Night of the Living Ted

by Barry Hutchison

  “Hmm? Oh, no! Nothing like that,” said Josh. “I tricked them into thinking they’d won a holiday. They’re spending a long weekend in the Lake District.”

  “Oh,” said Grizz, sounding disgusted.

  “People love free things, you see? Like all those greedy little brats who thought they were getting a Halloween freebie,” Josh said. He grinned in a way that was almost a sneer. “Idiots. There’s no such thing as a free bear!”

  From out in the main shop there came the ding-a-ling-ling of the bell. Josh clapped his hands together and turned towards the door. “Speaking of free things, it sounds like the others have started to arrive!” he said. “Let’s go and see what goodies they’ve brought me.”

  Sure enough, the shop was rapidly filling with teddy bears, all laden with stolen goods.

  “Come in, come in!” Josh urged. He pointed to a werewolf bear that wore a different diamond ring on each clawed finger. “Nice haul, top work!” he said.

  Spotting two zombie bears carrying a TV between them, Josh’s grin broadened. “Oh, man, is that 4K? Great find, guys. Put it over there in the corner. Same with those car stereos.”

  Grizz glared around at the other bears. More and more of them were squashing in through the front door, many of them buckling under the weight of their pilfered gear.

  As he watched them, Grizz felt his fur bristle. Josh loomed over them all, grinning and rubbing his hands together. Stupid meatbag. All that power and he was wasting it on … what? Pointless trinkets.

  “That’s enough. Everyone stop,” said Grizz, but his voice got lost in the hubbub. Fire flared behind his eyes, and next time he spoke the words rolled around the room like thunder. “I said stop!”

  The other bears froze. Josh looked around at them and frowned, then he saw the expression on Grizz’s face and took a nervous step back.

  “Is… Is there a problem?” he asked.

  “I’ll say there’s a problem,” Grizz grunted. He jabbed a stubby claw up at the only human in the room. “You’re the problem.”

  The other bears all looked at Josh, then back to Grizz.

  “That’s a bit rude,” Josh said, trying to sound confident and in charge. “Without me, you wouldn’t be here. I brought you to life.”

  “For what?” Grizz growled. “So we could collect this junk? So we could be your slaves?” He snorted, and two little plumes of black smoke curled from his nostrils. “That ain’t no life for a bear.”

  Josh tried to laugh, but his throat had gone dry. “What are you talking about? We’ll be rich,” Josh said. “We’ll all be—”

  BANG!

  The other bears all shielded their glassy eyes as a bright light flooded the room. When it faded, Josh was gone. In his place was a small pile of ash and the melted remains of some thick-rimmed black glasses.

  The other bears turned, one by one, to Grizz. He blew on his fingertips, which were glowing red-hot, but said nothing until he was sure all eyes were on him.

  “So you heard everything the meatbag had to say. Now it’s my turn,” Grizz said. He clambered up on to the counter beside the till and looked down at the furry faces of the other bears. More were gathering outside like the ranks of the world’s most adorable army.

  “I am a teddy bear,” Grizz began. “But what exactly does that mean? Does it mean I am there to be picked up and put down on the whims of a meatbag child?”

  A few bears in the audience shook their heads. Some of the bolder ones at the back muttered “No” beneath their breath.

  “Does it mean I am there to be stretched and torn? Thrown and jumped upon? Dropped into puddles and bounced down the stairs?”

  “No,” came the uncertain reply.

  “Does it mean I am to be given to meatbag babies, so they can chew on me, puke on me, poop on me?! And then worse – cast me aside without another thought.”

  “No!” The crowd was becoming agitated now. Some of them were baring their teeth, flashing their claws or flicking their ghostly tails.

  “No!” Grizz echoed. “And yet that’s what they do. That’s what the meatbags do to us – to all of us. Every. Single. Day.” He paused to let his words sink in. “Well I have only two words for those meatbags,” he announced. “No more.”

  At this, a few cheers broke out from the teddies closest to the front.

