The doll wakes up. This is the first mistake she makes each day. The second mistake is sleepily grasping for her phone, hands moving in long-conditioned reflex: swipe through the pattern and tap the brightly-colored little icon— Many wild species use bright colors to indicate danger. It is meant as a warning against attack: you may hurt me, they say, but you’re going to have a fucking awful time afterward. ...
(this is a direct sequel to this story. you might want to read it first) Mouse never returned. The rest of them—Stance and Tide and Ashes and Sparrow—always knew that it was a possibility. The ruins were dangerous, they knew that well enough; the unquiet dead, the ancient traps … But Mouse was supposed to be better. She was the best of them. And yet … “S-she’s fine,” Tide finally stammers, “just … just delayed a bit. Right? She has to be …” ...
It always sounds the same, that echoing chant, those pounding feet and snarling faces; look, look! See what you have done, see the crimes you have committed against Decency, against the People, against everyone who sought you out to ask for what you offered. How horrid, how criminal! How dare you. It’s almost like you wanted to be punished, to be destroyed; almost like you craved the lashing whips of You Are An Acceptable Target and the flensing knives of You Deserve Everything We Do To You. ...
“Why!” (slam) “won’t!” (slam) “you!” (slam) “die!” She brings the window down on your neck again and again, each impact sending fresh cracks shooting through your body’s smooth glass, reopening the old ones you had so laboriously sealed earlier in the day. A passerby glances at you, curious about the noise; you do your best to smile back, to ward off his attention. It’s easy enough not to wince, to play this off as just some game. ...
Each morning you wake to new holes in your vision, new sharp-edged gaps; each morning you wonder what they will take from you. At first it was only ever small things, easily unnoticed, spare chargers and half-forgotten souvenirs, the remains of a meal. Nothing that mattered. But then you woke to find that one had opened near the center of your vision, a gash of flickering emptiness tearing at the world; and as you turned to hug someone you can’t remember any more you felt it tear her apart, smelled her hot blood spilling out to soak the sheets. ...