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's life is a struggle, mostly due to having to deal with her six year old twin sisters Katie and Amanda, who always bring along with them Mary-Ellen, a life size doll that they constantly use to torment her. After insulting the doll, Jillian wakes up in the middle of the night to see the twins trying to cut her hair, claiming Mary-Ellen told them to. The next day, Jillian's mother tells her to take the twins and Mary-Ellen to The Little Theater for the ventriloquist show. Jillian brings along her best friend Harrison.

The ventriloquist is a teenager named Jimmy O'James, who comes on stage with his dummy Slappy. Jillian notices that Jimmy looks unhappy, made no better as the act is nothing but Slappy hurling harsher and harsher insults on Jimmy. The pair then ask for some audience participation, which Katie and Amanda volunteer, only to be hurled even harsher insults. After the show, the twins run off backstage to tell Slappy how mean he was. Jillian and Harrison give chase, when Jillian finds Jimmy's dressing room. As she spies on him, she sees Jimmy and Slappy arguing with one another, eventually leading to Slappy slapping Jimmy hard in the face, making his nose bleed. When Jimmy notices Jillian, he claims that this was all just a routine for the show.

Jillian eventually finds the twins and takes them to Dairy Queen, where they force her to feed Mary-Ellen. When the three get home, Jillian is shocked to find Slappy on the couch. Harrison shows up and mentions that he had found Slappy in the trash and brought him with him, believing Jimmy must have gotten rid of the dummy. Slappy then bites Jillian's hand to the shock of Harrison, who assumes his jaw must be broken. They also find the paper containing the magic words in Slappy's breast pocket. Jillian almost utters them, but her mother calls them for dinner. Harrison leaves Slappy with Jillian as her father is an aspiring carpenter. After an incident at dinner involving Mary-Ellen, Jillian begins to plot her revenge on Katie and Amanda.

Jillian and Harrison head to the local magic shop to buy props for the clown act for an upcoming four-year old's birthday party, as being a clown has been Jillian's longtime passion. However, the two spot Jimmy O'James. They try to tell them that they have his dummy, but he tells them to get rid of Slappy before it's too late, then runs off. Jillian returns home, having found squirting playing cards for the clown act, but sees that her lizard cage has been broken into and her pet lizard Petey has gone missing, with Slappy near the scene of the crime. She eventually finds Petey in Slappy's mouth. Their parents take Mary-Ellen away from the twins, who say that this will make her very angry.

The next day, Jillian and Harrison perform their clown act at the birthday party, but everything goes wrong. From bad jokes to empty squirting cards, it just makes the kids cry. When they they attempt a whipped cream pie prank however, things get worse as the cream was replaced with some kind of soap, which injures some of the party goers. Jillian believes it to be Katie and Amanda again, and resumes her plan for revenge. She also decides to give up being a clown, as Harrison's proposal of ventriloquism interests her more. She blames the twins again, but they say that they were at a friend's house the whole day, so they couldn't have done anything.

Harrison and Jillian find Jimmy's address, in hopes of learning about ventriloquism. However, they find the house abandoned. They do find a diary that mentions the origins of Slappy: he was created by an evil sorcerer who would create evil toys. Ones he would use to steal from or injure children. He created Slappy from the wood of a coffin and then possessed the body. The diary mention the magic words to awaken Slappy, but Jimmy put him back to sleep before abandoning him. Jillian believes that maybe Katie and Amanda had awoken Slappy.

Jillian's parents leave for the night, so she has to take care of the twins. When she enters her room, she sees Slappy by the mirror with the words Where is my bride? written with lipstick on the mirror. Jillian tries to see if Slappy's alive, but the dummy doesn't move. After going to the bathroom, suddenly there is a commotion downstairs. Jillian enters to find food and broken plates everywhere with Slappy sitting at the table, the twins in a panic. Slappy disappears again and is then found on Jillian's bed, once again with the words Where is my bride? now written on her wall. Jillian ends up grounded for the mess, and tells Harrison that she won't use Slappy for their ventriloquist act, so Harrison replaces him with another dummy named Maxie.

The two host another birthday party in the basement of Jillian's house. However, when they open the dummy case, they find Slappy inside. They use Slappy and Mary Ellen and everything goes well until Slappy vomits green slime on the children. Slappy then holds a kid named Eddie hostage, saying that he wants his bride. Jillian thinks he must mean Mary-Ellen, but Slappy rejects the doll, saying that he wants Jillian to be his bride. When she refuses, Slappy headbutts her, calling the altercation a "love tap". Suddenly Mary-Ellen awakens and starts to fight with Slappy, saying she brought Slappy to life to marry her, not Jillian. Katie and Amanda tell Jillian the truth, that Mary-Ellen has been alive this whole time, and that she was the one behind all the terrible things that befell Jillian.

Mary-Ellen says she wanted to bring Slappy to life to make Jillian's life eternally miserable. Slappy fights off Mary-Ellen and says that this birthday party will now be a wedding party with Jillian as his bride. The two dolls continue to wrestle with one another until they end up in Mr. Zinman's workshop. Slappy slices Mary-Ellen with the table saw, but she manages to drag him into the saw as well, causing both to be cut in half. The parents arrive to pick up their frightened children, but the kids don't mention anything about Slappy or Mary-Ellen. After cleaning up, Harrison reads from Jimmy's diary about how destroying Slappy's body doesn't kill him and how he can still possess others. Jillian suddenly says she finally knows how to get her revenge on Katie and Amanda and vomits green slime on them.

Differences

 * The Classic Goosebumps 2018 reprint removes some scenes and dialogue from the original 1998 book. The scene of Slappy insulting Jimmy during their act omits him calling Jimmy "as worthless as a penny". Later in the book, a scene where Slappy headbutts Jillian in the face and calls it a "love tap" is removed.

International releases
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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, which released eight months after the release of this book.
 * 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 a similar name with the Benson Family's dog in Welcome to Dead House.
 * This is the first book in the Living Dummy saga to reveal the origin story of Slappy, which has remained consistent throughout most of the series.
 * The book references Dairy Queen.