Today the heater didn't come on and we were glad. That hot air combined with the dust on our fur was a mud pie waiting to happen. It was the precursor to the kind of mud you can smell miles away in the Rhinoceros cage. We'd been stuck in this hammock for year after year, on top of each other, smothering each other, covered with swap cooler dust and nothing to do but watch the girl sleep. We had a perfect view of her bed. We could remember the days when she would take us with her to the grocery store or let us sleep in her bed with her. those days were gone, and we were left to go blind from fluorescent light and dust.

The pink bear was the bitterest of them all. All he could talk about was the day the girl got him and how excited he was. He was from Texas, and he was the girl's favorite for a long time. She even had a record that had a song about him on it. The years of attention had spoiled him, and his plush was wasting away to a lumpy, dull carpet-like flesh.

The Pooh Bear was the newest, and he was still soft. He would constantly talk about the day she brought him to school. That day it snowed, and he remembers being very cold in his little velveteen shirt. The string that was once his mouth was loose, and he talked with a weird lisp. He had long conversations with the Dumbo, who was really old, about the days in the store in Disneyland. It all seemed like a made-up dream to me.

I was once a source of pride for the girl. When she got me, she showed me to everyone she saw. She held me up and she talked excitedly, and then she tucked me into her backpack and took me home. I used to sit on her desk with the bear who held a little pouch. He wasn't much of a conversationalist- I think he was way to concerned as to why he was holding a pouch and what it was supposed to be for, because there was never anything in it.

Then one day, the girl picked me up, and put me in the strange hammock thing. She made sure I was on the bottom, so she could see me from below. She would smile at me every night before she went to sleep. I didn't have to worry about dust, because Dumbo and Pooh were above me, and they got it all. I was happy in my little hammock world.

Until the day when she forgot about her pride in me. I guess the obstacle she overcame to get me didn't matter anymore; once a girl reaches a certain age, they forget about the smaller steps they took as a child. I would look down at her from my hammock and wait for her smile, but it never was directed towards me. I began to feel trapped in a prison of polyester and nylon. Life seemed like a never-ending cycle of lonely days and dusty nights. I began to have these dreams about my childhood. I would wake up in the night, sweating blue fuzz, with horrible images of silver shining claws grabbing at me. I had cold flashes and I saw distorted faces, looking at me with greedy stares. Children raced through my head. I stopped sleeping to avoid the dreams. Pretty soon, my little stuffed world lost all sense of time. I had developed an addiction to the moss that was growing on the zebra; if I shot it into my veins it produced a euphoric feeling that I couldn't get enough of. All the other animals laughed at me and spit on me, calling me a worthless junkie. One day, I took so much of the stuff that I began to see lights dancing around me. A pair of roller skates came up to me and struck up a conversation.

"Hey there, beary, wotcha doin' with that there fryin' pan? Are ye gonna fry your fur innit? Y'nae ye ken always eat y'self when there's no one left."

A bag of popcorn began singing Push It by Salt and Pepa. I tried to scream but my mouth was full of foos ball men, hitting a ball back and forth. It bounced off my teeth and ran down my throat and I couldn't breath and the men were laughing, and yelling, get the ball, ya idiot, the damn bear swallowed it, the idiot so I tried to get it out but it wouldn't budge, it said it liked the view from the east window. Then there was complete blackness and I felt like I was slowly falling into a bed of electrical tape.

A loud noise woke me up. I was covered in a disgusting black goo, and the symptoms of withdrawl were setting in. My stomach was leaping around my insides and it wanted out. The noise was getting closer and closer and then suddenly it stopped. The hammock began shaking, and the noise started again. I heard screaming from above.

"POOH!"; I yelled, "WHAT IS GOING ON UP THERE?"

"SHE'S VACUUMING US!!!" was the muffled reply from several of my hammock-mates. I watched in fascination as the dust layers began to disappear from the Pink Bear's head. One by one, the animals were picked up, vacuumed, and then dropped out of my sight. I began having delirious dreams about where they were being dropped. I remembered blue carpet and how soft it was. I hoped the other dolls from the old days were still down there. I couldn't wait to show them how great this moss felt in your blood.

I felt a rush of fresh air and she girl picked me up. Her hand felt warm and dry, and I longed for some more moss to make the horrible feeling in my stomach go away so I could enjoy this moment to its fullest. She brushed me with the vacuum, and layers of dust and goo were lifted from my fur. I waited anxiously for the descent to the floor. She dropped me, and I landed with a thud of hard wood. The animals around me were either knocked unconscious or waning into unconsciousness. My head felt worse than my stomach, and I fell unconscious.

When I woke, I was in the girl's hands again, She was looking at me with an expression I remember with pangs of nostalgia. She touched my light blue nose and I hoped she would put me down next to the zebra so I could get more moss. I really needed a fix. Instead, she held me tighter and began to talk.

"This little bear,"she began, and my heart surged with a warmth I hadn't felt in I couldn't remember how long. I knew that my true importance in her lie had been renewed. She was holding me up high like she used to, her voice had that same glimmer of pride it once had. I waited patiently for the next, sweet words.

"This little bear was the only thing I ever won from a Challenger machine at Skate Country." She said proudly. I had never felt so important in my life. She remembered. After all that time, she still remembered how much I meant to her. I sighed with contentment. I suddenly felt a falling sensation again, and when I woke up from unconsciousness, I found myself in a cardboard box in an alleyway, the next pickup for a truck on it's way to Value Village. Luckily, the zebra was in the box close to me, and he and I cooked up some moss to hold us over for the trip to our new and hopeful more exciting life.