Author's note: The majority of this story is based on the 1977 animated film The Mouse and His Child and not upon the original novel by Russell Hoban or any other adaptation.

It was late one fall in the Twin Cities of Minnesota and the air had quite a breeze. In a more reputable part of the neighborhood, sat a toy shop with it's light glowing into the oncoming night. The proprietor of the store, a ginger haired woman in a brown wool coat, was met by a blond-haired woman much younger than her and her ten-year-old son Andy, who loved toys just as much as anyone else. His eyes were caught by a pair of dolls that looked like they came the old west, both of them wearing cow print vests, red floppy hats, brown boots, white shirts and long blue jeans. Woody and Jessie were their names and it looked like they were dancing.

"I want those two," he said, pointing his left index finger to the cowboy and cowgirl.

"Not tonight, dear," said his mother, having spent most of her savings on dinner from a high-cost restaurant to which they had previously been to. "It's getting late. If they are still here tomorrow, we can look."

Satisfied with his mother's response, Andy gave a parting wave of his left hand to the ginger haired woman and the trio left in opposite directions.

Inside the store, though appearing to be cramped given how many toys were stocked on the shelves, held a menagerie of toy elephants, seals, Barbie and Ken dolls and perhaps even the creepiest little clown you ever saw. There were also miniature race cars, monster dolls, stuffed dinosaurs, a yellow ball with a red star and blue stripes and even toy clown fishes. RC trains, planes and boats were locked in glass cases and some vintage toys like a slinky dog and a potato head were on a shelf next to a white and red phone with a painted smile on it's lips.

It was the midnight hour known by wiccans as the witching hour and an ancient power that breathed pure life into the bodies of these toys came to pass when a clock whose hour and minute hands looked like a moustache gave the all clear signal in a voice that sounded like the general impression of Father Time.

"Midnight…."

Rubber ducks quacked, dolls squeaked and the wind up band marched as they played their instruments to and fro on the shelves. Barbie and Ken moved by an inch, then a meter and in a minute their limbs were completely expendable. Ken wolf-whistled as his girlfriend twirled around in her pretty pink tutu on light feet, then he looked out of his dollhouse window to see a jack-in-the-box wearing a green nightcap popping out. Jack leered over the cowboy dolls, who were looking around at the strange and beautiful sights that looked so foreign to them.

"Woody?" asked the cowgirl.

The cowboy, equally confused as her, replied in a tiny voice that went deep as it fully emerged from the silence.

"Yes, Jessie?"

"Where are we?"

"I don't know."

"What are we?"

"I don't know that either. We must wait and see."

Woody's eyes turned to a porcelain figure wearing a pale pink bonnet with matching sleeves and a silvery blue corset. She also wore a white skirt with pink polka dots and carried a baby blue shepherd's staff in her right hand. She walked five steps closer to the Woody and Jessie and spoke in a gorgeous southern accent.

"I can explain that."

She stopped in front of them, giving the dolls a once over, her eyes peering up and down.

"You must have been recently manufactured. I should know because I have experience it once and I have been here for over fifty years. I am Bo Peep, the leader and the wisest of all the toys in this store."

Jessie did a small courtesy.

"Well, begging your pardon, mam. I have never so someone so beautiful like you before."

Bo smiled.

"That is because I am the first person you see me as. To answer your question, in case you have not heard, you are cowboy and cowgirl dolls and I think you are rather attractive."

Woody tried to process the new information into his head.

"So what you are saying is, this is a toy shop and we are…toys?"

"Welcome wagon!" came a pair of voices from above.

The voices, belonging to Ken and Barbie, came rushing down the stairs and pushing the dollhouse doors open with tiny streams of confetti blasting out of a cannon placed in between them. Barbie went first to introduce herself, pointing both index fingers to the other toys she could see.

"Hello, I'm Barbie, this my boyfriend Ken, that's Mr. Potato Head, that's Rex, I see you have already met Bo Peep, there's Slinky and that over there is Jack."

