"But the dream, the echo, slips from him as quickly as he had found it and as consciousness comes to him (a slap and not the gentle waves of oceanic tides), it dissolves entirely. His muscles relax as the cold claims him again, as the numbness sets in, and when his grey eyes open, there’s nothing but the faint after burn of a dream often trod and never remembered." --Brigade, written by Laura
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.
THEN I'LL GO OUT BACK AND I'LL GET MY GUN
I'LL SAY "YOU HAVEN'T MET ME, I AM THE ONLY SON."
He didn’t see any movement in his immediate vicinity, but he did keep hearing a faint humming of some unknown nonsensical tune. It was rather irritating to say the least. But he would ignore it for the time being; he had more important things to accomplish at the moment. He hooked his front legs over the lip of the box and began to pull himself over it (vaguely he realized that his legs were an absurd green color). Munroe had no other choice but to make the estimated foot drop onto the plushy carpeted floor beneath him.
He jumped with a poorly executed tuck-and-roll maneuver and ended up landing on one of his sides. All of the air in his lungs whooshed out and his side ached terribly, but he was at least free of his rectangular prison. His relief was short-lived when a sudden high-pitched screech rent through the air and he was suddenly unable to control his limbs as if he had been put under some kind of body-binding curse.
He was now imprisoned within his own body.
The source of all that earlier humming and the following horrible scream revealed itself to be a young girl. Cascading blonde curls adorned her head beneath a dainty golden tiara and vivid blue eyes gleefully took in the sight of the wonderful new addition to her toy collection. Princess Nerissa would not be completely satisfied until she owned a real life pony, but she would make do with this lovely offering in the meantime.
At first glance, Nerissa appeared to be a sweet and adorable little girl. But Munroe didn’t trust that malicious gleam in her eyes or the wicked tilt to one side of her mouth. All the dimples in the world couldn’t completely hide the cruelty hidden within Princess Nerissa. The largest feeling of foreboding rose up inside his chest and he could not contain his pained attempt at a whimper. He desperately wanted to be back home safe and sound with Ima right about now.
“Did you come to play with me, pony!? First let’s do something about that awful hair. Why did mommy and daddy pick out such an ugly colored pony too? You look like puke or smelly baby poop. Maybe I can fix that too!
Princess Nerissa leaned down with her sticky little hands and Munroe tried to futilely brace himself. He was unprepared for the tight, squeezing hold she kept on his torso, especially after he had just taken a rather solid impact to his one side. Although he was frozen, relegated to a mere statue really, he still felt the intense pressure on his sides and he struggled to burst free of his caged self to no avail.
She briefly set him down on the delicate gold and white dressing table while she began shift through various drawers until she found what she had been looking for – a pair of scissors she had hidden after taking them from the junk drawer in the kitchen. This was Nerissa’s favorite barbershop tool to use on all of her most favored toys. She also located her assortment of colored permanent markers for later cosmetic surgery.
All Munroe can do is lay there in horrified silence, unable to even twitch in discomfort.
She began her obnoxious humming once again while she picked both the scissors and her beloved pony up in each one of her hands. Hazel eyes stared indignantly at the floor while large chunks of blue-black hair fell carelessly downwards in a mocking fluttering little dance. Nerissa gasped as the scissors slightly slipped from her loose grip and scratched into his plastic skin which left behind an obvious mar to his previously unmarked body. Both his mane and tail have now been cut to match the big, ugly American Doll from earlier. All that remained were sad little tufts of shorn hair aligning his neck and rump – a brand new haircut via Princess Nerissa.
She then picked up a neon pink permanent marker and started to draw squiggly lines and an assortment of shapes upon his entire body. Munroe supposed that his haircut wasn’t enough humiliation for the day. He hated her constant touch; he had always shied away from strangers his entire short life. Only Ima had been allowed into his life and only Ima could handle him with the familiarity that this child had the audacity to instigate.
He hated every minute of this awful experience and he hated Princess Nerissa with a burning passion. Munroe thought that this was the most hatred he had ever felt for someone in his life. Distrust and wariness was of his nature, but hatred was a facet he had yet to venture into. He wanted to hurt this child in revenge for himself and all the other battle-scarred toys in the toy box prison. He even included Miss American Doll in his thoughts of revenge; he was certain she was only that much of a bully due to her own abuse from the so-called lovely princess.
