“Soooo. What’s it like living with your crazy aunt?” Asked JD through the loud crunch of his chips.

I felt bad that he outright called my Aunt Miriam crazy…but he wasn’t wrong. Dad had warned me about her:

“She’s a sweet lady, kiddo…but all the marbles ain’t there. Don’t tell your Mom I said that, alright?”

“It’s unique,” I replied, gazing out the window at Aunt Miriam as she entertained her…guests.

“Well, what’s unique? Care to elaborate?” JD asked.

I scoffed and tried to hide my laughter, I knew I was on the second story of her estate and there was no way she could see my face from the courtyard, but I didn’t want to take any chances.

“Alright, since you asked so kindly. She insists that we communicate entirely with British accents.” I emphasized insists.

JD laughed. One of those weird ones where your mouth is full of food, I could see his desk covered in half-chewed spicy Fritos.

“So you have to spend the next week talking in a British accent?”

“She won’t reply if I don’t. I asked her where the toilet paper was…in my normal accent and she didn’t reply. She seemed to get mad, huffing and puffing and walking away like I didn’t exist.”

“Hahahaha! That’s fucking insane. I don’t think I’ve ever heard you fake an accent. Let’s hear it Donnie.”

“No…” I said with a chuckle.

“Come on man, you need to practice or she ain’t gonna feed your ass.”

“Alright,” I muttered, I cleared my throat, and sat up straight.

“She ahsked me to tawlk wit a Brit-ish ackcent.”

JD was dying on the other end, we were miles apart but I could see the red on his face, “God that’s bad. I think it’s offensive. If I was British I’d legit be offended.”

“Thanks,” I muttered.

“That it? Your Dad made it sound like she was off her rocker.”

I shook my head, “Naw that ain’t it.”

“Well? What else?” JD asked. I could hear him crumple the bag and in the distance, I heard it land in the trash can by his desk.

“She asked me to bring all my stuffed animals from when I was a child.”

“Whoaaaa wait…all of them? I remember you had a big blue tote full of stuffed animals when we were kids. That’s a lot of stuffed animals.”

“Alright, not all of them. Just the heavy hitters.”

"So...Teddi, Chicky, Dumbo..." JD started.

"Right, those three, Brutus, Riley, Snowball, Buster," I paused. "Not going to lie I'm surprised you remembered those.

"Meh, the mind chooses weird things to remember. I'm surprised you still have them to be honest." JD said. I could hear another bag of chips tear open.

"Yeah, I mean they've been in storage for decades. I had to go sifting through my parent's storage to find them."

"Well, what did Crazy Aunt Miriam want with them?" JD questioned.

I paused, letting out a nervous sigh. This was where things got super weird, the whole constantly talking with a crappy British accent was one thing, but this was something else entirely.

"She wants us to converse with them as if they're real people," I muttered.

"What the hell? What the crap is that supposed to mean?" JD asked.

"It means exactly what I said. For the next week, we're to have breakfast, lunch, and dinner with them. We're supposed to play games with them and watch TV and movies with them. It's pretty much like it was when I was four but as a full-blown adult."

“Wait, wait…does she have anything? Or is it all your stuffed animals?” JD asked. I realized that he’d stopped eating his chips, he was fully invested in the insanity of my upcoming week.

“She has an army of those vintage dolls, the ones that look like little girls with fancy hair, the ones that can blink but never do.”

“Oh my god! Fuck that!! Those are the creepiest things in the world. My mom had one of those dolls in her study and I hated it with the passion of a thousand suns.”

I laughed and shook my head. Staring off at my aunt as she continued her elaborate dance, glossing over my stuffed animals and her vintage dolls as they stared at her with dead eyes.

“Then don’t come over here, you’ll have nightmares for the rest of your life.”

“That’s so weird Donnie. Are you hanging out with them right now?”

“Well, she’s hanging out with them at this exact moment. Right now she’s having a full-blown talent show with my stuffed animals and all of her dolls. I was supposed to join her an hour ago. So far she’s done magic tricks, sang half the musical catalog of Sound of Music to them, ridden a unicycle around the pool while juggling and right now she’s dancing for them.”

“Unicycle…that’s impressive,” JD started.

“You don’t know the half of it,” I muttered.

In the distance, I could see Aunt Miriam’s attention fall on me in my bedroom window. I could see her smile and wave a most energetic wave. She skipped through the grass, twirling around here and there before stopping just in front of my window.

“Donald darling, when will you join me for the talent show? Your friends are quite worried about your whereabouts and I can’t keep concocting lies for you now can I?” She said all of this in a near-perfect British accent, you’d have no idea that we were staying on her farm in south Texas.

“Oh my fucking god is that her??!?!” JD said with hysterics.

“It is…and I have to go. I need to figure out for this talent show…think they’ll be into jokes?”