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There was a nine year-old girl in an orphanage and her name was Ruby Lincen. Ruby was a thin girl with lush blonde hair and striking bright blue eyes. She was the kind of kid that hated being looked down upon, broke rules, and got bored easily. She would make up at the crack of dawn to go to school, a building where all the walls and ceilings were brown from water damage, it smelled of dusty mold, and there were no windows and horrible, probably stale, food. There she learned things she already knew, being taught by people she didn’t care about, while sitting next to kids that were just as miserable as she was. After this she’d walk back to the orphanage with the others and when she got there she’d do her homework, eat a cold gross dinner, go to bed, and then do it all again the next day. Yup, she was living the life.
But then one day, something interesting happened. Miley, another girl in the orphanage, ran up to Ruby one morning and told her that she overheard Mrs. Clamp, the owner of the orphanage, talking on the phone to someone about selling the orphanage. The children were thrilled at the thought of this. A new owner might be nicer to them, try to provide happier lives for them, and work harder to get them adopted!
Turned out that what Miley overheard was true, within a week the orphanage was taken over by new management, a company called Playtime Co., owned by Elliot Ludwig. They were transferred to the Playtime Co factory where they got rooms to share and got to play in the game station all day. The kids were sorted into three different color groups, blue, green, and red. Ruby asked why, and the coworkers said that Stella would explain in a minute. “Hello children!” Called Stella from the speakers.
“Hello Stella!” The children replied.
“I’m sure you’re all very excited about staying with us but we must warn you. The adoption center in our factory is called Playcare and the only way to get to it is to pass all three games in our game station. We are so excited to see how crazy smart and strong you are! Group red can follow Huggy down to Wack a Wuggy, group green and follow Pj to Statues, and group blue can follow Mommy Long Legs down to Musical Memory!” Then Ruby and her fellow blues followed Mommy. Ruby was picked first to attempt the game. After watching the instructional video and learning about Bunzo waiting for her in the ceiling, she began the game.
“Blue.” Called out an emotionless robotic voice. Ruby scanned the buttons and found the blue one. She hit it and a cheering noise played as Bunzo was pulled higher. Ruby thought the game was too easy but as it went on it got faster and faster and eventually started asking for colors she couldn’t find. Her heart started to pound, she felt sweat dripping down her forehead. She kept hitting the wrong buttons and panicking about what would happen if she couldn’t pass all three games. Would she ever be adopted? Then suddenly Bunzo scooped her up into a bearhug and started to tickle her.
“Times up! Times up! Times up!” He shouted and then put her down. It made her smile and laugh but once she was escorted to the end of the line and became suddenly so alone she began to break down again. As the day went by, Ruby had gotten to try all three of the games multiple times and failed every single one. They were then told they had free time to go do whatever they wanted whether it was to play, eat, watch movies, sleep, or do the games more. Ruby just climbed to the top of the tallest playground structure, wrapped herself in a hug and began to cry. She sat there like this for a little while till she heard footsteps come toward her.
“What’s wrong little one?” Mommy’s soothing calm voice asked. Ruby picked up her head to look at her. She could feel that her face was red, and her eyes were puffy from crying. “Oh my goodness! What happened?” Mommy said while looping her arms around Ruby, lifting her up, placing her on her lap, and cradling her in her arms.
“I’ll never be able to finish the games, and if I can’t finish the games I’ll never be adopted and I’ll never get a family!” After saying her fears out loud Ruby began to break out into tears once more.
“Oh don’t worry! I’ll help you win the games! And adoption or not you’ll always have me!” Ruby sniffled and looked up at Mommy’s face. Mommy wasn’t mad at her for not being good and she wasn’t upset that Ruby needed her help. Ruby had never been treated like this before. She began to smile and her tears went away at the thought of Mommy being there for her. When Mommy saw that Ruby was back in a happy state of mind she took her over to Wack a Wuggy. She showed her how to work the grab pack and deeply explained the adjective of the game. Mommy then walked into the glass windowed room and watched Ruby play and cheered her on. “I’ll never let anything bad happen to you.” Mommy whispered to herself as she placed her hand on the window smiling at Ruby excited face, and she planed to keep that promise for a long time.
Days went by, Mommy and Ruby spent every second together working on the games and strategizing how Ruby would win. “Hey Mommy! I wanted to tell you something I though of.”
“Okay! What is it?”
“You know the Itsy Bitsy Spider song right?”
“By heart!”
“Well, in the song the sun protects and helps the itsy bitsy spider the way you helped me, so I came up with some knew lyrics. Can I sing them for you?”
