The Touch of Plastic

April 4. 11:34 P.M.

The phone rang. It wasn't so much the fact that the phone rang that bothered Lyle Fenton, but rather which phone rang. Fenton's bloodshot eyes stared at it in disbelief.

"Lyle, are you going to get that or not?" whined Tina from her usual perch in the upstairs bedroom.

Lyle supposed he was, if only to shut Tina up. He rose from the couch, knocking the half-full whiskey bottle onto the floor, where it added its contents to the other stains in the portion of the shag carpet that surrounded Lyle's end of the couch.

He staggered into Kendra's playroom, put his hand on the pink plastic receiver and hesitated. Toy phones weren't supposed to ring. At least not this one.

It rang again. He put the receiver to his ear.

"Well, Lyle, aren't you at least going to say hello?" a soft, seductive, vaguely familiar feminine voice asked him.

"How did you know my name?" Lyle inquired of the phone, feeling somewhat stupid about engaging a plastic toy in dialog.

"It was on the credit card you used to pay for me today. I'm very glad you bought me, Lyle. You're going to be glad, too."

"But I didn't buy you today," Lyle told the Margie-phone. "Kendra's had you for over a month, now."

"Not the phone, silly. Me." Lyle recognized the voice now. Margie. He had just bought Kendra a new, improved Margie doll he had seen on TV. One who supposedly wouldn't say things like "Math is for geeks." Or "I think I'll paint my nails again." Her voice was the same as the old Margie's, though. At least over the phone.

She was just one more Margie doll to add to Kendra's seemingly infinite collection. He scanned her shelves. There was surfer Margie, ballerina Margie, place-kicker Margie, and his favorite one of all, harem girl Margie. They all had the same luxurious long blond hair and impossibly large breasts combined with an equally impossibly minuscule waist. Why, if Lyle were 5'7" shorter and made of plastic he might give that Ben doll a run for his money. Anatomically correct Ben. Why couldn't they leave the innocence of childhood alone, Lyle wondered, as he drunkenly contemplated running his tongue up and down surfer Margie's naked torso.

"You should take me out of the box, Lyle. We could have some fun together," the Margie voice on the phone whispered softly.

Now they were programming the dolls with late-night dialog for dads. Lyle supposed it was a pretty effective marketing technique. He looked dubiously at the box. He wondered what sort of fun the doll had in mind.

"Put the receiver closer to your ear, and I'll tell you," the Margie-voice whispered, as if the doll could read Lyle's unspoken thoughts.

Lyle put the receiver closer to his ear.

"We could..." the doll began, but Lyle didn't hear the rest of it because he was distracted by the thin filament that was weaving its way through the receiver and into his ear. It seemed to pass right through Lyle's eardrum and snake its way straight through his middle ear and into his brain. Into the right temporal lobe to be exact, if Lyle remembered his college anatomy. The filament felt warm in there, and Lyle shuddered as a wave of pleasure passed over his body.

"And I would lick your..." the doll was saying, as Lyle's body was overcome with another wave of pleasure that stretched from the tips of his toes to the bald spot on the top of his head.

"Did you like that, Lyle? That was nothing compared to what you will feel if you take me out of the box."

"Oomph," replied Lyle, as he reached for the box. He could feel the electrical filaments inside his brain multiplying, traveling down his extremities, reaching his fingers, his toes. His penis became enlarged as never before, and his balls throbbed with the pressure of their fullness. He wanted her. He wanted her now.

"Unwrap me, Lyle. Unwrap me, and I'm yours," the doll said. Lyle tore away the cellophane barrier that separated him from the object of his desire. From the silkiness of her polyester hair. From the exquisite feel of her jutting plastic breasts. He tore at Margie's pink party dress as well, not wanting anything to stand between them.

How would he explain this to Kendra, he wondered. Oh well, he could always tell her he had to put batteries in the doll so she would be working when Kendra first saw her. Or something like that.

The naked Margie doll seemed to writhe in his hand. He felt the power surging from the newly-grown electrodes in the palm of his hand into the doll's plastic flesh. Nanotechnology, he supposed. Atom-sized biological-electrical devices. That's what the Battel Toy Company must be using in these dolls these days. And in their phones as well, Lyle thought.

The Margie doll rubbed her arms sensuously against Lyle's hand. Their plastic flesh felt warm, almost human, against his skin.

"You know where to put me, Lyle, if you want to be truly happy," the doll whispered in the most seductive voice Lyle thought he had ever heard. Lyle thought he did know, and gently lowered the doll to his lap. Her tiny fingers actually reached out for his zipper, undid the button on his pants, and pulled him out of his shorts.