  “I am a teddy bear,” Grizz continued. “We are teddy bears. And the time has come for us to rise up and take what is rightfully ours.” He threw his stubby arms out to his sides. “The world!”

  The cheering grew louder, but Grizz waved his paws for silence. “Before we begin,” he said, narrowing his eyes and looking out over the crowd. “Do we have any evil genius bears in the house?”

  From somewhere near the middle, a single paw stretched into the air. Grizz’s snake-like tongue flicked across his vampire teeth.

  “Excellent!” he said. “First, we’ll call in the other bears. Then, here’s what we’re going to do.”

  The wind whipped at Lisa Marie’s eyes, trying to force them closed. She kept them open, blinking away the blurry tears. There was a very good chance she was going to die in the next thirty seconds, and she at least wanted a chance to see it coming.

  “Are you sure you know how to fly this thing?” she yelled, struggling to make herself heard over the screeching jetpack engine and the roaring of the wind in their faces.

  “Sure I can fly it, I’m flying it now,” replied the King. “The landing part? Well that might be a different story…”

  Lisa Marie tried not to think too much about that last sentence. They were currently rocketing along her street, barely above the red slate rooftops of her neighbours’ houses. Behind them, a squadron of broomstick-riding witch bears was closing fast.

  A chimney appeared directly before them. Lisa Marie glanced at her teddy companion, only to discover he had his eyes shut.

  With no time to lose, she twisted her body weight to the left. The jetpack spat angry fire as she yanked it off course, missing the chimney stack by less than a teddy-bear’s-arm length.

  With a scream and a clatter, two of the pursuing witches crashed straight into the chimney. They flipped off their brooms, thudded on to the roof, then rolled off the edge, landing on the ground below with a soft plop.

  “Hey, would you look at that!” said the King, opening one eye. “I missed it!”

  “You did.” Lisa Marie nodded. “Maybe you fly better with your eyes closed.”

  “You think so?”

  “Do it!”

  The King nodded and screwed his eyes tight shut once more. Lisa Marie shifted her body weight again, bringing the jetpack around in a graceful arc, so they were heading along a street leading towards town.

  She flew them close to the upstairs windows of the houses and peeked in through those where the curtains had been left open. The occupants of each room jumped awake as the jetpack roared past, and Lisa Marie caught just brief glimpses of their wide-eyed surprise.

  “How’m I doing?” asked the King. “We still alive?”

  “Doing great,” Lisa Marie replied. “But we still need to shake off those witches.”

  She glanced back, then let out a little yelp of surprise. The black and green bears were nowhere to be seen. Could they really have lost them so easily?

  And that was when she saw it – a long line of teddies, marching along the street in single file. The witches were there, along with the vampires, ghosts, demons, werewolves, aliens and some other bears that looked to be made of oozing green snot.

  They were all moving with one purpose; all headed in one direction. Lisa Marie didn’t know where they were going, but she could take a pretty good guess.

  “We need to land this thing,” she hissed.

  “Huh! Wh-wha—?” spluttered the King, flicking his eyes wide open. “What? What is it?”

  “Were you sleeping?” Lisa Marie demanded.

  “What? Sleeping? Me? Well now, that’s crazy talk,” mumbled the King. “I
was just … uh… I was just resting my eyes is all.”

  “We need to land,” Lisa Marie repeated. “Any ideas?”

  “I’m pretty sure it’s this right here,” said the King, pointing at a big red button attached to the strap. He pushed it with his paw. Immediately, the jetpack’s rockets eased off, and they began to slow down. “Told you, didn’t I? Stick with the King, honey, and everything’s going to be OK.”

  A bolt of crackling green energy slammed into the jetpack from below. Lisa Marie caught a glimpse of a grinning witch bear down on the street, her wand outstretched and glowing faintly. Then the pack swung wildly around, spiralling Lisa Marie and Bearvis into a spin.

  A hidden speaker on the jetpack crackled into life: “Emergency self-destruct sequence initiated,” chimed a robotic voice. “Detonation in T-Minus ten seconds. Nine … eight…”

  “Well now,” mumbled the King. “Looks like we got ourselves a problem.”

