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Time is a funny thing.
I used to count it, you see, always acutely aware of its significance. The time I spent in production and packaging, those months in the toy store. The amount of time I spent with Daisy. How long it took us to make the journey back when she... when she-
How long I was at Sunnyside for. The length of time it took me to take over. The endless, sequenced cycle of patrol shifts. The average amount of time it took for a toy to break under our... heh... care.
There was always time to be marked, days crossed off on the Sunnyside calendar and a new photo of a new group of children placed on the wall every year. It was validation of my achievements, in a way, a reminder that despite... despite all that had happened, I was still here. Still going. Immortal. No matter how much time had passed, I was never going to be forgotten.
It was also a reminder of how busy I was, how much the running of my empire consumed my days and nights, and how little time I had to lend to other things. I found myself thinking on more than one occasion that it would be nice to have a little more time, the precious commodity, to myself. I'd driven myself to such a state of paranoia that I could never have trusted anyone else, not even my closest advisers, with the running of Sunnyside. I was afraid that if I handed over too much power I would lose it all, would be stabbed in the back, replaced with another-
It's ironic how I wished for time and now I have it in spades I can't bear it, can't bear to mark its passing, lest it drive me mad. If I ever thought the routine of Sunnyside was monotonous, how ungrateful I was! How I live now can only be torture. Arms spread to the wind, in such a crude approximation of a welcoming hug that seems to deliberately mock my origins, I am forced to spend my days driving around the same old roads, breathing the same old filthy air.
A garbage truck. Of all things, a a garbage truck. How undignified. And every day that I would count, if I did opt to count the days, would serve as a reminder that this it. The foreseeable future. My fate for all eternity.
Have I not suffered enough?
It seems... no. I haven't. Not only am I covered in filth all day and every day, my trademark strawberry scent almost lost under layers of grime and filth - a symbolic gesture, perhaps, of how with each day I lose more and more of myself? - but I have to listen to the inane chattering of the others around me who have met the same fate. They bear it so cheerfully that I can't stand it, these maddeningly optimistic folks who tell their terrible jokes and recycle their limited collection of anecdotes, sharing them again and again like... like... like old toys being passed down from generation to generation, eventually worn out and defeated by the changing eras and all manner of other things.
I let them talk around me, at me, but I listen without hearing, gazing out over the tarmac speeding by and losing myself to my own thoughts.
I'm a kid's toy, I shouldn't have to think about this stuff. But I don't think 'bout Sunnyside no more. That just gets me helpless and frustrated, that I don't know what's become of that place and that I probably never will. My beautiful empire, my carefully rigged system... nah, it doesn't do to dwell on it.
My mind drifts to other things now.
I dream about her sometimes, you know? I didn't think I could dream, not any more, but there they are, clear as day, until the truck bounces against a kerb and jolts me awake. But to my surprise, I dream - I never did at Sunnyside - and it's like my mind's rememberin' all the things it ever wanted to remember that I made it forget about.
It's Daisy and me, and sometimes Big Baby and Chuckles too, but the best ones are just me and her and there ain't nothing to tear us apart from each other and we have all the time in the world. Memories blended together with wishes, into tea parties and movies watched from underneath blankets, and sharing a swingset with the grass spinning underneath us.
"I love you," she says, breathing me in and pressing her face against the softness of my stomach.
In the best dreams of all of them there's no rules, and so I reach up a paw and wrap it around my shoulders and I tell her, "I love you too Daisy."
There's something about being loved... I can't explain, but if you're a toy then you'll get it. We can live without it - the toys on the shelves in the stores do, and the toys in storage do, and the toys like me, they all get along too... but to be loved, really completely loved by a child... You stop just existing and you start living. You don't need to get up and walk around; they breathe all their life into you and all the happiness they feel when they play with you starts to become your happiness too. And you might come with as many detachable accessories as you can lose in a few hours on Christmas morning, you might get all your fur matted or your hair chopped off, but if you've got that love inside you then none of that matters...
Sometimes I'm asleep for hours and in those dreams I watch her grow up, and even then she never leaves. That's the beauty of dreams for ya. When you're in the middle of them there's no common sense telling you that things wouldn't turn out that way even if things hadn't happened like they-
I won't talk about that. Not even in my own darned head. I'm through with suffering. I'm already suffering, I'm sure you'll agree. So why would I bring suffering on myself?
I just ain't doin' it. Fate's been mean enough to me already.
Tryin' not to think about that's making me think about the other bad things. The other dreams...
