The shopping mall was silent, a strange sight to see for a place normally bustling with life and commotion. It was early; the sun had barely reached the sky by this time, and yet as the morning’s first rays of light were cast through the windows of the mall, the silence was broken. Between the rows of shops a lone pair of footsteps echoed down the hall, accented after each step with the click of a cane against the stone floor. The man walked at a brisk pace through the space in front of him. He had a definitively off look to him; if it was not for the fact that he was alone, he most definitely would have stuck out of the crowd of the mall. Donning black dress shoes, black slacks, black jacket and black cane, he seemed to more likely be making his way to a funeral than through the mall. The only accent of different color on him came from his white button down shirt and a maroon band worn around his black short-brimmed hat, only seeming to confirm the starkness of his clothes. And yet he seemed young, 30 at the oldest, an odd sort by any standards truly.
The man walked for some time, never even seeing another person walk by aside from the sparse security staff reluctantly waiting to leave from their night shifts before, and yet he hurried on at the same pace despite the emptiness around him, until soon enough he stopped in his tracks and faced up at a store. Much like the man, the store didn’t seem to quite fit its surroundings: it was a toy store, and a rather stylized one at that. The front of the store alone had two large bay windows to its right side, with red upholstery lining their frames as well as the floors inside. The rest of the front seemed to have a dark wood finish to it, and above it all hung a large sign with sharp and bright letters: Wonderland Toy Shop. Looking up briefly, the man approached the enterance of the store with his quickened stride, and with a solid stamp of his cane against the ground, the doors before him opened as he entered the still unlit shop.
Standing in the darkness for a few seconds, the man slowly removed his jacket and cast it onto a coat rack behind him, shortly before moving deeper into the store. With every step forward, he would stamp his cane against the red carpeted floor of the store, and with each strike the shop seemed to spring to life. Over head the lights began to flash on one by one, as below the space began to appear out of the dark, unveiling shelves packed with all manner of toys. Each aisle was filled with specific kinds of toys, ranging from everything from rag toys to plastic dolls, with displays lining the area in front of the bay windows in the front of the store. This was all a familiar sight to the man, as he moved quickly to the back of the store, running his hand against the wooden lining of an aisle as he walked. Turning the corner to reach the back corner of the store, the man approached a large dark wooden door labeled “Employees Only” and dipped within without a moment’s hesitation.
The room around him now had a distinctly chaotic feel to it. The space seemed to be used for all sorts of jobs; storage, repairs, and whatever else the store saw fit by the hectic look of things. The length of the room seemed to stretch for the length of the store, but was much wider for what you’d expect a back room to hold. Regardless, the man now began to navigate his way around boxes of unopened boxes of toys to the other side of the room. But as he reached about the middle of the way through the room, he slowed his steps and turned to face the wall beside him. There, on a set of hooks high on the wall, hung a life sized marionette. The wooden doll was dressed head to foot in an elf costume, with a tight green dress, droopy hat, pointed shoes, and long stripped stockings going up her joined legs. Her body hung limp, pulled upwards only by the strings pulled tight as they tugged at her joints, with her head resting against her chest as the rest of her dangled above the ground.
Starring up at the puppet, the suited man slowly raised his arm and rapped his knuckles against the girl’s wooden stomach. “Wake-y wake-y kiddo, I don’t pay you just to hang around all day, do I?” The man said in a playful tone. Slowly at first, the toy blinked. Once, then twice, and soon enough the wooden girl lifted her head to look at the man in front of her. Unfazed, the man stood there smiling up at the puppet as she stretched her arms. “Oh, hey there Mr. J.. Christ, it’s morning already?” she said as her words were half muffled under an exaggerated yawn, with her wooden mouth, little more than what one would see on a ventriloquist dummy, sliding wide open as she did this. “Ugh…so where you gonna put me today? The window, outside the store, what? Just please don’t leave me lying around for the kids to play with me again, some of the guys who come into the store are a bit to hands on with their play.” The toy had a tired look on her face even remembering, but just then the man chimed in. “Don’t act so strung up, you’re a toy, you should love getting played with, especially with the guys.” He said as he began to walk away with a grin on his face, the marionette still on the wall. “I’ll set you up later; right now I need to get our cashier set up!” With that the puppet sighed as she slumped back on her strings. “God I hate his puns..” she mumbled as the man walked to the back of the room.
Finally making his way to the back wall, the man pushed a box aside and stepped into a small clearing in front of a workshop counter. The desktop was covered in gears and pieces of toys, with the shelves above littered with little unfinished projects scattered throughout. Right now though, the man simply stared right ahead at another large toy, this time propped up on top of the counter. She was a stuffed doll, and a large one at that. If she could stand up on her own she’d be 5 feet tall, but now she was simply slumped over with her legs sprawled out over the side of the desk, her head cocked to her side. Her hair was a jet black streak of black yarn, currently half covering the toy’s surprising detailed face: her green eyes were stitched on patterned cloth, with her eyebrows a thin stitching of the same yarn as her hair. Her lips seemed to be a different texture of cloth as well, standing out on her face with a light red color to them, pulled into the slight sideways smile as the doll sat silently. Her clothes were strange for a doll though: she was dressed simply, with a white cotton tank top and dark blue jeans going all the way down to her ankles, where they were tucked into two black boots. Playfully, the man tapped one of the doll’s boots with his foot, watching her leg swing back and forth for a moment. He extended his arm to the doll’s chin, gently lifting her head to meet her eyes, and after a second he spoke clearly through the silent room. “Morning beautiful, miss me?” At that, he quickly moved his hand to the doll’s waist as he picked her up, sliding her under his arm. “It’s Friday, we’re always busy on Friday, so let’s get you out there right away,” he said as he walked back down out the door to the shop. All the while, the doll simply slung in his grip, drooping up and down with each step he took.
Back out into the main room of the store, the sun had risen higher than before as light began to flood in from the skylight of the mall outside. In his typical quickened pace, the man made his way to the register counter next to the front of the store, and as he approached he plopped down the plush in the stool directly behind the register. The doll slouched in the seat, her chest falling against the counter in front of her for support, but without missing a beat the man turned away and began to walk back to the back room. After a few steps, he stopped in place and slowly turned back to the counter. “Ah, I almost forgot,” he said with a joking smile on his face. He then extended arm out to the doll and snapped his fingers loudly, and immediately the doll sat up in her seat. Quickly, a visible change swept over her body: starting at her finger tips, the light cloth of the doll’s body began to give way to skin, real skin, with the change slowly making its way up her arms to her shirt. The change swept over her neck and chest, reaching up to her head seconds later. Soon enough color rushed to her checks as the wave moved past, and her eyes began to blink. The girl began to move her arms now, reaching upward to stretch as the change rushed its way through her hair, finishing the transformation leaving her with thick black curls in place of her yarn. At that, the now completely human girl yawned as she lowered her arms back to her side. “You know,” she said still yawning slightly, “you really shouldn’t change me right next to the windows. Who knows who might see something?” The man only chuckled and raised his hat to the girl behind him as he began to walk back to the room behind him. “Morning to you too Alice!” he said as he ducked back through the door. With a slight smile on her face, the girl leaned back on her stool against the wall. “Morning, Joel.” she said quietly, looking out to the morning sun breaking just outside the window.