The fire flared and sizzled, the entire stacy doll went up in smoke. Not an ash remained of the rubber remained in the burning embers, just that of the selfstarting briquettes that the boys had put into the old fire pit in the park. The grey white smoke that was Stacy still conscious but even less in control than she'd been as a doll wafted helplessly in the breeze. She started to dissipate into the cold night air. Strangely, the dissipation stopped, she began to condense. Something else was helping her, something cold and powerful, and very very scary.
STACY, I ADMIRE YOUR DETERMINATION, boomed a voice from everywhere and from nowhere, somehow close and distant at once.
FIRST, YOUR PLAN TO GAIN VALEDICTORIAN. THE WAY YOU USED PEOPLE. BUT WHEN YOU POSTED THAT AD TO SELL YOUR OWN BROTHER AS A STUFFED TOY, I KNEW YOU WERE DESTINED TO BE WITH ME. SUCH SELF SERVING EVIL, IN SUCH A YOUNG INNOCENT! NO YOU SHALL NOT PERISH. YOU SHALL BE AVENGED, AND MY POWER SHALL GROW IN THE WORLD!
A black cat with glowing green eyes stared out from the shadows of the park at her victims putting out the fire. Stacy lived again, and now she had a power of her own.
NEXT YOU CAN PLAY CAT & MOUSE, laughed her new master. Stacy had changed. What little good had existed, or what she might have considered good wafted away in the evening wind. Little more than a puff of smoke from a quick drag on a cigarette. What remained was case hardened evil, forged in the fires of hell, concealed in the body of a mere cat. Cat and mouse, thought Stacy, I can do that!