Our Monster

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.

Our monster doesn’t care about gems, though, doesn’t give a rat’s ass about the sparkle of souls: her meal will be back on two feet as soon as we can craft it a new body. A doll’s brutal death is almost like a vacation.

We’ll give it some time in the void. There’s no need to rush.

For now our monster rests, curled up in a happy snoring pile; her fur will be stained and crusty when she rises, soaked through with her meal’s refuse. She’ll be angry, desperate to be made clean—

But her coming anger will be far less than whatever would bubble up were we to wake her now, when the blood and guts and gunk have yet to dry, when a few bursts of warm water would wash them away.

So we’ll let her sleep, and when she wakes we’ll clean her matted fur and pray that she doesn’t take a swipe at us, that we cause no pain; we’ll do our best, and hope she’s not hungry again so soon.