Thanks for reviewing, Darth Sith'ari, Bunnies-Take-Over-The-Universe and Sideshow Cellophane 26 (your reviews actually gave me the ideas for the direction this story is going)! OK, here we will have a familiar face from the last story!
Oh, and I forgot the disclaimer: I do not own any characters from "The Simpsons" or the "Goosebumps" series. I only own Stephanie and the scenes in the dreams.
I was floating in this scene, in white nothingness. Nothing was said, but I still heard someone asking me "Do you wish reincarnation?"
"No." my character's voice whispered. "But is there someone that could take a life like my own, but be able to handle it? I feel so guilty about what I did."
"Hmmm...a soul with fire." The voice of no voice whispered. "Yes...Springfield, Oregon, USA." I gasped inwardly. Was this girl really wanting to pass on her own life to me? I didn't believe it until I heard – or rather, knew – the voice speak again.
"Daughter of Homer Jay Simpson and Marjorie Bouvier. Young unmarried couple, jobless as of today. Do you still want to continue? You are going to make this girl's life difficult, even if she comes through stronger for it."
I felt the girl nod. "If she learns from my mistakes, it's worth it."
Then-
"Steph, wake up!"
"Lisa, it's still night, isn't it?" I groaned.
"It's almost seven thirty!" my sister protested. "And for once, you didn't actually wake me up with your talking."
I sighed, and then thought of something. "Lise, you're Buddhist. So you believe in reincarnation, right? What really happens?"
Lisa shrugged. "I believe in reincartion, sure. But I also believe in karma, like if you're good, you come back as a human. If you don't do good things, you'd probably come back as a dung beetle."
I held a hand up. "OK, OK. So if there was, say, a girl who did everything she was told and tried her best to please everyone, would that mean good karma?"
Lisa simply shrugged again. "I guess."
We went to the mall in the next town that weekend. After about ten minutes, Mom let me and the others go off on our own. Both Lisa and Bart went to some toy shop. I wandered around, looking for an art shop, and that's when I came across the opshop. I went in, and it immediately reminded me of the story Lisa told one Halloween about an evil Krusty doll coming from a place called One Stop Evil Shop. I nearly expected the guy behind the counter to tell me that they sold weird items and Frogurt.
The shop was dark and crowded, but a few things caught my attention. I found a very cool black choker necklace, and was just about to buy it when a sunbeam caught my attention. I turned, and it had come from the glass eyes of a doll, who sat in the window, smirking like an idiot.
I considered buying the thing out loud. "Hmm...this thing would probably freak out people. I would just love to see that." I picked it up, and then discovered that it was a ventriloquist dummy. "Even better." I grinned, and moved his mouth, trying not to let my lips move, and made him sing "Wonderful, they called me wonderful,
So I said wonderful, if you insist." from Wicked.
"So you're buying this." the man said as I took the dummy and the necklace up to the counter. "He's been here for about a year now. No one wants him. People say he's frightening."
"Exactly why I want him." I grinned. "So did he come with a name or anything?"
"Apparently, he's had many owners, and they've all called him Slappy." the shop owner told me. "He's pretty old – made in the nineteenth century, probably."
"Cool." I smiled. Finally, I walked out, the necklace on and Slappy in the bag.
Back in the car on the way home, everyone asked me what I'd bought.
"Well," I said, "It's a ventriloquist dummy." I said, bringing him out. "The shop owner said he's really old, and all his former owners have called him Slappy. Weird name, huh?"
"He looks frightening." Lisa said, edging away. I pushed Slappy at her.
"He's a freaking dummy! Just freaking touch him! It's not that scary!" I told her.
"Get that thing away from me, Stephanie!" Lisa screamed. Yes, my levelheaded sister was freaking out, just because of a stupid dummy. Sometimes I wondered if her brain was loaded into the wrong person, when she started acting that babyish.
"Stephanie, leave your sister alone." Mom ordered.
"Fine, spoil my fun." I muttered, scowling. "Bet no one would say that if it was really him doing that."
That night, my dream was related to Slappy, which was a lot more unnerving than it sounds. I'd stuck him in the closet at Lisa's request, but "out of sight, out of mind" is never going to be accurate, no matter how many times that naïve bimbo said it. Slappy was still in my mind.
"Well, Ali Baba had them 40 thieves, Scheherazade had a thousand tales," I heard my character sing.
"But Master, you're in luck cause up your sleeves, you've got a slaving girlfriend never fails.
You've got some power in your corner now, some heavy ammunition in your camp.
You've got some punch, piyazz, yahoo and how, see all you gotta do is rub my lamp,
And I'll say, "Mr Slappy, sir, what will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, jot it down, you ain't never had a slave like me..."
The whole song was a parody of a song from the Disney movie "Aladdin", but my character replaced the word "friend" with "slave". That was just creepy. My character seemed to be sure that this guy was called Slappy, just like the ventriloquist dummy I'd bought, but how would I come across the same tname that didn't even sound like a proper name in the first place?
When I woke up the next morning, I found Lisa yelling at me again. "This time you were singing, Stephanie! Sleep-singing! And what's more, it was from a Disney movie!"
"Like I can help it!" I shot back.
At this point, Lisa stopped. Suddenly, her face softened. "Steph, is there something strange happening in your dreams?" she asked softly. "You know, if you want to talk about it, I won't tell."
I considered this. Lisa was a good listener, and I wouldn't have even thought about telling anyone else in the family, apart from possibly Maggie. Mom wouldn't understand, and Bart and Dad would just laugh at me.
I thought about it, and made my decision. "I'm fine." I told Lisa firmly. "It's just a recurring dream, and strange things happen in it."
Although, I have to say, I was a little spooked out, when later that day, a song I had never heard came on in a shop I went into, and I was able to softly sing along, knowing all the lyrics. "Here you sit in your high-backed chair, wonder how the view is from there
I wouldn't know cause I like to sit, upon the floor, yeah upon the floor..."
Although I only became really spooked after I got to the last line, "What if I'm a siren, singing gentlemen to sleep?
Sleep...sleep...sleep..."
As you probably guessed, Stephanie heard that song in her dreams. After all my Emilie Autumn refefences in "Slave To Passion", I have to put in quite a few here as well, although Stephanie isn't so much of a fan. The lyrics come from "What If" one of my favourite EA songs from her album "Enchant". Go find it on YouTube, it's so beautiful! Sorry this took so long.
One more thing. I recently updated my "Aladdin" story "One Jump Ahead Of Myself" which has, if I say so myself, an original twist on the "OC falls into Aladdin" type story. PLEASE read and review it? It would mean a lot to me.
