I call her the devil
cause she makes me wanna sin
“Ummm… what now?” Shaytan turns to look at the yellow man, but he is stiff and lifeless again, arms and claws stuck holding up the lid, eyes gazing blankly out at the room. Fuck. She is all alone. She is all alone and she has a feeling that the thing across the room (the giant thing with golden curls which is brushing, brushing, brushing them) is not going to be so nice.
Why else would the toys want to stay asleep?
Unfortunately for Shaytan, the yellow man in his frozen state, cannot hold the toybox lid open. The top snaps shut, flinging the yellow man back into the darkness and pushing her forward, off her precariously balanced plastic forelegs and slamming her abdomen onto the rim. She squeals in surprise and pain, but apparently no one can hear her anymore. No one can hear her scream… but someone did hear the sound of the lid falling shut and flies around, eyes wide. “Who’s there?!” Nerissa demands impetuously, eyes narrowing in the sinister way that only a spoiled, demon child can. “Sebastian, is that you? I TOLD you, you aren’t allowed in my room unless I say so! Especially on my BIRTHDAY. And not during the party!” Shaytan holds oh-so-still, not realizing that as she is plastic, the girl cannot see her breathe.
It is futile. Nerissa sees Shaytan and in a heartbeat, her demeanor changes. The girl’s crazy eyes go wide with excitement and she squeals in joy. “Ooooh! You’re the perfect pony for my pretty pretty princess!” Nerissa fies from her seat and grabs Shaytan, yanking her fully ou tof the toybox. Plastic can’t bruise, but if it could, Shaytan’s knees would be hurting. Her hands are hot and tight and Shaytan feels like she is suffocating in their tight grasp. Not to mention the sudden realization that she is afraid of heights… while traveling a great rather quickly and a great deal above the floor. But her mouth won’t open so she can scream, and in that moment of Oh god oh god ohgod ohgod I can’t breath I can’t move Imgoingtodiehere, Shaytan imagines that her heart has burst from pounding too hard, and she loses consciousness.
For all her murderous tendencies, it appears Shaytan is more of a coward at heart.
The pretty pony isn’t out for long; she wakes to the sound of ”CHAAAAAARGE!!!!, and finds a Disney Princess barbie perchd precariously atop her back. Luckily, she isn’t the one charging - no, it is a buff, muscular, man in army fatigues who has the honor of running full force into a chipped and one-eyed T-rex. The dinosaur roars, according to Nerissa, and the two toys slam together with a resounding CRASH! Nerissa hits them together a couple of times for good measure, and then delivers a killing bite from the jaws of the T-rex. It is so violent that Ken’s head pops off and goes rolling away. She can’t hear the moans and groans of the toys, but Shaytan can. She can hear Ken faintly pleading for the girl to stop, and she can hear the T-rex apologizing profusely, and she can hear the Princess praying that she isn’t next.
Unfortunately for Shaytan, they are indeed, next, as she realizes from Nerissa’s narration… “But it seems that the Princess’s pony is magical, and it is brave! And it decides that it must save it’s precious Princess from the very scary dinosaur! ROOOAAARRRR!!!” Uh-oh. Shaytan doesn’t know how to fight! She can’t do anything except kill the bunnies and mock fight her brother. She’s going to be decimated by the T-rex! And of course, Princess is no help. She’s too busy alternating between praying and worrying about Ken to offer any advice. Nerissa makes Shaytan buck Princess off anyway, as the ‘loyal, brave little pony attacks!’
The dinosaur comes at her with tiny little stubby arms and lots of teeth and headbuts her, sending Shaytan (in Nerissa’s hand) head over heels into the air. It leaves a dark green scuff on head. Shaytan lands hard, but bounces back, neighing and challenging the T-Rex she runs back up to it, and climbs up its front, just to jump on its head. The ‘jumping’ chips a bit of color off the bottom of her hooves. Apparently it must do the trick, because the T-rex suddenly falls over, and Shaytan is prancing over its dead body while Princess decides she must give Pony a kiss, because he was so brave during the fight.
Whether or not Shaytan is supposed to turn into a Prince, we’ll never know, because of a well-timed interruption.
“Nerissa! Come see what Mommy made you for your birthday!” A pleasant voice echoes up the stairs, and the girl stops what she is doing. “Oooh! Mommy, did you make cupcakes?!” she yells back, dropping the toys to the floor. In her haste to get downstairs to some scrumptious cupcakes, she flails a bit, and kicks Shaytan one way and Princess the other. Shaytan ends up under the bed, completely hidden by a pale pink bed skirt. Oh thank god, she thinks, it’s over. She won’t find me here. I can escape later… But every scuff and missing bit of paint is a wound, and perhaps it would be better for her to rest awhile… recover her energy.Yes, she thinks, little yellow man’s words echoing in her head... you’re small… maybe Nerissa won’t find you... It was dark, like the toybox. Dark equals safe in Shaytan’s poor, deluded mine. And with that, she nods off to slip, the adrenaline of everything that happened before slipping away, which leaves her absolutely exhausted.
