“What the—”
I felt myself being picked up and whirled around.
If you’re just tuning in, Emma and I had just spent the last five or ten minutes as severed heads on the floor, intermittently making out, because well, what else were we going to do?
But now we were facing Amy, holding us at arms length, now with an ordinary-sized head, that looked vaguely like the original I’d disappeared before.
“It was an accident,” said Emma.
Amy looked past us to something else.
“Looks like it,” then she started laughing. She turned us around. There was Amy’s body, still holding the knife up to its neck, the scattered display of some kind of what looked like bean bags that she’d tripped over, and beyond, my own body slumped over by the sword case.
“Anyways, c’mon. I wanna show you something.”
Amy turned and to walk away.
“Our bodies—” I said.
“Won’t need ‘em. Not for this.”
She carried us to corner on the far end of the room. In large letter blocks a sign spelled out “TOYS”.
“There’s a toy section?” said Emma. “This store is awesome.”
“Just wait.”
We came round to the back of the aisle. If I had lungs, I guess I might have lost my breath. Lining the entire shelf were a bunch of boxes with small little dolls, about two, two and a half feet tall but lacking heads. The box graphics had action shots of kids heads attached to the toy bodies.
There were bodies for all the appropriate kid themes. A princess with a pink dress, a baby-doll, a silver robot.
“Alright kids,” said Amy. “What do you want?”
“I want the chicken walker,” I said. It was pretty simple - a pair of mechanical legs and a platform where you set your head. “Or the velociraptor.”
“Mmm… No. You get the teddy bear.”
“But I don’t want the teddy bear.”
“Shut up. You’ll be cuter this way.”
She set down Emma’s head on the shelf and picked up, sure enough, a headless Teddy bear. I felt a sudden fuzziness all over when she stuck my head on it. I held up a useless stuffed paw in front of me.
“Aww,” said both girls simultaneously.
“And it has ears!” said Amy. She picked me up and carried me over to the mirror. Holding me up, she gave me a big squeeze. Then she set me down and took out two teddy bear ears, which she set over my own, then slid them up to the top of my head.
“You’re staying like this,” she said.
“I’m… no.”
“You can’t stop me.”
“Just watch me.” I took a swipe at her and fell over.
“Awww!” She picked me up and squeezed me again.
“Then I wanna be a princess,” said Emma.
“Nah, don’t think so.”
“Oh c’mon. Just think how cute Joey and I will be!”
“I’ve got another idea for you. Once we finish exploring here.”
Amy showed us the rest of the toy section. There was all sorts of variations on usual toys, just with a magical slant. A pair of mini race cars each piloted by a head. A nerf gun that replaced your arm. A pair of feet with built in roller-skates. A set of “build your own body” kits fashioned after KNex. There was a box showing a smiling girl’s head with two large flywheels on a shaft through her ears.
And the games. Well, those certainly piqued my interest. I shuffled over (you can’t really do anything but shuffle when you’re a teddy bear) to find a board game where you each play as a head, slowly gaining control over the opponents body a piece at a time. Another titled “Emergency!” seemed to be a timed reassembly game, where someone gets blown up and everyone else has to get them together before the time expires. And on the third shelf, well, it was too high for me to see, but it looked like some kind of variant on Twister…
Abruptly, I was picked up. Amy carried me, dangling by a stuffed paw, with Emma tucked under her arm. I was whisked past the sports section, featuring a box that promised it could turn your head into any type of ball, a set of legs with built in springs, a “balance training kit” with an armless boy and girl on the front.
We paused for a minute before a display set up labeled “Freeze Tag.” Pairs of retro ray guns were stacked underneath a poster showing kids running around a bunch of marble statues of presumably other players. Another set promised to turn your friends into frogs, chickens, and other small animals.
From there, Amy took us into a cluttered section devoted to jokes and pranks. Dangling, I was spun around and couldn’t see straight for a moment. I caught a glimpse of “fingerless gloves” the gloves themselves featuring fingers. I imagine they’d make your fingers vanish if you wore them. It’s that kind of store.
She stopped, sitting me down on one of the aisle shelves, and setting Emma next to me. From a box labeled “Joke Glasses” she picked up a pair of thick groucho-style eyeglasses and put them on Emma. When she pulled them off, her eyes were gone from her face, their image hanging disembodied behind the lenses.
Amy then set the same pair on my face. Nothing seemed to happen until she took them off a moment later, my vision following the glasses now. She turned the specs around to face us. Emma remained eyeless, and my face now possessed her eyes, though I couldn’t see out of them. She set the glasses back on Emma, completing the switch.
“Woah, this is weird,” said Emma, as I turned my head to face her.
“I’m already a damn teddy bear,” I said, “Now I have to have girl eyes too?”
“You know Joey,” said Amy in a joking tone, “That mouth of yours is starting to be a problem. And I think I have just the answer.”
She picked us both up again and walked to the next aisle where a machine was set up with two clear boxes at head height with a mass of wires leading from the top of each box to a control panel in the middle. Opposite the machine was a large mirror, evidently so the participants could witness its effects. A sign hung over it reading “The Discombobulator.”
Amy lifted up the first box and set Emma’s head inside, then disconnected my head from the teddy bear body and set it in the other.
“So what’s this do.” I asked, my voice sounding muffled inside the glass.
“We’re gonna find out.” Amy flipped a switch. The machine sparked to life, there was an electric flash, and—-
Everything went white. A moment later, I realized that I had my eyes shut. I opened them and had to shut them again - everything was incredibly blurry. I opened my right eye and took in what had happened.
My vantage point had changed, and for a second I thought I was on the other side of the machine. Then I realized it was only my eye, and that my right eye was now on Emma’s left cheek. Switching to my left eye, I saw it was still in the original spot, but Emma’s nose was now on my forehead, her mouth in the center of my face, and one of her eyes where my mouth had been.
Amy laughed for at least a minute, until her huge head almost tipped her over. That started the two of us laughing, and it all cycled into hysterics. Then she flipped the switch again. And again. And again.
“Enough,” said Emma, finally, her mouth coming oddly enough from my mouth.
“Alright. I’ll try ‘reset’ huh?” She flipped the switch again, and our faces were restored. “Ohh, there’s all sorts of other settings here. ‘Brain swap’, ‘Upside down’. I wonder what ‘Surrealism’ does.”
And zap. I opened my one, giant eye that took up the entirety of my face. I could see that Emma was simply a giant nose. Amy flipped us back.
“Okay. One more.”
I think I wanted to say something. But the machine flipped again.
“Oh wow.”
My vision began to clear, but as it did so, I felt myself crumple, and it was hard to see anything. After a moment, Amy opened the box and I figured out what had happened - our heads had disappeared, leaving only a mask-like face.
“Try Joey on!” said Emma. I guess we could still talk.
Amy did, pressing me up to her face. My vantage point changed, to where I could see from Amy’s point of view, but I had no control over anything. Amy looked closely into the mirror, contorting my face into all sorts of expressions.
“Eww,” she said, after a minute. “I don’t like Joey-face.” She peeled me off and threw us back into the boxes. There was another zap, and things seemed to be normal again.