Bo Bedson Part 1

Some teddy bears in this life are treated with intolerable cruelty. Fact. They are submitted to all forms of psychological and physical abuse in their lives. Fact. And most importantly of all, they are very aware of it. Very true fact.



Now you, being the reader, most likely believe that the stuffed treasures you buy at the store are purely inanimate and thoughtless objects. Well you’re quite wrong. They think quite a lot actually but just you try making your thoughts verbal with a sewn mouth full of cotton. Oh and they most certainly do feel, that one goes out to all of you who would abuse your teddy bears, ahem.



This is the story of one such teddy bear.



One day Bo Bedson the bear found himself on a warehouse shelf. He wasn’t too sure why he was there, but something about the chilly breeze from the air conditioning, the grey light that came in through the dirty window and the hard concrete floor below told him it wasn’t for a good reason. Certainly he couldn’t recall doing anything bad in his short life, so he must have done something awful in a past cuddly toy life. Maybe he’d cut a poor child’s finger with a loose thread or something like that.



But these were only really the background thoughts. At that precise moment the only thought in Bo’s head was, “Bugger.” Hardly groundbreaking, but then a bear that can think at all is grounds enough for amazement don’t you think? In any case it was nicer than what all the bears were thinking of the newbie who’d blocked their limited view, “What a wanker.” But of course he wasn’t to know they were thinking that and I would be most grateful if you were never to tell him.



So far Bo thought that he’d had quite a miserable lot in his life. His creator had barely spared a second to glance at him before he’d been chucked into a cardboard box at the other end of the conveyor belt along with a lot of identical versions of himself all wearing the same slightly upset expression. The only thing he truly knew at the start of his world was his name, Bo, Bo Bedson.



After spending half an hour in the cardboard box with the clones Bo was aware of a very strange lifting sensation all around him, and it wasn’t until the cardboard box was jostled quite violently that he realized that he was being carried out of somewhere huge in the arms of a very mean looking man with a shaved head and a black t-shirt with some weird orange insignia on it.



A moment later and the shaven head man had placed them all on a surface and was pulling out a strange gun type of item and closing the lid of the cardboard box on all of his clones altogether. After a quick tearing sound above them that you or I would know to be tape sealing the flaps of a box Bo realized that he was being left in complete and utter darkness. It was about this time that he realized that he also suffered from claustrophobia. But he barely had time to think about this before the lifting sensation had started again.



After the lifting ordeal Bo was shoved into the back of something else large and very stuffy with four walls and a strange roaring sound all around him. Then followed the oddest sensation that Bo could ever imagine, the sensation of being moved forward…but without moving at all. Now this might sound very strange to him but it may help the reader if I explained that at that time he was in fact being transported in a very large delivery van.



It seemed like hours that Bo was stuck in that cardboard box, not being able to breathe with the lack of a mouth and not being able to see with the lack of light and all the way through being shoved and bumped by the limbs of the furry doppelgangers around him. He even spent what seemed like an eternity with a paw in his eye, poor thing.



Soon though the roaring sound all around him stopped and after a sharp slamming sound that you and I know to be a door the lifting began again, though thankfully bears can’t suffer from motion sickness. One of life’s few mercies for bears.



Finally, blissfully, the box was put down and there was a sharp tearing above little Bo’s head before light came flooding into the small space and it was so nice the small toy could have cried if he had tear ducts. There was a face above them now but, thankfully, it wasn’t the face of the shaven headed man. It was what Bo instinctively knew to be a woman, something about the long flowing hair and the gentler features of the face.



For a second, just for a second, Bo thought that maybe finally this would be the end of his very traumatic first day of life…But no, the woman then reached into the box, her long manicured nails snaking towards the little dear’s eyes before snatching him and several others up and bringing them to the shelf system of the new world that he was now observing. What a god awful beginning you’ll quite agree.



For the next few hours, Bo’s world was a tedious hell of the same disastrous view, broken only by the comings and goings of several other women, including the one with the talons, and one or two men all wearing the same black clothing. Each time that one of these people passed by his line of sight Bo would be filled with the traitorous hope that this time, just this time, he would be picked up and taken somewhere new. And each time he was severely disappointed and so he waited and waited…and a lot more waiting after that.



Then it happened.



Just when the light from the window was starting to go very dark one of the strange black clad women came and stood in front of his shelf and looked intently at him and all the others for a moment. Bo had seen this girl a few times now, blonde hair, slightly orange tinge to the face and a shirt that was buttoned a tad too low for his more decent tastes. But right now he could forgive her that if she were to move him from this cold shelf.



