A/N: After the movies, I own nothing except my OCs and their names aren't mine, it showed up in Goosebumps first.
I always used to think that the best part of being a psychiatrist was talking to people. To talk to them and see those tiny little snapshots of their lives, you know? To know their thoughts, feelings. To experience love, pain, regret, sadness, joy, excitement all through their eyes. I loved to perceive the world as they see wheels of the mind, the switches of a decision, the machine fuel by the coals of memories.
Choices.
Good or bad.
Right or wrong.
Black or white.
Then I get kidnapped by this guy, to speak to his niece, to 'find out what's wrong with her'. I can hardly believe that Rachel is related to him. She's so nice and sweet, unfortunate she had to get kidnapped, too. Her uncle, on the other hand...
Gray.
I don't know whether or not to call him his fake name, Ricky, or his real name. 'Slappy' is such an odd name but as he is a monster toy... I suppose it's not so odd. After all, I did read about him when I was little.
Ironically, he used to be my favorite.
Trying to psychoanalyze him is like jumping off the Empire State building and expecting to fly, it's crazy! He doesn't have a reason, he's a creation, created to be this way and yet I-
And yet I can't help but wonder if there's more to it than just that, more to him
I suppose, besides keeping Rachel sane, I stay here. My job is done, Slappy set me free. Yet I can't help but want to know what made this happen. Why is he 'evil'? Why did he kidnap Rachel? Why, if he does not care about her well-being, did he send for me? Why me? Did it have to do with me sharing one of his protagonist's names?
I wish he would speak to me. To talk to me, for any purpose except for teasing and taunting me. I can see a hurt in his eyes sometimes like he's in such pain but then it's gone as cruelty takes over.
I can't say for sure if I care for him. He did try to harm me once, after all.
On the other hand, he's saved my life twice.
No one has risked themselves for me before. I've never had the pleasure of experiencing that and yet one of the most arrogant of characters has given me this gesture. I suppose that's what makes him real, isn't it?
It scares me a little that a word like 'real' effects him so much. To have that one word dangle you off a side of a cliff as the rest of the world disregards your very existence. To be 'real' and yet 'make-believe'.
Make-believe... is that why he hates his creator, R.L. Stine, so much?
Did the author not regard him as real? What could he do to scar someone like Slappy so much?
Maybe. It was a betrayal of some sort.
Dr. Amy Kramer, that's what he called me once, a long time ago. Yet now, he scarcely uses my name. 'Ames' seems to be his preferred way of calling me as if I was his pet dog.
What was his method for seeking me out? What logic was behind it? What made him come to the conclusion he needed Rachel? What made him seek a psychiatrist out?
All can ask for him right now is that he speaks to me one of these days. That he opens up and tells me his true origins before he burns to death inside. Before me and Rachel go with him. Before they find us and take Rachel back...
They will, I can feel it. Slappy can only keep it up for so long before her parents find him. I worry about that day. The two of them have grown so attached to each other that I'm sure it's not Stockholm syndrome. What will he do, I wonder?
Until that happens, I will be here for them, I suppose. Standing in the background as he pretends not to be interested in his niece's activities, sneakily stealing glances at her coloring book. I will stand here until he calls me over to ridicule me again, to say what I've done wrong.
Until the day Slappy is broken all over again.
Until the sad day I see his family be torn apart.