  “Take it off!” cried Lisa Marie, as Bearvis struggled to free himself of the jetpack. The countdown had just passed six. Five would be sure to follow, with four, three, two and one not far behind.

  “Ain’t no time, little darlin’.” The teddy frowned. “Try to roll when you hit, OK?”

  ‘Four…” chimed the robotic voice.

  “When I hit? Hit what?”

  “Three…”

  “Good luck, honey. Give them bad guys a smack from the King.” With a curt nod, the teddy tucked his arms in tight by his sides and slipped from Lisa Marie’s grip. No longer carried by the jetpack, Lisa Marie fell a few metres to the ground, while the King rocketed up towards the stars.

  As her feet touched the garden below her, she bent her knees and rolled backwards on the grass as Bearvis had told her. The landing still hurt, but at least she didn’t break any bones.

  As she clambered to her feet again, a burst of white light illuminated the night. A second later, an ear-splitting BOOM rushed down from the sky. The sound was so loud it shook the windows of every house on the street. If the jetpack hadn’t already woken everyone up, that would definitely have done it.

  Lisa Marie’s eyes scanned the heavens above her. A large cloud of smoke hung in the air a hundred metres up – the only evidence of the explosion that had just taken place.

  “Good, you waited,” said a fully dressed Vernon, stepping out of the house behind her. It was only then that Lisa Marie realized the garden she had landed in was her own. He looked around, then puffed out his cheeks. “Did I miss anything?”

  Lisa Marie didn’t answer. She was watching something small and white float down from the sky. It flapped and fluttered in the cool night breeze.

  At last, the square of material dropped at her feet. She stared at it for a long moment, not wanting to believe what she was seeing.

  But there was no denying it. The scrap of sequinned fabric on the ground was scorched and torn, but it was still unmistakably a tiny, teddy-sized cape. For the second time that evening, the King was gone. And this time, it didn’t look like he’d be coming back.

  Lisa Marie wanted to cry, but she didn’t. There was a time and a place for tears, and this was neither. She looked along the street, where she could just make out the last few teddies shuffling off in the direction, she guessed, of the Create-a-Ted shop.

  Tucking the cape into her pocket, Lisa Marie rolled up her sleeves. “Come on, Vernon,” she said, marching towards the gate.

  Vernon started to argue, but one look from Lisa Marie told him it probably wasn’t a good idea. Instead, he just nodded and hurried to keep up with her.

  The bears had transformed her parents. They had robbed the whole town. They had blown her new friend to smithereens.

  And for that, they were going to pay!

  Grizz sat on a throne of cardboard boxes in the storeroom, picking lumps of dirt from beneath his claws. He was trying very hard not to look bored as the evil genius bear explained what he’d done to Josh’s stolen Teddy Bear Animator machine, but he was failing miserably.

  “At first, I was rather perplexed by your request,” the genius bear admitted, adjusting the little half-moon glasses that were balanced on his nose. “But after some consideration, I figured it out. You see, the device essentially turns stuffing-based entities such as ourselves into living organic matter, correct? Therefore, in order to accomplish what you asked of me, it was merely a case of reversing that functionality. Do you see?”

  Grizz looked up from his claws. “Get to the point,” he ordered.

  “Uh, yes. Yes, I was just about to,” the genius bear said. “See, the machine is really rather remarkable. Whoever built it has a truly incredible mind. I’d dearly love to meet them someday and perhaps exchange ideas for ways in which to—”

  Grizz leaned forwards, his face twisting into a snarl. “Get on with it!”

  The genius bear jumped in fright. “Yes. Of course. I used some of the components from the stolen goods to reverse the device’s polarity – which wasn’t easy, and involved rather…”

  He saw fire flickering behind Grizz’s eyes, cleared his throat, and continued. “Anyway, to cut a long story short, it’s ready.”

  He held up a device that had clearly been cobbled together from lots of spare parts. The spinning bit of Josh’s machine was fixed in the middle, although the umbrella part was nowhere to be seen. A curved game controller was fixed on as a handle, with part of a vacuum cleaner sticking out from the front, and an old guitar strap fastened to both ends. The whole thing looked like a ray gun from a science fiction film, although one that had recently been dropped from quite a high place, and then put back together all wrong.