He was almost disappointed. She turned away for a moment and the same sinking feeling of rejection started to flow through him again as he resigned himself to more waiting in the darkening room. But then there was a cacophony of rustling and before the fear of the wait could take hold again the girl was before them picking them up with very little care and throwing them to somewhere just below her. It wasn’t until it was Bo’s turn that he realized that the rustling was a bag…and that he was going in it.



“This is like that damn box all over again,” he thought woefully, as he was squashed up against the others in the blindingly white carrier bag. “I’m doomed to forever go through life being shoved up against fluffy creatures and not being able to complain about it as they lift us everywhere. She’s probably going to lift us up and swing us every which way now.”



The girl didn’t seem to lift them at all, but instead proceeded to drag them across the floor, letting the bag slide this way and that erratically behind her. So he was half right after all, but he wasn’t able to feel much pride in this as he was feeling extremely sorry for the little bears in the bottom of the bag, inevitably being dragged face down across the forbidding concrete floor.



“It can’t get any worse than this,” he thought hopefully, “It just can’t, it’s not possible…OW!”



The ‘OW’ was warranted by the fact that all of a sudden he was experiencing sharp dropping sensations over and over again followed by a hard smack as they hit another little level only to drop again with only one brief reprieve of a longer pause before the smacking began . You see, the girl was also dragging them down the two sets stairs so the poor cuddly items were bouncing up and down and bashing into each other all the way.



After about fifteen of these bashes the up down sensation finally gave way to a very long sensation of levelling out. They were on the floor again and being dragged as unceremoniously as before, but at least there was no banging anymore.



“Thank my paws for that,” thought Bo, “Now at least it can’t get any more pain- BOLLOCKS!” Now again this isn’t the kind of language that you would expect a bear to know but it is quite amazing what a mind can think up when a door has just accidentally slammed shut on one’s paws, which of course it had.



There was a silent curse above the poor bear and the door was opened again and the rest of the bag, including him, was pulled through the rest of the archway.



“Ow, ow, ow oh good Creator OW!” Bo was thinking as he was dragged for a short while longer. With a complete lack of ability to move Bo was forced to endure the pain of a very severe bash to the paw without being able to even give it a little stroke to make himself feel better.



Bo was almost in too much pain to realize that the bag he was in had actually stopped moving and it was only when the top of the bag opened like the portal to a different universe that he realized they were all going to taken out of the bag by those dainty, but clawed hands again.



No such luck. Instead there was a grabbing sensation to the back of him and the entire bag was upturned, casting him and all his fellow teddy bears onto the floor with a painful smack on the outdated carpet below.

“Oh well that was very nice of you wasn’t it?” thought Bo as the old carpet began to itch horribly against his soft back. He longed to be able to reach to his back with his stubby little paws and scratch at the inferno on his back but try as he could he couldn’t move them a millimetre. He could only imagine what the others were going through, compassionate bear that he was.



Then the girl’s voice resounded through his ears, taking his mind off his burning back completely, “I can’t get this stupid pin through his bloody ear!”



Pin. That didn’t sound good. No that didn’t sound good at all.



There were footfalls and then it appeared that another person was with the girl, “What’s wrong?” The baritone of the voice told Bo that it was one of the men that worked there that had come along.



“It’s this pin it just won’t go through this bastard’s ear,” the girl sounded almost frustrated and vexed that she hadn’t been able to forcibly insert something into the poor thing’s ear. Bo was utterly nonplussed.



“It’s fine,” said the male voice reassuringly, “You’ve just got to go for the bit that’s got the least resistance to it and just stick the bugger right through.”



“Yeah and every time that I do manage it the pin stabs into my own finger, just take a look at the state of that!” There were sounds as the man stepped forward for a closer look. Bo could hear his echoing sound of disapproval from way on high.



“You’ll probably need to get something on that, once you’re done here mind you.” And with that last jibe the ma walked away to another part of the floor.



If Bo actually had a stomach he was pretty sure that he would be feeling very sick right now, purely from the fear that was boiling up throughout his entire consciousness. Whatever they were about to do to him it sounded like it was going to get done with something very sharp, and as such, would be extremely painful.



