With the lid forced open by the indigo plastic of her nose, she wedged herself through, more surprised than she should have been that there was nothing on the other side, the outside, to catch her as she lurched forward. Again she found herself falling, the lid closing somewhere behind her with a decisive click. The ground rose up to catch her at long last and she landed with a thud, bouncing a few times before coming to an abrupt stop. This time though, she was horrified to find that when she tried to rise, to climb to her feet, nothing happened. It was an indescribable feeling, all her synapses firing on high alert, adrenaline coursing through the memory of her veins despite now being little more than a hollowed out shell. It didn’t matter than she had no heart to thump wildly, no pulse to flutter like wings until she felt consciousness beginning to fade as if preparing for a nap. It was enough that she remembered what it felt like, remembered the fear, the tremble of muscle strung too tight beneath the quiver of vulnerable flesh.
From where she lay, she could see the sky through a square hole on the far wall. She wondered briefly if it was like the divider in the toy box, if perhaps a solution waited for her on the other side. But it wouldn’t matter if she couldn’t make her thick, knobby legs move. She heaved again, putting all her effort into what should have been the simple task of turning her head. Still, it wouldn’t budge. Then suddenly the ground was falling away from her as a small hand wrapped around her hard, plastic body. Her vision swam as the world blurred, details of the room blending into one pink and gold blur. Each time the window passed, that shock of bright sky framed in the wall, she felt her metaphorical heart throb in her hollowed chest. It didn’t seem to matter than she was no more than a hunk of hard plastic, cheaply built and brightly color. She felt everything through the memory of her thoughts, the way things were supposed to be. Nerissa clutched her so hard, so pleased, that the plastic caved slightly under those sweaty fingers, and though Malis had not a single rib in her body, her mind fed her the memory of falling as a child. A time she had lost her footing and crashed hard against a cluster of large, smooth stones. She could feel that pain so fresh, so clear, that her vision faded in and out around the starbursts popping in her eyes.
“Pretty, pretty, pretty.” Nerissa sang out as she stopped waving Malis around in the air. “Mine, mine, mine.” In a flash she had set the toy Malis down on her bed in such a way that Malis could see the toy box she had escaped from and two others that looked almost identical. She opened one, reaching in and digging around, but came out empty handed with a pout crinkling the corners of her mouth. The next opened with a squeak, and Malis wondered if the box was protesting from too much use. She hated the way curiosity sharpened her vision with suspicion. From out of the box came several pieces of gapped white plastic. They were rectangularly shaped with two white posts on either end, and three white boards stretched from side to side connecting them. Fence. The word wormed its way into her thoughts like a parasite, infecting her with a sort of primal fear she couldn’t begin to understand. Fence. Trapped. They meant the same thing.
Again she tried to wiggle, to burrow beneath the folds of a thick pink comforter, but her body betrayed her. Nerissa moved suddenly out of her line of vision, taking a few more things out of the second chest and set them up with a satisfied giggle. With that, and much to Malis’ horror, Nerissa opened the third toy box. Her toy box. She watch the girl pause, her face screwing up first with confusion, then contempt- a look so out of place on the angelic face of this blue-eyed child. She reached in and pulled something out. It was Buttons. Without a second thought she had grabbed the mangled clown and several handfuls of stuffing, and threw them into a nearby pink and white trash can. When she reached in again Malis wished she could close those painted on green eyes. The dinosaurs, she must be getting the dinosaurs. Buttons had warned her that they were the villain in every game. But as Nerissa reached from them, she paused, her attention drifting to something else in the box. Slowed by indecision, she leaned over. When she stood up again Malis thought she would be sick. In one hand was Molly, who was tossed immediately back into the box, but in the other hand she held the tailless, mute pony Buttons had referred to as Sparkle. She clutched the long-forgotten toy as if she had discovered a most wonderful treasure. Turned away from Malis as she was, Malis completely missed the malevolent way Nerissa’s eyes shone.
Nerissa turned abruptly, her gold curls bouncing over her shoulders as she trounced across the room, flinging Sparkle on the bed beside Malis before turning to race through the white trim door. As soon as the girl was gone, Malis found her ability to move was restored. The thick quilt made it nearly impossible, but she clamored to her feet unsteadily, making her way to Sparkle's side. She was about to reach out and touch the toy when something forced her to hesitate. Doubt uncurled in her belly like a snake, slithering up her throat and into her mouth so she suddenly couldn’t speak. It would be selfish to wake her, she realized, looking around to see that there was no way off of the bed, no route to escape. It would only serve to ease the loneliness Malis felt, the fear of what was to come. But then Sparkle would suffer too. She turned away, devastated, aching with her emptiness just as the door was flung wide open and Nerissa pranced through. She had several new items with her and Malis found this only fed her distrust. There was a brush, a pair of scissors, and nail polish. The magic having been bled away as Nerissa returned, Malis could only lay still as she picked Sparkle up and grabbed the scissors. She must have decided the toy looked silly with a full mane and no tail, because for five agonizing minutes she devoted herself to cutting off every single strand of Sparkle's once thick, curly mane. When she was done she put the battered toy down in what appeared to be an arena constructed of the fence she had pulled from the second box.
