I've been wanting to write my own version of 'How Robbie got Rex' for a while, and here it is!
Rex was a sixth birthday present. A gift from Mommy to Robbie.
Not that little Robbie paid much attention to him.
He was a doll; why would Robbie want him? Robbie wanted action figures, and they were definitely not dolls. They were cool superheroes and villains and that green guy from his The Avengers comic that he liked to look at the pictures in. He wasn't quite sure about that green guy.. was he good or bad? Robbie wasn't a very good reader, so he could only look at the pictures. Words confused him. They fuzzed up in his brain and made his head hurt and the other kids laugh when it was his turn to read out loud and he could only stutter through verses from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (though he had taken in enough to like Charlie and relate to him in more ways than he had talked about in the writing he did for Mrs Matthews).
Eventually, after three hours of whining from Robbie about how he wanted something - anything - else but that stupid puppet sitting on his bed, his mother locked him in his room, demanded he play with the then-unnamed puppet, and stormed off muttering about how she had never wanted children.
So he had sat.
Sat cross-legged on the floor - his glasses falling down his nose and his t-shirt stained from the birthday cake he had stolen a taste of at breakfast - staring at the puppet. It was creepy; all big head and long arms and no body. Just the type of thing that Robbie didn't like. It looked like one of those weird life size dolls with long hair that girls like his sister had been given as a child (now she was twenty-three and little Stephanie the doll was his, but he didn't tell people - his few friends over at the elementary school he attended being those people - that little piece of information).
"I hope you're making friends!" he heard his mother shout from downstairs, her voice kind, obviously trying to make up for being mean to Robbie earlier.
He didn't like his Mommy sometimes - she liked to shout. Especially at Daddy, when he came home late from work with his hair all messy and his buttons done up wrong. Robbie nodded at his mother's words, but didn't move any closer to the freaky doll. It was staring at him, and staring at him, and staring, and it didn't stop. It was too weird. Robbie didn't like how it was staring at him. It had that same look in its eyes as Mommy did sometimes when she was helping him with his shoelaces in the morning. Like she was thinking really hard about something, and her eyes just happened to be looking at him at the time.
Glancing around him, checking the room was safe, Robbie moved silently over to the doll. Standing up, he was much bigger than it. That made him feel a tiny bit better.
"Hello?" he asked the puppet. It didn't reply.
Slowly, cautiously, he poked its arm with his long finger. Nothing happened.
"Hello?" Robbie asked again, poking it a little harder. Again, nothing. He tried again, a little harder. And again. And again. And again. And again..
"Ahhh!" he yelled, jumping back from the doll as its head flopped to the side. Robbie stared at the thing, waiting for it to move, but, no. Nothing. Nada. It occurred to him that maybe, probably, he had made it move.
"Sorry." he muttered to the puppet, because Daddy had always told him that saying sorry was a big boy thing to do, and Robbie was a big boy now. Yet again, the floppy haired doll didn't reply. He obviously wasn't one of those talking dolls like Robbie's action figures who shouted their catchphrases too loudly and he had adults in the supermarket huffing when he was in the queue behind them and playing with it. But, maybe it was possible.. the talking ones had batteries, didn't they? Maybe this one just didn't have his batteries in yet. Vaguely aware of where the batteries were generally stored, Robbie moved around to the back of the doll and began to prod its back. He couldn't feel any openings to put the power in. Wait, there might be one- no.
Robbie frowned. Where else could there be batteries? There might be some at the bottom, he realised. Robbie grasped the doll under his shoulders and picked him up. His birthday present was lighter than he looked. Robbie tried to look at the space where the bottom of the doll should be, but he was greeted by a dark space there instead. There wasn't even a butt area on his jeans! How did he sit up if he didn't have a bottom? It was so confusing. Robbie moved his finger to the space, and poked it gently. It was a hole! A hole.. why was there a hole?
"Mommy, there's something wrong with my doll!" he shouted at the top of his voice. Footsteps began to sound on the stairs, and Robbie could hear his mother mumbling words to herself. The lock on the door clicked open, and Mrs Shapiro entered the room.
"What on earth are you talking about, Robert?" she asked, sounding quite grumpy. Robbie noticed the telephone in her hand, and then realised that she had probably been talking to one of her many friends.
"He's broken!" Robbie whined, dragging the puppet over to his mother and showing her the hole. Mrs Shapiro said a very bad word.
"Oh, Robbie, Rex is meant to have a hole. He's a puppet." she said, as though this explained everything to her little son. Putting the phone to her ear, she turned to leave, before noticing that Robbie was only staring at the doll as it lay on the floor. "Put the-" his mother began, the phone still in her hand, "No, no, not you, Lynne," she said into the phone, before covering it with her hand and turning back to Robbie. "Put your hand in the hole!" she hissed, before going back to her conversation and leaving the room.
Robbie watched his mother leave, feeling more confused than ever. His hand in a hole? Still, his Mommy never lied to him. The small boy picked his toy off the floor, and did as his mother had told him.
Rex sat on his arm quite comfortably, actually, and, with some experimentation, Robbie discovered that he could make the puppet's mouth move!
"Hi, my name is Rex." Robbie said in a low voice, making the puppet's mouth move at the same time. It looked like Rex was talking!
"Rex, Rex, Rex." he tried out the name his mother had used. Robbie liked it. It suited this strange half-doll half-person. "My name is Rex Powers."
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