“Of course!”
“Yay! Here it goes, the itsy bitsy spider went up the water spout, down came the rain and washed the spider out. But out came the Mommy Long Legs and made it go away. And the itsy bitsy spider went up the spout again.” Mommy felt tears forming in her eyes. None of the children had every done anything like this before. She pulled Ruby up and gave her a big hug.
“That was beautiful!” She said through her tears.
“I love you Mommy!” Ruby said with a large smile on her face, happy that she made Mommy happy.
“I love you to my itsy bitsy spider!” More days went by, and Ruby got incredibly good at all the games and couldn’t wait for the day that she’d be allowed to get on the train and ride it to Playcare. Mommy was, though sad at the thought of her leaving, happy that she’d be able to reach her goal. Ruby was the best at the games over every other child in the game station.
“Umm… Mommy?” Ruby asked worriedly.
“Yes?”
“Who are they?” Ruby asked and pointed to the ceiling. Mommy looked up and saw three of the Playtime employees standing in the clear tube tunnels in the ceiling looking down on them.
“They are very very bad people, but the good news is they never come down here.”
“What makes them bad?”
“Nothing you need to worry about my itsy bitsy spider, lets just keep playing!” Ruby was confused and a little worried. Mommy seemed very stressed and angry at the mention of the people in the ceiling, but she decided to leave the subject alone and continue with the games. Ruby started walking toward Statues and Mommy gave a death glare to the employees and then followed Ruby. Mommy was very worried the next morning because she couldn’t find Ruby anywhere. According to the other children she was seen going to her room and in the morning she was gone.
That night the employees, or rather scientists, came into Ruby’s room, woke her up and walked her out. She was drowsy from just waking up at 3am from a deep sleep but she was confused on why two of the three people had firm grips on her upper arms as if pulling her through the hall, and why were they wearing gas masks? It was hard for her to understand when they were saying but she caught bits and pieces of their conversation. “George! Why are we doing this now! Aren’t we supposed to wait till she gets to Play Care?”
“Play Care!” Ruby thought to herself. Maybe they wanted to move her there early! As happy as going to Play Care made her, she strongly wished she could say goodbye to Mommy first.
“Yes Darla, we normally do but did you see the way Mommy looked at us yesterday?” George asked.
“Well yeah but she’s always hated us, and we’ve never done this.”
“Yes but she’s never been so protective of a particular child before, she might not let her on the train, and we can’t take that risk.” George answered.
“I still think it’s a little weird doing it without telling Ludwig, your with me right Stan?”
“I am worried about the whole not telling anyone anything part of the plan but this one is too good to loose. I say it’s worth a little extra work. Maybe we’ll get paid more.” Ruby began to worry about what they were talking about. It didn’t sound like adoption, it sounded like something bad. Then they went into a plain white room with a clear dome in the middle.
“Alright little girly, go into there.” Darla said while trying to push Ruby roughly forward, but Ruby kept her feet planted in the ground.
“Why? What is it?”
“Ummm…” Darla said worriedly looking at George and Stan.
“It’s a camera. We need to get a full body picture before you go to Play Care to give to families who apply to adopt you.” Ruby wasn’t satisfied with George’s answer. It seemed too strange.
“Why do you need my picture at 3am?”
“Because we have a lot of pictures to take before the train ride tomorrow, now please step inside the dome… camera thing.” George answered sounding quite annoyed. Darla continued to try to shove Ruby into the dome. Ruby stomped on Darla’s foot.
“OWW! SERIOUSLY?!” Darla shouted and let go of Ruby to hold her foot. Ruby took her chance and quickly rushed out the door. She heard their foot steps behind her, not needing to turn around to know they were on her tail. She began twisting and turning down different halls and storming through different doors. She tripped many different workers and through posters and empty toy boxes onto the floor to create obstacles.
Ruby eventually found herself in a room full of things like blue prints for new toys and files on the kids in the game station. She looked down to catch her breath and saw a paper signed by Elliot Ludwig. It was an experiment on how to kill a rat and bring it back to life. She then found a paper of an experiment on how to transfer the life of a rat into a rock. “Okay, that’s creepy.” Ruby muttered to herself. Then Ruby, finding herself very curious, started flipping through the different files and blue prints. The blue prints looked neat, they described how they built the frames for the toys, but none of them said how they made the tech to make them seem alive. Ruby had wanted to believe they were alive; Mommy Long Legs didn’t seem programed, and she definitely didn’t have the mind of a rat. But how did they do it?