“Very well, come here you little bastard lets see if we can’t have more luck with you,” said the woman and with a deft kneel and a flick of the hand Bo was in the claws of the orange blonde. That he didn’t mind, because he was now looking very intently at what she had in her other hand. If he could have screamed with his little bear mouth he was sure he could have screamed the entire place down.



In her hand was not a pin, no, no it was most definitely not a pin. To the little bear that was in fact the size of a full double handed sword. The needle glinted ominously in the shop light and at the end of the deadly blade was a little cap full of red liquid.



“No, no please I beg of you don’t do this,” thought Bo as hard as he could as the hand started it’s perilous wander towards the vicinity of his ear, “Please, surely you wouldn’t want to stick something as fluffy as me with such a – OH GOOD LORD!”



Just as he’d predicted it hurt about as much as he thought it would, if not more. What’s worse was that it had gone right though the tips of his ear which, if the reader has ever been pricked through the end of a finger or the toe, you will fully understand that it was quite a painful experience.



The dastardly woman then proceeded to clamp something onto the end of the pin behind Bo’s mutilated ear to make sure that it had no chance of getting out again and then shoved him carelessly onto a display shelf where dozens of other clones of him had had the same treatment.



Now as I’ve explained before, bears don’t have all that great vision, and furthermore when they are faced in a particular direction then they have no choice but to stare in that direction no matter the view. And this is why Bo was then forced to spend the next ten minutes on the shelf watching bear after bear being stabbed through various appendages with the evil little daggers. It was grim amusement however; that he watched the blonde girl getting stabbed several times in her own finger, although this just led to more forceful attempts against the bears that made his compassionate sorrow for them well up again.



After the ten minutes was up the girl hastily grabbed the bag that she had brought them all down in and sauntered off to the back in search of a plaster, leaving Bo and his fellow survivors to sit on the shelf.



“Can this actually get any worse?” thought Bo as he sat there. “Can this day actually get any worse than it already has. I would like to believe it couldn’t but then whenever I think that something worse always happens.” A very depressing thought for something that looks so adorable, but then with the treatment he’s received thus far I personally believe he can think anything he likes.



Of course it was then, right on cue, that his wonderings became harsh reality as the electrical lights that festooned the shop ceiling were then turned off out of nowhere and he was thrown into a darkness that was only dimly illuminated by the eerie orange glow of the outside street lamps. And with his nerves already in tatters you really couldn’t blame the poor guy from being on edge to the imagined movements in the dark.



“I don’t like humans very much,” thought Bo miserably, “I really, really don’t like humans at all.” And with that the bear did the only thing that he could do at this stage and went to sleep with the pain in his ear gradually dying down.



Note: Bears do actually sleep you know. With the amount of thought that they actually put into an entire day it’s only fair that they should get to sleep it off.



Further note: They also dream too, though to be honest it’s mostly about fields of cotton and meeting girl bears, or boy bears depending on gender, (and sexuality funnily enough) and becoming happy for the rest of their lives.



Even further note: Aww.



When Bo finally woke up the next morning if he’d had a little bear heart then it probably would have stopped completely. There were people everywhere! At this stage in his life Bo had been forced to assume that there were only very few actual humans in the real world and that they only wore black clothing.



But no, the people milling to and fro about him were all dressed in a variety of colours and they all looked so different! Different hair, different eyes, different sizes, different faces even different skin!



The little bear was completely awe inspired by the entire sight although, at the back of tiny bear head, there was that welling fear again. Look what humans had done with him so far for no apparent reason. He didn’t much like to think what the humans that were here right now could possibly do to him out of nowhere. And so he watched every human he could in his poor eye line and saw the strangest things of all.



The people coming in seemed to be very interested in the shelves all around them, much more than the people dressed in black had been. They kept peering at the toys on display, picking them, putting them back down and picking up another one to inspect it further. Bo himself got picked up a few times and got flipped over and over again.



“It’s actually quite rude,” he thought, “But then, less rude than sticking an evil bloody spike in your ear.” And at this point he’d resigned himself that there was very little he could do with his little bear limbs anyway, even if he could move them.



But what amazed Bo most was what the humans appeared to do once they had picked one of the bears, and he only found this out beforehand because some inconsiderate viewer had placed him to once side so that he had a full view of what you and I know to be the tills and the front doors.



When they had picked their bears the human then went to the various tills that were at the front of the shop. After a short exchange with the black clad humans that were stood there the brightly coloured humans then passed the bears over and then the black shirted people would then seem to duck downwards, fiddle with something, produce the bear again and put it in a bag and after an exchange of pieces of paper and metal, the bears were then taken away outdoors.