The doll wrapped her entire torso around Lyle's organ, licking the tip with her seemingly infinitely extendible tongue and rubbing her breasts up and down the shaft. Lyle could even feel the wet spot of Margie's vagina as it traveled up and down, up and down his prick. At each point of contact, the new electrodes inside Lyle's penis and balls delivered a pulse of the purest ecstasy Lyle had ever experienced.

"How do you like your little girl's new toy so far, Lyle?" the doll's sultry voice asked Lyle, as her deep blue eyes rotated up to focus on his face.

"Gnork," said Lyle. He thought for a minute and then added, "Ooooh, oooh, yes, ah."

"I'm glad," she whispered, as the movement of her tongue and breasts across Lyle's throbbing organ increased and then increased again, the electrodes in his genitals discharging intensely with every movement of her body.

"Arrgh," observed Lyle. "Oh, ohmygod, oh, no, awp, rorgh," were his final comments as he entered the throes of orgasm and lost consciousness.

When he awoke, she was lying against his chest, her head resting in the crook of his armpit.

"Did you like that, Lyle honey?" she asked, rubbing her finger around his nipple. Lyle felt another electric charge coursing through his body.

"Uh huh," said Lyle.

"We can do it any time, Lyle. Any time you want. Every night. There's only one thing I want."

Lyle's left eyebrow raised involuntarily. "What's that?" he asked cautiously.

"I want that new party dress. You know, the blue silk one with the white sash. And the matching shoes."

Lyle thought he remembered that outfit from the store. But that's $89.99!" he protested.

"Lyle, do you like what we have? What we did?"

"Uh huh," Lyle assented.

"Then please do this one little thing for me. OK, Lyle honey? If you want to do this again."

Lyle thought for a minute. "OK," he told the doll reluctantly. The Battel Toy Company was pretty crafty, he thought. They really had him by the balls this time.

Oh well, he thought. Kendra would enjoy playing with the dress. And he could always remove the price tag before Tina saw it.

April 5. 9:37 A.M.

"Why is her hair so sticky, Daddy? And what's that dried gunk on her skin?"

Lyle snatched the Margie doll from Kendra's hands and turned it over in a feigned examination. "I don't know, honey. Something must have happened at the factory. Here, I think we can wash it off." He was going to have to be more careful in the future, Lyle thought, although he was damned if he was going to wear a condom to be with a plastic doll. That was simply asking too much.

"I'm Daddy's little girl," the Margie doll announced as Lyle carried it into the bathroom to be washed. Out of the corner of his eye he noticed that Tina was looking at him strangely.

April 5. 4:05 P.M.

Lyle tucked the blue party dress under his arm and reluctantly entered the checkout line at his local K-mart. The bastards had jacked up the price on him since yesterday. Now the dress was marked at $99.95 instead of $89.95. For a goddamned doll's dress!

He couldn't help but notice that the guy in the next line was doing much the same thing, except that he had gone for the entire Margie riding set, complete with riding boots, crop, helmet and horse. As Lyle recalled, that set was going for $259.95. The man's hands trembled as he pulled his credit card from his wallet to pay for the set. And when he turned to look at Lyle, Lyle could see the dark circles under his eyes, which seemed to be sunken deep into the slack sallow flesh that surrounded their sockets. The guy looked emaciated as well. And haunted. When the dude noticed Lyle's stare, he turned around to sign the slip with a shaking hand, then scooped up his package and beat a hasty retreat toward the exit.

Suddenly, in midstride, he stopped and turned to face Lyle. His bloodshot eyes darted back and forth over Lyle's face, and he uttered a single sentence in a whispered breath before he turned around again and was gone for good.

"Don't listen to her."

April 5. 11:08 P.M.

"I'm Daddy's little girl."

Lyle stared into the doll's vacant eyes. "Come on. Talk to me. I bought you the damn party dress. Talk to me," he pleaded, his fingers involuntarily tightening around the doll's throat. Needless to say, a part of him felt a tad silly screaming at an inert plastic doll.

Then the phone rang. The pink phone.

Lyle searched anxiously for it and then finally located it beneath one of Kendra's princess gowns. He put the receiver to his ear.

"If you would like to place a call, please enter your sixteen digit credit card number and the expiration data now." It was the ubiquitous voice of the same operator that seemed to be on every phone recording ever made.

Feeling even more stupid than before, Lyle went to his coat to retrieve his wallet and dutifully began punching in the digits. With each digit entered, Lyle felt a pulse of ecstasy flow through the electrodes planted in his brain. The pleasure rode over his body and surged all the way down to his toes. Not to mention the effect on his genitals. Lyle began punching harder and faster.