She looked at the different files of unrecognizable names and pictures of children from years and years ago. They seemed so strange, the ink was so old and smeared so Ruby couldn’t read them, but they had pictures of children, and some had pictures of toys in them. “Do they turn the kids who don’t make it to Play Care into toys? Is that what they were going to do to me!?” Ruby wondered to herself. Ruby started finding papers of kids from the current year. The first name she recognized was Miley. Miley’s scores were good in all the games. The paper had a passed stamp on it and at first Ruby was happy for Miley, that she would get to go to Play Care to be adopted. But Miley had a picture of Candy Cat next to her picture. “Why are they turning her into Candy Cat if she’s going to Play Care to be adopted?” Ruby questioned out loud. Suddenly a hand wrapped around her mouth and another around her waist and a male voice replied.
“Because children don’t go to Play Care to be adopted.” Ruby thrashed and screamed as he caried her through the halls. She managed to kick him hard in the chest. The sudden pain hit him so hard he dropped her on the floor. Ruby got to her feet and began to run through the halls once more. She now understood why Mommy didn’t like these people. Ruby made the poor decision of accidently running into a small room with no doors other than the entrance. When she turned to leave the room a scientist opened the door and tried to grab her, she got so scared she fell over and scooted herself away from him as far as she could and screamed for help at the top of her lungs. Suddenly out of nowhere a hand wrapped around his waist and through him out of the door way and crashed him into the wall across the hall. Mommy Long Legs rushed into the room to help Ruby to her feet.
“Ruby! Are you okay? What did those monster people do to you!?” Ruby was speechless. All she could say was.
“Mommy you’re bleeding!” Ruby noticed a bad looking gash on Mommy’s shoulder.
“I’m fine, don’t worry about me.” Suddenly over twenty Playtime employees rushed in front of the door way, some with cameras and some with needles. Mommy became enraged. Ruby had never seen her this way. Her pupils almost took up her whole eyes and her teeth became sharp as she shouted, “GET AWAY FROM HER!!!!” The people rushed in and in all the hustle and bustle someone got both Ruby and Mommy shots. Ruby felt her vision get hazy and her head got all heavy.
“Poor girl, that monster really beat her up.” The man holding her said.
“No! Please! Don’t take me from my mommy!” Ruby pleaded weakly.
“Poor thing, she’s delusional.” A woman next to her said. “Don’t worry, we’ll get you to a good home.”
“Mommy…must get back to… mommy.” Ruby pleaded one last time before everything went black.
Ruby awoke hours later, “Where am I?” She asked with a tired voice.
She looked around to see that she was in a hospital room. Just as she started to sit up to leave a nurse entered the room.
“Hello sweetheart, how are you feeling?” Ruby completely ignored the question.
“Am I still in Playtime Co?” Ruby asked the nurse.
“No, and the doctors and detectives are working to figure out what happened. And you’ll be here until we get some answers.”
“But my mommy is there!” Ruby pleaded. “Please sir let me see her!”
“Was she an employee?”
“No! Mommy Long Legs--”
“Oh sweetheart! She’s not your mother.”
“YES SHE IS! SHE SAVED MY LIFE!” Ruby screamed and through her pillow at the doctor.
“Miss Lincen please calm down.”
“DON’T TELL ME TO CALM DOWN!” Ruby was about to say more when suddenly a nurse gave her another shot that made her sleepy and everything went black again.
Years went by, Ruby got adopted by a nice family and had a good life. She went to a nice school and made good friends, but she never forgot what happened at that place. Playtime Co, once a bright colored place that would bring a viewer joy now is broken, dark, and fenced away from the public. The fence wears a sign saying that dangerous chemicals and dangerous monsters lurk in the closed off area and it’s a forbidden place and completely off limits. But all Ruby thinks about is how there are so many children and adults, hurt and confused, trapped in there and they don’t know why. Ruby wondered every day of her first true mother. Was Mommy okay? Did she know she wanted to see her? Did she know she was alive? Ruby, now 15 years-old, likes to sneak out, climb the fence in the blind spot of the security camera and walk along the factory’s parking lot. The windows to the game station were so murky and dirty that Ruby couldn’t look through to see if her mommy was in there. But she’d sit for hours in front of the window and talk to Mommy and tell her about her life. And before she’d leave she’d always sing her itsy bitsy spider song. And she never fully found out if it was just her mind playing tricks on her, but she also swore that she could hear her mother’s faint voice singing along.