Lily’s jaw aches, just below the corners of her wide lips. A full sensation, more like a bloated stomach than a sore tooth. It’s been there all day, ever since she woke from a dream of delicious release, but in the last hour it’s grown near intolerable.
The surgeon is sprawled out on her living room couch when you arrive, flipping through screen after screen of beautiful people on her ancient phone. One of her housemates answered the door and let you inside, their too-perfect smile drying into a polished mask as they realized why you were there. The last words they said to you before they fled were a quiet “good luck.” She’s really not much to look at. Chubby and long-limbed, with oily shoulder-length hair. You can see her split ends from the doorway; it’s obvious that she’s never bothered to put proper care into them. Her clothes show a similar lack of effort, just loose grey sweatpants and a tank-top that barely contains her breasts. ...
“The strangest thing,” Carol will say, afterwards, “was that I knew it was right. It was—have you ever seen someone do something, and known it was wrong, without even having to think about it?” “Of course,” the interrogator will say, “like a wild animal mauling someone.” “Exactly! But,” she’ll reply, “no, you don’t get it. It—it looked like that, sure. But it was right to do it. It was doing what was best for both of us, for everyone.” ...
Sticky-sweet doll-guts ooze out through the cracks in her teeth as she chews, mouth grinding in ceaseless motion. She’s a messy eater, our monster is, and her meal drips down to stain her ample chest and her temporary cell’s clean tile floor. By the time she’s done ruined dollstuff puddles around her feet and the poor broken thing’s porcelain shell is stretched as open as we’ve ever seen a doll’s corpse. ...
She doesn’t get a chance to understand before it kills her.
Every night your restless dreams lead you back there again, and every night the wound is renewed. It’s been decades since your body walked in that hallowed place, the labyrinth carved and filled; decades since your skin felt the dripping heat and your stomach clenched at the smell of the dead saints and the stars wheeled above. Time should heal wounds. The therapists certainly think so; they think you’re unhealthily obsessed, unwilling to let go, unwilling to let yourself grow beyond the memory. They blame you. They don’t understand. Each night the memory is made anew, each night you are once again the things which were done to you and the things which you did—the things you were made to do, they’d say. A small rephrasing. A lie. ...
“Wake up, doll. Something is coming.” Her words echo in the doll’s mind as she wakes, just as they have for years—ever since the doll’s new mistress ate her old one and dragged her back into its lair. Such a small memory to be burned so deeply, but she’s thankful for it. Today she wakes as she always does, words echoing in her mind and the monster’s looming vastness crouched on spindly legs above her stony bed. A drop of venom sizzles on her skin, another hole burned through her ruined dress. ...
Hero pinned to the floor, glaring up at the beast who’s finally gotten the better of him. Trying not to notice the thin lines of blood welling out of where its claws grip his neck, trying not to think about how easily it could end all his struggles— (if he thinks those thoughts his luck will break, or so he’s always been told. there are so many things he doesn’t think about.) ...
116.678 wakes in the back of a van, hivedreams slowly receding as its lonelyself comes back to the surface. It hurts as it always does, but its two service dolls are fussing around it, and there’s the familiar fullness of fresh tanks slotting into its back, so it’s okay. It’s fine. It hurts, but there’s the warm reassurance of hivethoughts lapping at its most distant thoughts, the reassuring hum and flicker all through the wires that grow like lichen across the van’s surface, the feeling of its dolls easing it back into the world. ...
False-color blood flows in neon spurts, rivulets painting her cheek in a tie-dye tapestry her ruined eyes will never see. She knows her own taste all too well, can’t help but letting her tongue dart out to grab a few more drops, to soak up the vibrance pooling on her lips— Of course she can’t see you looking, but she notices nevertheless; tilts her face up, gore-filled sockets staring into your too-eager eyes, licks her lips one last time, and— ...