Chapter 24: Mommy Tells All

"Elli."

Hearing a soft familiar voice, Elli woke up. Instead of being in her usual bed, she was in a white bed with curtains on both sides. But when she looked up at the ceiling, Mommy was staring down at her.

"Where did you take me?" Elli asked, rubbing her eyes.

"You're in the Medical Room," Mommy explained as she stretched down from the ceiling and stood on her two legs. "Let's see how your leg is doing."

Before Elli could protest, Mommy lifted the covers off the bed Elli was lying on. To Elli's horror, her left knee was bandaged up with patches of dried blood on it. Mommy then meticulously removed the bandages, revealing several puncture wounds in the knee.

"Does it hurt when Mommy does this?" Mommy said as she poked Elli's left knee gently.

Instinctively, Elli cried out in pain. When this happened, she remembered what happened the previous night.

"Miss Delight, the one with the weapon she calls Barb, attacked me outside of Home Sweet Home," Elli said.

"And what were you doing outside Home Sweet Home in the middle of the night?" Mommy asked. "That's where Mommy found you."

This made Elli clam up.

Mommy frowned and cleaned the blood-soaked bandages in a nearby washbasin. "Did you hope to speak to Poppy again?"

Elli couldn't believe her ears. So she stuttered, "I-I don't know who you're talking about."

"Don't lie to me, Elli!" Mommy snapped as she slammed her rubber fists into the washbasin, causing it to shatter. "I'm your mother, and you should always tell the truth!"

"But you haven't been honest either!" Elli argued, not wanting to show Mommy how afraid she actually was. "I know what's really going on here, in this place."

Elli immediately regretted what she said as Mommy turned to face her with a malicious smile on her face.

"So you were standing near the door where Kayla's remains were dumped carelessly," Mommy said confidently. "I saw you and Rez running back to Home Sweet Home from the ceiling of Playcare the night Kayla left, but I wasn't sure if you had seen the contents of the bag or not. Then when you and your friends' scores on the games started to go down, I knew something was up. For that reason, I put in a request to have Kissy Missy come here to help me watch you guys more efficiently.

"To my disappointment, you three still continued to behave strangely which made me realize that you might be trying to learn more about the factory in order to find a means of escape. But I had no way to prove my suspicion until I spoke with the Miss Delight sisters on Parent-Teacher Conference Day, who had been conducting their own investigations of you and your friends after the odd extra-credit assignments. Plus, the Miss Delight that caught you three standing near the door overheard you talking about Poppy. And so we hatched a plan to trick you into sneaking out again when I took away your DogDay plushie so you could meet Poppy and we could catch both of you in the act. Unfortunately, Miss Delight went overboard on injuring you and Poppy never showed up. She must have known it was a trap…."

As Mommy seemed lost in thought, Elli tried to get out of bed. Her left knee stung like a thousand needles were being poked into it, so she could barely move.

"While I commend you and your friends for being quite clever, there's no way to escape from this place," Mommy said as she shook the bloody water dripping from her rubbery hands in the nearby sink. "Believe me, I tried."

Thinking back to the night Poppy showed her the secret panel, Elli realized what Mommy was implying. "Were you one of the kids that Poppy tried to help escape?"

"Before I became this, I was a bright girl just like you," Mommy responded, cleaning up the broken pieces of the washbasin. "Then one day my friend Ollie showed me a videotape he found in Caretaker Claire's office, which he snuck into with Poppy's help. It was the final episode of Smiling Critters, but it was strangely dark and unfinished. So we told our other friend Theodore about it and he consulted his 'imaginary' friend the Prototype, who revealed the truth to him about what was really happening to the orphans in the factory. We believed him at the time and made plans to escape with Poppy's help.

"However, Poppy betrayed us. She didn't show up when she was supposed to, and because we took too long to wait for her we got caught by the factory workers. The scientists then decided to get us 'adopted' earlier than our pre-scheduled time. We were put to sleep using the Red Smoke, and when I woke up I was in this body while Theo was in CatNap's body."

Elli pictured CatNap's menacing face in her head, not believing he used to be a child.

"Do you know what happened to Ollie?" Elli asked cautiously.

"No," Mommy shook her head. "I never saw him again, even in this form. So I don't know if he's truly dead or alive in some way."

Taking all this information in, Elli clenched her hands. "If you knew what was really happening here, then why aren't you helping me and my friends? Why are you working with the very people that turned you into the monster you are now?"

"A monster?" Mommy laughed haughtily. "I don't see myself like that, Elli. Though I was initially horrified at my appearance, I discovered how powerful this new body is and used it to my advantage. Because of that, the factory workers are afraid of me, CatNap, and all the other living toys made from the Bigger Bodies Initiative."

"But if the factory workers are so afraid of toys like you, why were you created?"

"Simple! The higher-ups wanted to cut labor costs. Why spend so much money on the hundreds of human workers that operate this factory, who expect to get paid decent wages as well as compensation for any accidents that might happen on the job when they could just be replaced by a handful of nearly indestructible toys who can do twice the number of jobs a human worker does without needing to be paid?"

Elli didn't fully understand what Mommy was saying, but figured as long as she kept Mommy talking that she would get the answers she had been looking for.

"I guess that makes sense," Elli fibbed. "But where does the Prototype fit into all this?"

To be continued…