Shaytan doesn’t know how long she’s slept (the light is the same under the bed - dark and cool), but she is once again woken up by terrible monstrosity of a noise! She can’t hear Mommy’s voice over the deafening rumble, but if she could, she might hear, “Just a quick clean before your friends get here, Ris. I’ll be out in just a second!” No, then she might welcome the massive, long tube that is violently shoved under the bed and catches her hair. She screams as it yanks her backwards, dragging her mane and tail in and upward, and begins to friction burn away the layers of her head. The beast now thunders in a more high-pitched manner, and the smell of burning rubber makes Mommy stop the machine.
“Alllllright… what do we have this time?” she mutters to herself as she bends down to see what small toy the vacuum cleaner has tried to gobble up this time? Suddenly, Shaytan sees nothing but blinding daylight again, as the vacuum is turned upside down for inspection. “Aha! - NERISSA!” she demands towards the door, “NERISSA! What did I say about your small toys? Come here and put them in the box.” Meanwhile, her sharp, neatly filed nails are pulling at Shaytan, trying to disengage her and her mane/tail from the vacuum roller. She yanks. Hard. Every tug frees Shaytan up a little, but it comes at a price - she can feel the strands of hair being tugged out one by one, or sometimes in several clumps. It is excruciating. Mommy, however, is hell bent on getting the toy out of the vacuum, and doesn’t have any time to run downstairs to get the sharp (adult friendly) scissors to cut the pony out. A final, vicious yank pulls everything out - and now Shaytan is left with a gaping hole where her tale used to be, and an empty line that runs from her forehead to the base of her neck. It seems to Shaytan as if she might poop her innards out, but only after her head spits in two from the jagged dagger of pain that is cutting into her.
She is no longer the pretty pony.
Now she is no longer useful to Nerissa.
Mommy hears the sound of the doorbell and places the hairless pony on top of the bed and exits the room with the vacuum cleaner in tow. The guests are arriving and there is no more time to clean - the children won’t care anyway, it’s just something for her peace of mind. While the party guests are arriving downstairs, Shaytan is involved in a struggle of her own. On the very same bed that she’s lying on is a ratted old stuffed animal, and when Mommy is gone, Shaytan makes an effort to communicate with it. “Please… please help me. I can’t… it hurts so much…” The bear makes a shushing, soothing noise (he is good at this, he ‘comforts’ Nerissa every night), but does not move. “Don’t worry, little one… it’ll all be over soon. Be happy you have the easy way out. ”
He was speaking from experience. Was it not better to get death over and done with in one fell swoop? Rather than linger through the years, slowly growing old and fading away, watching all your fellow toys die horrible deaths and break from old age? He would see it all, and he would never be able to help any of them. In the end, he might be put up in the attic as an old keepsake, a fond childhood memory - and there the moths and mice would come for him, and he would be forgotten.
Yes, Shaytan’s ending was better.
”No…” she groans, struggling to stand through the splitting pain, “No end. Not yet.” Where was Straia? If this is the end, she has to tell Straia that she loves her. She has to do something about the Dale rabbits. she has to…
The door bursts open and Nerissa enters again, this time followed by another girl, who is also dressed as a Princess for their Princess Party. She is in mid-sentence, saying “- and I want to show you my new magical pony who beat the monster!” It takes a moment of her searching on the ground before she looks elsewhere, and finally spots the maroon colored Shaytan atop her pink comforter. “There it - OH NO!!” Nerissa rushes over, and grabs her pony, turning it over and over in disbelief that it is now mane and tail-less. Olivia, her friend, pipes up. “I don’t see what’s so magical about it. It doesn’t even have a sparkly mane like mine…” Nerissa sighs, knowing that Liv is right. “Yeah, I know… well… what do you want to do now?”
Olivia’s face lights up with a very, very bad idea. “I know… My brother was seeing how hot is has to be for things to melt for his science class. Let’s see if this pony melts!”
“Oooooh. Yeah! Our mommies are outside. Let’s see if we can sneak into the kitchen.” They giggle and grab hands and Shaytan is once again subjected to her fear of heights… which is only a small, small ordeal compared to what is going to come next.
Shaytan is quivering inside when they tie a piece of string around her plastic neck. The gas stove clicks on and she is dangled above an open flame. It isn’t long before her hooves start to turn dark and smoke and twist into something unrecognizable. The pain spreads up her hind legs and Shaytan doesn’t even try to stop screaming, because no one can hear her. If someone had been able to, they wouldn’t have known that her cry for her own mother was the pinnacle of her pleading. It is a slow and agonizing death. Unfortunately, it isn’t until Nerissa and Olivia set off the fire alarm that the Mommies come running back in. By this time, Shaytan is half a smiling, twinkly-eyed, twisted hot lump of plastic, recognizable only by her face.
Shaytan
and every time she knocks
I can't help but let her in