Yeah, that's right, it's not all sunshine and meadows up in here my head. Sometimes it's... these things bubble to the surface and burst open into streams of bad thoughts that are hard to stop. I wonder what the other toys on the garbage truck think of me. Some of them moan in their sleep too, but we all pretend not to notice each other's misery and they keep pretendin' they're okay and I act like I don't know they're all faking it.
Where was I? That's right, the other dreams. Well, I'm rememberin' now so there's no point stopping them. There's this one in particular that haunts me sometimes and makes me question everything.
It's late at night. Daisy and me are sitting on the bed, under the harsh yellow light that burns under her lampshade, lighting up the whole room and making the sliver of night I can see through the crack in the curtains seem even darker. She's reading to me and she grabs my paw to trace over the letters on the page, jabbing enthusiastically at the colourful pictures.
Then she loses interest for a moment and places the book face down on the covers and flops onto her back, holding me up in the air. She smiles and her golden hair looks like sunbeams spread out around the pillows.
She chatters on. I enjoy the attention but my thoughts drift a little bit. And then out of the blue she says something that almost makes me jump (though I don't, 'cause the rules are still there in this dream.)
"...And I've showed you how to love so you're really good at loving everyone right Lotso?"
She frowns. It's as though a storm cloud has passed over the moment and I will the smile to come back.
"If you're ever sad, remember how happy you are right now. Mommy always says that a good way to be happy is to make other people happy. And if you're sad, taking it out on other people will make you feel worse." She nods solemnly, then lowers me so our noses are touching and then suddenly her face looks older than her years, matching the wisdom she's just been repeating. The next words echo, over and over until they're ringing in my ears and seeping into my brain:
"I didn't mean to leave you, silly!"
The scene always changes at this part; in an instant I'm soaking wet and sinking into the mud outside her open bedroom window and she's staring out at me but her face is cast in shadow so I can't see her face.
"What's the point in a toy that can't love?" she asks me.
I reach out a paw to appeal to her.
The window slams shut.
That's when I'm jolted awake, usually crying out, sounds that I can't smother with my arms restrained.
What's the point in a toy that can't love... and now that I think about it, I just got a revelation I ain't sure I want.
What is the point in that?
And even though I've had these thoughts over and over, it's like I'm seeing something in them for the first time.
A toy that can't love...
She didn't mean to leave me.
But she did.
Daisy! You left!
You gone and left us all and what was we supposed to do? The minute I was out of that box, I had the kind of love I was talkin' 'bout before, the kind that every toy lives to receive. You... you repl-
I was better than that other bear.
What makes you any better?
I was there first, that's what. I earned what I had!
And Daisy's other toys before you? What about them?
Bah! This is what happens when you talk to yourself for too long. Your own darn mind starts turnin' against you. But, well, now it's got me thinking ain't it?
Like how... maybe, now that I think about it, I felt entitled to what I had. Like it was my right above anyone else's to be Daisy's special toy even though I hadn't done anything but be new and soft and strawberry-scented. And maybe how... accidents happens, and... she left! She abandoned us! She abandoned me...
And I could hate her forever - because I resent her and crave her and need her so much all at the same time, and until now I couldn't put that into words - or I could... the word feels weird to even think. I could...
Forgive.
Love.
Would those two things be enough to repay her for all the love she gave me? Heck if I know. It won't come easy, anyhow. But it's a starting point. To what, I don't know.
Accidents happen, like I say. Though, I guess I should admit it whilst I'm here, and it's been a long time comin' I s'pose: me being here is no accident. Or maybe it is, but it's something I could have prevented, if I'd helped the Sheriff and those other toys instead of trying to get revenge like I did. Going even further back, maybe I could have been happy at Sunnyside if I hadn't tried to get revenge on Daisy by taking it all over to show her I didn't need her to be happy, to feel valued, to be the most important.
I think I might've mentioned Fate before, or somethin' like that. Well, I ain't so sure about it, not really, not now that I have all these new thoughts to keep me entertained for a while. Maybe there is Fate. Maybe it's somethin' you take a hold of instead of somethin' that just happens to you. Like how if that day we saw Daisy at the window and I'd made some different choices, things would've turned out better in the end. If I hadn't forgotten what it means to be a toy - to bring happiness to a child no matter what - instead of getting caught up in Sunnyside and revenge and hurting everyone else around me because if I was hurting, other toys had to hurt too.
Things could have been different. Could have been.
Ah well, an old toy's mind gets a little tired with so many new thoughts coming in at once. It's dark now and the truck's pullin' into the old depot for the night, and I'm feeling a little drowsy myself. I'll sleep on it all. It'll be there in the mornin'.
Like I say, Lotso, you've got all the time in the world.