"Hi there, handsome. I thought you would never call." It was finally Margie's voice. The good Margie. The sexy Margie. His Margie.

"Hi," said Lyle, still feeling a little embarrassed to be talking to a plastic doll. He looked over at her body. Her eyes were no longer vacant. Instead they held an almost feral intelligence. And he could swear she was grinning.

"You mean I have to punch in my credit card number every time I want to talk to you?" he asked her.

She answered him directly, rather than through the phone. "It takes a lot of R & D to develop something like me, Lyle. The Battel Toy company has to recoup some of their costs. Nanotechnology does not come cheap, you now. Besides, you know I'm worth it." The last was uttered in a pouting Shirley Temple voice.

As if to illustrate the last point, she sent another wave of pleasure through the electrodes in his brain. Lyle trembled in shock as his penis grew to mammoth proportions.

"Come to mama, Lyle, honey," she said, with a seductive toss of her blond tresses.

Lyle came to mama. And assumed the position once again.

June 17. 8:02 P.M.

Lyle couldn't believe his eyes. Over $6000 in charges on a single Mastercard bill. At least three grand in phone charges to the Battel toy company alone. Who the hell ever heard of charges for calls made on a plastic play phone? Well, he guessed he could no longer yell at Tina for her part in running up the bill. Of course, the main reason he could no longer yell at Tina was the fact that she had left Lyle, taking Kendra with her to live at her mother's house.

He shoved away the cardboard tray containing his half-eaten TV dinner. He knew what he had to do. He pushed away from the table and stormed into the playroom.

There she was, still sprawled in the chair right where he had left her the night before. He still felt somewhat guilty about hiding the doll and phone from Kendra when she moved out, but he knew he needed Margie far more than Kendra did. Besides, she had other Margies. This one was special. At least to him. And Tina had seemed quite relieved that the doll was missing.

He no longer bothered to dress her during the day, and her naked plastic breasts felt strangely cold against his hand as he picked her up. That was because he hadn't anted up with his credit card, he knew. He seized the doll by her ankles and took a few practice swings, meaning to use her body as a baseball bat and break her head against the side of the door. That way he would be rid of her for good.

But then a wave of nausea and emptiness came over him. The world felt suddenly meaningless and dark, and he knew he would die without Margie. It was just the electrodes in his brain talking, he realized. Manipulating him like a puppet. But that knowledge did not take away the pain.

He considered unscrewing the light bulb in the floor lamp, maybe putting his finger in the socket. That was one way to end to this blackness, this emptiness he was feeling inside.

The pink phone rang. He stared at it for a good thirty seconds before reluctantly answering it.

It was her voice this time. "Dial me and I'll take it away," she whispered in a mocking, vindictive voice.

Lyle's fingers trembled as they punched in the long-since memorized sequence of numbers. With each digit entered, the sense of emptiness grew lighter.

August 16. 3:11 A.M.

Lyle stared at the shadowy shapes of the Margie hospital and the Margie fitness center. They cost him about a grand each, as he recalled. He looked over at Margie's reposing figure, her magnificent breasts jutting like two pink alps in the moonlight. He envied her ability to rest. Sleep no longer came to him in these hot August nights, now that the power company had turned off his air conditioning. Lyle's stomach rumbled. He hadn't eaten for days and he felt weak. The skin seemed to hang on his bones as if awaiting the return of his lost flesh. His hair had even begun to fall out.

Still he needed to save the remaining balance on his credit card for Margie, now that he was no longer going in to work. He thought it was pretty good advice he had given that poor bastard in the Rite Aid who was buying the Margie astronaut gear. He had grabbed the poor schmuck by the arm and breathed some simple words of advice to him in his by-now fetid breath: "Don't listen to her."

The guy had pulled Lyle's hand off his arm and run in the opposite direction down the aisle as fast as his feet would take him. Some assholes were never ready to hear the truth.

Lyle suddenly felt his heart beating irregularly as his eyes roamed over Margie's naked form. Cardiac arrhythmia. He really should drink some fruit juice at least. Margie wouldn't really let him die, would she? After all, parasites didn't usually kill their host. Did they? He really ought to buy a little food. Margie would surely reduce her rates to help keep him alive. After all, he was the goose with the golden credit card.

He watched the sparkles of moonlight on her golden hair. He knew that he loved her as deeply as life itself. She was his whole world now. Surely she felt the same way about him.

With some trepidation, he began dialing the numbers on the pink phone. It was time to wake her again. One thing was for certain, he thought. You really had to hand it to the Battel Toy Company.

They sure knew how to make a buck.