"You'll get used to being here sooner or later," the dog called Slinky said, circling around them like a snake. "Because at some point, you two will be finding a new home with someone who loves you."

"And that someone is likely to be a little boy or girl who can treat you well," the phone with painted lips rolled up to them on his four blue wheels.

"Everybody gets bought?" Jessie asked in astonishment.

"Yes," the green T-Rex simply named Rex answered. "Anything that goes, goes out the door. Everything must go, including you two."

"The only reason I have been here," Bo Peep went on to explain. "Is because I am a decoration, a trademark to what this store represents."

She stood proudly, her eyes closed as she stood before the window. Her arms were raised, widespread as far as they could go. To the other toys, she looked like a martyr, a heavenly martyr who brought joy and peace to the hearts of children by channeling it through the toys she advised and kept watch over like a flock of sheep. Then at the very moment her eyes opened, another pair of eyes were staring back at her. Bo did not scream, but she did falter at the beady eyes, the little pink nose, the bony tail and big ears belonging to a blue furred rat that observed her in the mannerisms of a pedophile. It left behind three claws marks on its right hand on the window, mimicking the sound of wooden sleigh screeching on ice. After twenty seconds of eyes staring at them all, the rat left, his experience having left Jessie traumatized. She gulped.

"I think we'll stay here."

"You have no choice," Rex shook his head sadly. "The chance you'll get of staying here is if a child doesn't hack you up into little pieces."

Bo slammed her staff down.

"This is a G-rated toy store. That means no sex, no booze, no profanity and no violence."

Her tone was harsh and firm and fit for a superior of her own statute. Her word was law, and the toys had great respect for her.

"I was going to say they could come back to be repaired," Rex reasoned.

Then Jessie thought of an idea that had come to her head in an instant without even having to know about it first.

"What if we could be a family?"

This stymied the rest of the toys. It took them ten seconds to move again after they had just heard her words.

"A family?!" they all cried.

"Sure," Jessie smiled. "Then we can all stay together."

"Sorry," the moustache clock said down to them. "But you must do what you are meant to do, not what you want to do."

The sight of a passing man who seemed homeless brought the toys back into a clockwork mode, or at least tried to act like clockwork toys in order to get a good impression on their human owners and bypassers as well as visitors who came to the store. At most times they just stood still like they were meant to do, but this time it was a quick action that needed to be taken into consideration. They wanted to be viewed what people want to see them as, even it caused such a controversy given the robotic manner they were walking.

The band started to play and Woody and Jessie found themselves dancing the tango while their fellow toys did their own style of automatonlike ambulatory. Rex stomped, Mr. Potato Head did the robot, Barbie and Ken held hands, and Bo was twirling like a ballerina, something she had learned from Barbie and couple of other ballerina dolls during her spare time. They were going around in circles, wary of Rex swinging his tail back and forth as Woody began to notice that Jessie seemed to be…hyperventilating.

"Woody, I don't wanna go into the outside world. It feels too strange!"

Try as he might to stop himself from dancing a small foxtrot with their hands locked together, Woody and Jessie could not stop until the man was out of sight. The same went for the other toys. The shop that bore their newfound surroundings were spinning out of synchronization with their own twirling. Jessie, continuing to cry, "I don't wanna leave!", seemed grow louder than the music which intensified the dancing and just when Woody tried to console his girlfriend, his right foot was hanging over the edge of the front shelf. It was too late to reverse himself or for any of the other toys to pull him back once Woody had discovered that Jessie was pulling him down, down five feet to the floor. There was clatter made from the impact and Woody found that his hat was lying three inches away from him. His right hand reached for it, but only thing he got as far as were his fingertips. It was apparent that the pain he felt coursing through his limbs were his joints discombobulated. Bo Peep and the other rushed over to the edge and called down with cupped hands.

"Are you okay?"

What they heard next was an all too familiar reply.

"We've fallen! And we can't get up!"