandmother’s pie. The smell of smoke, yes, but before that, the smell of home. His mother’s touch. A moment—just one—when he was loved by someone who wanted nothing in return.
When he opened his eyes, Bobby BearHug was still protecting him. But its seams were tearing, something black and shiny oozing out, and it wasn’t breathing anymore—if it ever had. DogDay was on its knees, head hanging down, its sun-shaped pendant torn off. The other Critters… fragments. Just fragments, scattered like defective production waste.
And the Prototype was there. Close enough to touch.
“Don’t CRY,” said the thing that had been 1006, that had been someone, long ago. “You won’t feel a thing. None of you do. I’m very good at what I do. Very… CAREFUL.”
Elijah looked up. At that abomination of gears and flesh and plastic and hatred and… yes. And loneliness. Because deep down, at the very bottom of it all, the Prototype was just a child too. A child who had learned far too early that the world only wanted to use him. And now he was using the world right back.
“I’ll remember,” Elijah whispered. “Even if you take everything away, I’ll remember that this is wrong. That you’re wrong. And one day...”
“A DAY?” the metallic voice sounded almost curious. “Ah, Elijah. There are no more DAYS. Only nights. Only the factory. Only the Hour of Joy, eternal and perfect. And you…YOU WILL SMILE. Everyone smiles, in the end.”
Darkness enveloped him.
There was no pain. The Prototype had been honest about that. Just… pressure. The sensation of being molded, reshaped, of something liquid being injected into veins that would cease to be veins. Of hearing his own voice change, distort, become modulated, cheerful, and smiling.
When he woke up—if “woke up” was the right word—Elijah was lying down. The white walls almost hurt his eyes. The beds were still there. But the children...
He looked at his hands. Small hands. Rough plastic. There were joints where there used to be knuckles; where there used to be elbows, there were now articulated spheres, replacing the knees, the heels, the wrists. Miniature hooks strategically placed.
“What?” The voice came out wrong. Too high-pitched. Too sweet. Too happy.
Something stirred in the darkness. Another figure, yellow, with a sun pendant. DogDay. Or what was left of him. His eyes—those eyes that had once belonged to a child—met Elijah’s, and for a moment, a single moment before the programming took over, there was recognition.
And pain.
And apology.
And farewell.
“Welcome,” said DogDay’s voice, and it sounded exactly like it did in the cartoons. Cheerful. Excited. Empty. “Welcome to the family, Pierrot. We’ve been waiting for you.”
Elijah—no, not Elijah, Elijah was just a memory now, just a file, just a ghost in a toy’s file system—smiled.
Not because he wanted to.
But because he had been programmed to.
Because it was all that was left.
In the factory, the machines hummed. The pipes whispered. And somewhere in the darkness, the Prototype watched his new army of smiling faces—perfect children who would never cry, never complain, never try to tell the truth.
Because the truth, he knew, was a disease of the flesh.
And the flesh...
The flesh could always be replaced.
FIM
Epilogue — 2005
The Player found the mural ten years later.
It was on the wall of Home Sweet Home, preserved in some way—perhaps by the Gas, perhaps by something worse. A child’s drawing, made with materials other than paint. It showed the Smiling Critters. It showed children. It showed hugs.
In the corner, scribbled with a trembling finger:
"Elijah was here. He knew. We all knew. Sorry for being what you’re going to be."
The Player didn’t understand. He couldn’t understand. But when the flashlight swept over the mural, for an instant—just an instant—the figures seemed to move.
Smiling.
Always smiling.