Returning to the bed, she grabbed Malis and the bottle of black nail polish and sat down on the floor. With as much concentration as the child could muster, she took the brush and painted Malis face. She made a thick band of black that stretch over both eyes, over her cheeks, and connected beneath her jaw. Despite how she’d tried to paint around the green of Malis painted on eyes, the nail polish art seemed to closely resemble a blindfold. Nerissa dropped Malis to the floor, letting the nail polish dry, and then picked her up again this time with the scissors in hand. She cut the long, soft curls of her mane so that it stood short and roached above her neck. Her tail which had reached the floor and curled around her hooves was now spiky and uneven against her hocks. “YOU ARE THE DARK ONE!” Nerissa shouted suddenly at Malis, picking up Sparkle in her other hand and bashing them together. “Princess Sparkle of Summertime must defeat you to save her kingdom!” She slammed them together again and again. It went on like this for what felt like eons, time drifting slower and slower as thin fissures began to appear in Sparkles old plastic body. With one more tremendous collision, one of Sparkles glittering gold and purple legs fell off of her body.
Time froze entirely.
It was at this moment that Malis realized she hadn’t needed to touch the toy to wake her up. From the moment Nerissa’s hand had wrapped around her body, she had become a conscious hostage in the prison of her own plastic body. Malis felt her metaphorical stomach clench as she ached to be sick. As if this wasn’t enough, Nerissa angrily threw the toy to the floor, clutching Malis even tighter in her growing wrath. For a moment the girl was eerily silent, her stony face turning pinker and pinker until finally she was shrieking. “BUT THE DARK ONE IS TOO STRONG!” Malis felt herself lurch as she was tossed to the carpet. Reaching over, Nerissa retrieved first the leg that had popped out of its fragile toy joint, and then Sparkle herself. “PRINCESS SPARKLE OF SUMMERTIME IS DEFEATED!” Without any warning, Nerissa plucked the three remaining legs from Sparkles shattered body. Clearly no longer of any interest to the birthday girl, she threw the broken toy in the trash where she landed with a soft thump on top of Buttons.
Malis ached to close her eyes, to shut out the nightmare unfolding before her. But it wasn’t meant to be. Fingers wrapped once more around her torso as she found herself suddenly face to face with those striking baby blue eyes. “That means you win dark one, and I know the best prize.” Before she could understand what was happening, those fingers plucked first one leg, then the next, and the next, and the next from Malis’ body with such ease she knew the child was used to doing so. But what she did next was far worse than the strange imaginary pain of losing ones limb. With careful fingers, Nerissa stuck the legs back in the sockets, adding glue to make them stay. But the legs she chose were not indigo. They were gold and purple and coated in glitter. Sparkle’s legs. Nerissa dropped her new frankentoy on the carpet, waiting until the glue had dried. But the glue must have been taking too long to dry because the child huffed impatiently and then dashed out of her room to return the brush, the polish, and the scissors to wherever she had borrowed them from. As she went, her foot caught the garbage and Malis watched on in horror as her two mangled friends spilled into view. She wanted to move, to turn away from them, but all she could do was wiggle like a fish out of water. Nerissa had left, but these legs weren’t hers, they didn’t obey the requests her thoughts kept firing at them. All she could do was lay there, the throb of her amputated legs entirely unappeased by the new ones Nerissa had gifted her. A prize, she had said. She could feel every crack in her body, each brittle fissure stretched like cobwebbing over her indigo shell. It was different this way, no bones, no blood, unable to die, but fully capable of an eternity of suffering. Her body wracked with sobs that had nowhere to go, tears that didn’t exist, couldn’t fall, but she could feel them. Could feel the lump in her throat like a swallowed stone. “I’m sorry.” She whimpered to the inanimate toys, the shapes of her friends spilling limply out of the waste basket. “This is all my fault.” And it was. Completely and undeniably, it was.
When the door swung open again she didn’t even bother to move. Didn’t try, didn’t want to, couldn’t remember how to care. Though she hadn’t expected a tongue to sweep over her body, or sharp puppy teeth to pick up and puncture the now worn plastic, she welcomed the pain as it swelled to envelope her, as it overtook the image of Buttons and Sparkle. This felt easier.
As time passed (seconds, minutes, eons, it didn’t matter anymore) and Nerissa didn’t return, the biting turned into chewing, the chewing into gnawing. Her ears bent and broke, her painted on eyes were scratched away- and as they were, she could see the room grow darker and blurrier. There was almost nothing left of her tail and one of the gifted legs had been snapped in half and chewed past recognition. Malis was curled up within herself, tucked catatonically away in the furthest corner of the prison of that mangled plastic horse figurine. So when Nerissa returned with cake on her face and a new box labelled Equestrian Collections in hand, Malis didn’t notice. Nor did she noticed the shriek of disgust when that small, warm hand plucked her up, righted the garbage and tossed her irreparably broken body atop Buttons and Sparkle.
And when the darkness came to collect its prize, she surrendered freely.
MALIS
makai x oksana