Bride of the Living Dummy

Bride of the Living Dummy is the second book in the Goosebumps Series 2000 book series, and the fourth book in the Living Dummy saga. It was first published in 1998.

The cover illustration depicts both Slappy, dressed as a groom, and Mary-Ellen, a bride, raising a big knife in order to cut a wedding cake.

The Classic Goosebumps cover shows Slappy and Mary-Ellen throwing pieces of wedding cake around.

Plot
Jillian Zinman has her hands full with her pet lizard Petey, her little twin sisters Katie and Amanda, their ugly life-size doll Mary-Ellen, and her best friend Harrison. Jillian has dreamed of becoming a clown almost all of her life. One day Jillian is forced to take Katie and Amanda to the Little Theater where a ventriloquist show will take place. Jillian's mother believes that she will learn how to entertain children from this experience. Her friend, Harrison agrees to come along with them since he thinks it might be cool.

The entertainer, Jimmy O'James comes on stage with his "good pal", Slappy. Jillian is shocked that the ventriloquist is only a teenage boy as Jimmy tries to do an act, but most notably she is turned off by Jimmy looking genuinely stressed, sweaty and preoccupied towards Slappy, who keeps throwing nasty insults at him. The ventriloquist calls Katie and Amanda to get on stage, and Slappy further insults them and Mary-Ellen.

After the show, the twins are so angry at their treatment that they decide to tell Slappy how mean he was. Jillian tries to get the two six-year-olds to stop from going to the backstage where Slappy is and she and Harrison run in after them and they split up to search for them easier. Jillian comes to a door and spies Jimmy and Slappy arguing with one and other, puzzling Jillian and leaving her wonder why would Jimmy keep his act on behind the scenes. Jillian is shocked upon Slappy throwing a slap at Jimmy, making his nose bleed. Jimmy notices Jillian and claims that Slappy is not alive and it was just his new routine he was practicing for. Jillian decides to believe him and soon locates the twins. But she has lost Harrison, who does not seem to be around anymore. The twins then make her take them to Dairy Queen and she is forced to even buy an ice cream for the doll.

When they get home, Slappy is waiting on the couch! Harrison appears and explains that he brought the dummy, telling Jillian about how he met some friends he knew working backstage, and into the alley behind the stage he found Slappy in the trash. He brought the dummy along and almost immediately, believing that Jimmy decided to get rid of it. Slappy bites Jillian's hand, and Harrison assumes that Slappy's jaw is broken, so he leaves the dummy with Jillian in the hopes her father, an aspiring carpenter, can fix it.

Fed up with her obnoxious sisters after dinner one night, Jillian begins scheming of the perfect revenge, and has Harrison help her the following day at school. She then contemplates smearing their doll with cheese and letting the rats feast upon it as a good way to get her revenge and after school, she and Harrison visit the local magic shop to pick up some fun tricks for their clown act.

As they walk into the store, Jillian spies Jimmy the ventriloquist exiting. Then he warns her to get rid of Slappy as soon as she can and he vanishes. All and all, Jillian is in a pretty good mood since she found some cool squirting playing cards. However, her good mood lasts but a few minutes. When she returns home she finds that someone cracked open her lizard cage and Petey was released. Slappy is nearby, perched on the busted case which leads Jillian to accuse her sisters of the prank. Even her parents seem to believe her and they soon find Petey inside Slappy's mouth. Katie and Amanda are scolded and the parents make Jillian put Mary-Ellen away, the twins beg her not to claiming that the doll will get angry, but Jillian dismisses their complaints and further wishes to get her revenge on the two brats.

Jillian and Harrison perform their clown act for a four-year-old's birthday party, but it unfortunately goes wrong. Instead of laughing, they only end up making the children cry. Their jokes fall flat, they forget to fill the squirting cards trick with water and a whipped cream pie prank they were supposed to smear themselves with blows into the faces of two little partygoers and hurts their eyes, as it turns out that someone replaced the whipped cream with shaving foam. Jillian believes her twin sisters are responsible. So, once more she resumes trying to plan revenge. But before they can, Harrison proposes they do a ventriloquist act for the children using Slappy as it may be better than performing as clowns. Jillian warms up to the idea and decides to give up on pursuing a clown career.

When Jillian gets home, she picks on Katie and Amanda for ruining her clown act, but the twins reject the accusations and make Jillian realize that they were out at their friend's house the whole day, so they couldn't have sabotaged her clown tricks, leaving a scared Jillian to wonder who did it.

Harrison wants to get a doll of his own, so he gets the address of Jimmy and the two children race to Jimmy's place and soon they reach the ventriloquist's abandoned house. They enter his house and start rifling through the belongings he left behind when Jillian comes across a diary and out of surprise, learns the secret origins of Slappy: an evil sorcerer created evil toys to steal the possessions of children while they slept. He made Slappy out of a coffin and the sorcerer then possessed the dummy body. Jimmy goes on about the magic words to bring Slappy alive, and that he managed to put him to sleep and get rid of him, hoping that no one will find him and read the magic words.