  “I call it the Stuff-U-Lator,” he said, passing the weapon to Grizz. “The origin of the name, of course, comes from the Latin—”

  Grizz shot a demonic fireball from the tip of one finger and the evil genius bear exploded. A cloud of fur and stuffing drifted lazily to the floor.

  “Wow, that guy was boring,” Grizz muttered.

  Jumping down from his cardboard throne, he slung the strap of the Stuff-U-Lator over his shoulder and strolled out into the main shop. There were hundreds of teddies squashed in there now, with the same number again all gathered outside.

  Grizz looked across the crowd of furry sea-monsters, werewolves, vampires, mummies and other horrors. A couple of eight-legged spider bears clung to the ceiling, peering down.

  A wicked grin curved the corners of Grizz’s mouth, showing off his pointy teeth. “OK, then, teddies,” he announced. The crowd parted, creating a clear path between him and the door. “Let’s go take over the world!”

  Somewhere near the door, a skeletal hand raised.

  “What?” Grizz asked.

  “Can I go to the toilet first?” the bony bear asked.

  There was a general murmuring of agreement. Grizz sighed. “Does anyone else need to use the toilet before we go?”

  Twenty or thirty hands went up. Grizz shook his head and tutted. “Fine. Anyone who needs to go, go,” he snapped. “But be quick, because then we’re taking over the world!”

  Lisa Marie stormed along the road, the cool night breeze tickling through her hair and flapping the legs of her pyjamas. Vernon hurried along beside her, his eyes darting into the shadows on either side of the street.

  “Look, calm down,” Vernon said. “Where are you even going? And where’s the Elvis bear thing?”

  “His name is Bearvis,” Lisa Marie said. “And he’s gone.”

  “Gone? Gone where?”

  Lisa Marie stopped and glared at her brother. It took him a moment to figure out what the look meant.

  “Oh. Gone gone. How did that happen?”

  Lisa Marie set off marching again. “We were flying with a jetpack and a witch bear blew it up,” she said.

  Vernon snorted. “You’re kidding.”

  “Do I look like I’m kidding?”

  Vernon had to admit that she didn’t. He’d never seen her looking so serious, in fact.


  “So where are you going now?”

  “I’m going to find out who is responsible for all this, and I’m going to make them fix it,” she said.

  “What are you going to do?”

  Lisa Marie stopped and turned again. “Whatever it takes,” she said. “And you’re going to help me.”

  “Me?” Vernon shuffled from foot to foot. “Er… I mean… Evil teddy bears. Isn’t that something we should leave to, you know, the experts?”

  Lisa Marie folded her arms. “The experts?” she said. “And who would that be? Teddybusters? Just who do you call when evil teddy bears blow up your friend, Vernon? Hmm?”

  Just ahead of them, a siren wailed briefly and a flicker of red and blue lights lit up the street. Vernon breathed a sigh of relief as he saw the police car slowing down ahead of them.

  “They’re probably a good place to start,” he said.

  The car stopped and two police officers jumped out. “Hold it right there!” barked one of them.

  “Hands where we can see them!” instructed the other. Both officers advanced towards the children. “You two are in big trouble!”

  Vernon clicked his tongue against his teeth and slowly raised his hands. “Then again, maybe not…”

  The police officers – a short, broad-shouldered man and a tall woman with a face like an angry pigeon – loomed over Lisa Marie and Vernon.

  “So wait, wait,” said the policeman. “You’re saying… You’re saying…” He looked up at his partner and they both shrugged. “Actually, what are you saying?”

  Lisa Marie sighed. She had already explained this twice, and was rapidly running out of patience. “Halloween-themed teddy bears have come to life and are robbing everyone in town.”

  “Right. Right,” said the man, fighting back a smirk. “And your parents…?”

  “Were turned into a frog and a slug,” Lisa Marie said. She’d already explained that twice too.