Chapter 2

Twister

The bedroom door slammed shut and the book bag hit the floor by the side of the bed. Its contents spilled out, books and pens in a line across the old hardwood floor. A well-creased sheet of paper slid out with the pens and calculator.

The shadows in the room stretched out along the floor and disappeared as the sun went down. Janey's breaths slowed, became even as her fingers gave up their grip on the pillow she had been hugging tightly to her chest.

Beneath the bed, Twister felt the change as Janey fell asleep. Her button eyes glowed brighter in the faded light as she became more physical. She let go of her perch beneath the mattress and dropped, her cloth feet silent on the floor. She walked from under the bed and looked up. Janey was still in her school clothes. They both wore dark clothes, but Twister's were heavier and always more worn at the elbows and knees. Their hair was also dark and straight, the doll's cut shorter. Twister had no need to ever hide behind it.

Twister turned, pushed herself all the way into Janey's physical world, and picked up the note. She saw the empty check boxes and the written reply underneath. "No way in hell," she said, reading it aloud.

She sighed and shook her head. "You want to go out with this guy? Seriously?" She folded the note and tucked it inside her jacket. "I didn't mean ask that guy."

The window above Janey's desk was closed, but Twister bent her knees and leapt up. Her sewn fabric hand caught the edge and she vaulted up onto the sill, then grasped the latch and pulled up. The window was heavy, and hard work to pull up, but she had been getting out this way ever since Janey was a little girl and had moved into this room.

She ducked under and eased the window back down before hopping into the nearby maple tree. Halfway down the trunk, she saw the family cat perched on a branch. "Hey, Muffin," she said. The cat hissed a short reply and backed away.

Twister shook her head and jumped to the next branch. "Whatever. Go lick yourself."

On the ground, she left the front yard and turned onto the sidewalk at a jog. The houses passed by quickly and became shabbier and darker. Shadows around the trees deepened as she came closer to the entrance.

The manhole was closed, its iron cover firmly in place. She looked around and spotted the gatekeeper. He sat in the shadow of a bush, his doll-sized lawn chair frayed at the edges. "Hey, Bounce," she said.

"Twister," he said. They knocked their cloth knuckles together. "Here on business?"

She nodded back. "Gotta set an insult right."

He let out a chuckle. "Ring challenge?"

"Hope not," she said. "Just looking for an apology, promise that he'll set his human straight."

"Right. You betcha," Bounce said. He touched the manhole cover and it slid half way open. "Wish I could see the fight."

She turned her stitched mouth down in a frown and shook her head at him. "Yeah, yeah." Then she jumped down onto the first rung.

The streetlights faded as Bounce closed the cover above her, but she could see the way down clearly with her buttons. She picked a spot on the opposite wall, leaped and bounced off it to rebound herself back to the iron rungs. She could drop straight down, but there was water below, only a few inches at the bottom of the storm sewer, but she didn't want to get wet. Wringing the water out of her stuffing would take too much time. She had hoped for a quiet evening in town, but had to take care of Janey's problem with the idiot boy James right away. She'd worked too hard to pull Janey out of her shell. One cruel reply from a boy wasn't going to spoil all that.

Another jump landed her on the concrete walkway near the bottom of the drain. She started forward, the black plastic of her button eyes soaking in the faint light, making each brick and crack ahead of her as easy to see as the streets above.

Her eyes adjusted as the tunnel ahead began to glow. Then she heard the sounds of Voodoo Town. Voices called out to each other, shouted encouragement and curses. She decided there must be fights going on already tonight. Bounce had figured she would be in one of them soon, but she didn't really want to be. Yes, she did end up in the ring on a semi-regular basis, but Janey just seemed to invite insults. And those insults had to be stomped on and kicked away. She knew how much her human went through, had felt most of it firsthand, and didn't want something like this to hurt Janey.

All she had to do was get Squat to rein in his human, James. She just hoped it would be less violent than Bounce thought.

The glow from Voodoo Town brightened and she stepped out of the tunnel on the outskirts of town. She walked straight in toward the brightest section. The layout of the streets and hangouts was constantly changing, depending on the mood of who was in town, but the ring and other challenge arenas were always in the center. Twister wasn't the only one who had reasons to fight.

To her left was the baby section of town. Dolls with tiny humans blew off steam there in tea cup rides and rainbow colored sandboxes. She shuddered at the bright colors and continued past the old folks homes. She put any doll whose human was over twenty-five in the old folks category. Some of the places there were bars with old, worn out pop music; others were coffee shops or all-you-can-eat-buffets. The dolls, with stitches for mouths and stuffing for guts, didn't need to eat or drink anything, but Twister figured the old folks had been around their humans so long that they'd picked up the habit.

She kept walking and soon came to the carnival. That meant she was getting close; the carnival was always near the ring. Inside, she saw a doll strapped to a spinning wheel. Another doll, blindfolded, was throwing pins at it while a small crowd cheered them both on. It looked like a fun diversion, but Twister turned away from it and the other attractions. She had work to do before she could relax.

At the next corner, she stopped and surveyed the area. Cheers echoed from her left side. A challenge was probably going on in the ring there. To her right were more shops, mostly clothing stores and boutique stuffers where dolls could get filled with fu-fu scented stuffing of different colors and textures. She looked down at her worn clothing. Janey worried about what she wore sometimes, but Twister didn't. When there were more holes than jacket, then she'd get something new.

Straight ahead was the message kiosk. She didn't feel any messages pulling her toward the stand, but walked toward it anyway. There were always other dolls around there and they might know where Squat was tonight.