Jillian realizes that she and Harrison did find the written magic words in Slappy's pocket, thus she fears that Katie and Amanda may have brought Slappy to life and were too scared to tell.

Upon getting home, Jillian learns that her parents are leaving for the night and she has to make sure Katie and Amanda eat their dinner. When Jillian reaches her room, she finds Slappy next to the mirror, with "Where is my bride?" written on it with her lipstick. Panicked, Jillian shakes the dummy up asking is he's alive, but gets no response. Jillian goes to the bathroom to refresh herself, when suddenly the whole house shakes and the twins shriek in terror. Jillian runs downstairs and is shocked at finding the dining room trashed with broken plates and food everywhere, and Slappy sitting at the table and the twins screaming in despair that he did it. Jillian gets a phone call from her mother and she tries to tell her the situation with the evil living dummy, but it only ends up angering her. Jillian notices Slappy missing and she and the terrified twins hear eerie footsteps going upstairs. Jillian chases after Slappy only to find him limp on her bed, having apparently written "Where is my bride?" again on the wall.

The following day Jillian is grounded for the trashed dining room and she phone calls Harrison claiming that she refuses use Slappy in the ventriloquist act with Mary-Ellen, as she locked him away in a case and wants to get rid of him. Harrison manages to replace Slappy's role with Maxie, a dummy he found in his uncle's attic.

Soon, another child's birthday party arrives. Jillian and Harrison plan to do the ventriloquist act. The party will be taking place in Jillian's basement and without adult supervision. Jillian goes to take Maxie, but finds out that Slappy has tooken his place! So with no choice, they use Slappy with Mary-Ellen and the party starts off well. When the grumpy birthday boy Eddie claims that he doesn't find their jokes funny, Slappy suddenly talks on his own and vomits a disgusting green slime on the children.

Slappy then gets up and grabs Eddie hostage, threatening to kill him unless he is given his bride. Jillian fetches Mary-Ellen and Slappy reacts in disgust before informing her that he does not want anything to do with Mary-Ellen. He then informs Jillian that he wants her to be her bride and serve him as his slave for the rest of her life.

Jillian refuses, so Slappy retaliates and headbutts her as a form of affection. She then tries to run, only to slip and fall into a pile of the vomit.

Mary-Ellen suddenly reveals to be alive too and angrily pushes Slappy around for that she did not bring him to life to marry Jillian. Katie and Amanda finally reveal to Jillian that Mary-Ellen was alive all along since the day their father brought her in, and they were scared of her and that she was behind all the things Jillian believed Slappy had done. When asked why she did it, Mary-Ellen explains that she always hated Jillian and wanted to awaken Slappy so that they can both rule the house with her living a miserable life as their slave, along with the twins. Slappy however violently punches and kicks Mary-Ellen off refusing her company. He then tells everyone that the birthday party is now a wedding party, and he wants Jillian to be his lovely bride.

Mary-Ellen recovers and wrestles with Slappy, eventually winding up in Jillian's father's workshop. They manage to land near the table saw and Slappy uses it to slice Mary-Ellen right in half! But Mary-Ellen is still alive and has him caught by the table saw, causing Slappy to be sliced in half as well. Slappy tries to grab at Jillian once more, but his body collapses. The parents of the children rush downstairs after being called by Harrison, and Jillian scoffs that it's a long story upon being asked what happened.

Later, Jillian and the twins relax in the living room while Harrison keeps reading Jimmy's diary. Jillian asks Harrison to let it go as the story is over, but he replies that she may be wrong, reading from the diary that destroying Slappy's body may not be enough to kill him, that his evil spirit can live on and possess the person that was the closest to him. Jillian dismisses and has the twins agreeing with her, when suddenly she begins to stare at them and smile sinisterly. Jillian tells Harrison that she knows how to get revenge on Katie and Amanda, before proceeding to vomit green slime all over her sisters.

Differences

 * The Classic Goosebumps 2018 reprint removes some scenes and dialogue from the original 1997 book. This includes Slappy insulting Jimmy during their act by calling him "as worthless as a penny", as well as a scene where Slappy headbutts Jillian in the face and calling it a "love tap."

International releases
Table = Gallery =

Television adaptation
Bride of the Living Dummy was adapted into an of the Goosebumps TV series. It is the sixteenth episode of season three, and the sixtieth episode overall.

Trivia

 * The book's description of Mary-Ellen differs from how her depiction on the cover of the book. Her hairstyle on the cover seems to be inspired by the Bride of Frankenstein from the eponymous film.
 * Slappy shares similarities to the horror icon Chucky, a doll possessed by the spirit of a murderer. The concept of this book is an allusion to the 1998 film Bride of Chucky.
 * Slappy wears a red-and-white-checkered sports jacket, similar to Slappy's Nightmare instead of a gray double-breasted suit, which was what he wore during his first three appearances. However, the re-release of the book gives Slappy his normal suit.
 * Jilian's lizard, Petey, shares its name with the Benson Family's dog in Welcome to Dead House.
 * This is the first book in the Living Dummy series to bring up the origins of Slappy, which has remained mostly consistent throughout the series.
 * The frozen treat restaurant chain Dairy Queen is referenced.