An emotion then built up in Bo that he’d never been ware of other than fear and pain so far. And it was hope, pure unadulterated hope.



“I don’t care if I have to go into another bloody bag again, there’s actually a way out of here,” thought the little bear excitedly, “And all I’ve got to is hope that one of these people pick me up and choose me to take away.”



And with this hopeful thought in mind Bo sat there patiently waiting for the right person to come along. And what’s more this time he didn’t have to wait that long for his wish to come true at all.



After about half an hours worth of waiting when he was starting to get sleepy again a girl came in that perked the bear’s interested immediately. In fact the exact thought that went through his head was, “Yes, I would like you to take my please.”



She was wearing all black, from her black jeans to her black jacket and she had more colours in her hair than anyone in there, so much so that the bear couldn’t help but stare and try and count them with amusement whilst he hopefully waited for her to come over to his little shelf.



Finally, as if in answering his little bear thoughts, the girl came over to his shelf and started to inspect each of the bears around him, picking each one up in turn and giving herself a little smile with each different one she picked up.



To be honest with you, the little bear had already put enough investment into this girl that each time she picked up another bear something in his little bear mind went, “NO NO! Not that one! I’m sure he or she isn’t a very nice bear! Me please! Pick me up, take me!” And it was with a sense of relief that Bo watched her put all these bears back down and steadily get closer and closer to him.



Finally the colourful girl came right up to him and picked him up and looked into his little beady eyes, leading him to hope for the first time in his bear life that he looked just as cute as he hoped he did. What he was also thinking was, “Wow…blue.” Not only was the girl sporting blue in her curly black hair but her eyes were also a very striking light shade of blue, very intriguing for a bear with pure black eyes. He was even interested in the fact that, unlike most of the other women in the shop, she didn’t even have the barest hint of orange, in fact she was very pale which was a lot more comforting to the little bear.



Unlike all the others this girl was very gentle when she was turning Bo this way and that, giving him the once over to see what he looked like. He was extremely thankful for this, considering the last human to pick him up had been a small child who had to have her parents take him off of her for fear of ripping off one of his little paws.



“Yeahh, I think you’ll do,” said the girl in a satisfied sort of way before stopping for a card and then heading off to the counter herself.



“Yay,” thought the little bear happily. “Finally. She will take me away, she will be gentle and she will keep me and everything will be ok.” And this time there wasn’t anything that could squash his little bear hopes; everything was going to be alright now.



After a bit of a queue the multi coloured girl set the bear down on the desktop and handed the card over to the assistant, who the bear recognised instantly as the girl that had jabbed him with the spike that was currently in his ear.



“ARGH! No girl you’ve handed me to the wrong one! She’s EVIL! She won’t let you keep me surely!?” thought Bo desperately, trying to get into the girls head so that she could hear his tiny please, but it was too late. The woman was already taking the bear into her manicured hands and was putting him lower behind the till and then did something very weird to him.



She seemed to jam the little thing behind his ear against a weird little hole in the desk and after a bit of jiggling he felt the spike in his ear become looser and after some careful prying the spike came completely free of his ear! She then stuffed him into a bag of course, but after having taken out the evil little blade out of him he could completely forgive her that as long as she was going to give him back to the black haired girl again, if she didn’t he would make sure there was hell to pay, though he didn’t know quite how.



But of course she did, and he could see through the top of the bag that he was now in the girl’s possession and that they were making their way quickly towards the doors and, with a gust of wind, they were out doors.



“FREEDOM!” thought Bo cheerfully, though he wasn’t quite sure why this statement was coming out with a weird accent.



Note: The accent was in fact Scottish; as such general humour is placed into every being in existence as far as I know.



However the little bear became very worried when the girl then suddenly stopped out of the door looking a bit confused.



“Oh no,” thought the little bear, “She’s going to take me back, she doesn’t want me and she’s going to give me back to them. I’m going to get a needle in my ear again.” He was so quick to push himself into this that depression came quickly. But was snuffed out again when the girl shook her head.



“No, no, don’t need anything else,” she then looked down into her bag and beamed at the bear and the look gave Bo a very warm fuzzy feeling, “Yeah, you’re perfect.”



Perfect, he didn’t quite know the word but he was quite sure that it was complimentary and so he allowed himself to be carried off in his little bag to wherever the girl was going in a state of happiness.