“The pink only made you uglier! How could that even happen?” Nerissa wailed over her failed attempt at covering his green skin. She didn’t understand why it hadn’t worked; pink was her favorite color after all. Pink fixed everything. She looked at him in disgust before carrying him into the attached bathroom. Nerissa turned on the hot water in the sink and plunged the bedraggled-looking toy beneath its scalding spray. She vigorously tried to rub the permanent marker off of Munroe’s skin but it hadn’t been named permanent maker for just any reason.
Munroe was drowning. His sides hurt and his lungs were on fire. He was still frozen, unable to close his eyes to protect them from the burning stream of water. He felt as if his skin was literally melting beneath the onslaught of heat and roughly scrubbing hands. Luckily, his water torture was cut short when Princess Nerissa became distracted by a sudden thump in her bedroom. She hurriedly left the sink to investigate this strange noise.
A fluffy white poodle had knocked over her tea tray which had held an assortment of sweets and a cup of hot chocolate and was currently gorging herself with as much sweets as possible. Nerissa screamed and threw the closest thing she had at the stupid dog, which just so happened to be Munroe. He went flying through the air, weightless but full of suppressed fear and adrenaline. Maybe this would give him an opportunity to make his escape from the devil in disguise.
He hit Georgette with a resounding thud and fell once again on the same side he had damaged earlier. The poodle wasted no time in becoming distracted by this missile and quickly snatched Munroe up by his head. But Princess Nerissa was having none of that. She would not allow the stupid dog to deprive her of her new favorite play thing. She rushed over to Georgette and grabbed a hold of his supposedly puke-green torso – a tug-of-war ensured. Poodle and princess fought valiantly but ultimately it would result in a tragedy.
Munroe’s head was encased in sharp canines which pushed into his hollow plastic body viciously. But his body and head felt like they were being slowly pulled into two and the pressure was agonizing. He screamed but the only ones who could hear were the toys in the box prison; they huddled in fear with their ears covered and their heads filled with guilty thoughts of thank goodness it wasn’t them this time.
His agony ended with a resounding pop.
His head remained in the gleeful Georgette’s mouth.
His body was held in a disbelieving Nerissa’s hand.
Now he felt distant and detached. An underlying ache remained unmovable within his soul, but his sense of touch was now divided between two separate pieces. This somehow dulled his pain to a manageable level and Munroe felt as if he were floating in a void of denial. He honestly didn’t even want to acknowledge what had just transpired.
Princess Nerissa was furious and finally managed to steal her toy’s head back before running to her Mommy frantically. Angry tears rolled down her face as she screamed for her mother. “Look what Georgette did, Mommy! Fix it! Right Now!” Her mother took in her darling girl’s tear-stained face and cooed soothingly to her little princess. She took Munroe’s broken body and attempted to repeatedly jam his head back onto his body. Finally, his head seemed to pop back on, but it was rather stilted and lop-sided and Princess Nerissa decided he was much too ugly to begin and not worth her precious time anymore.
She flounced off in disgusted huff which left Munroe abandoned by the little terror.
With his head reattached, his senses seemed to have realigned and his pain is full-frontal once again. All he can do is close his eyes in exhaustion as mommy dearest carelessly tossed him into the nearest trash can. For her, he was one in a long line of broken and discarded toys to be thrown away. But Munroe will never forget that feeling of heartless abandonment. Life seemed to be taken for granted when it came to these odd beings. It was different for a toy. No matter how roughly mishandled they were, all they had to live for was the child they had been gifted to. Their only goal in life was to please their child.
But Munroe had been abandoned by his master.
It was like being abandoned by Ima.
Now he had no one who loved him in his life.
He was only good for keeping the shredded paper, dust bunnies, and rotting table scraps company.
“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
Isn’t this when I wake up? He wonders, looking around, trying to figure out where he is. The room is huge, and pink – much like the color of Erling’s new body – and there is a young girl, seated, brushing her blonde hair. There’s the door –
“PONY!!!!!!” The girl squeals, and Erling would have jumped if his body hadn’t stopped cooperating. He is not accustomed to this level of enthusiasm, particularly when it is directed towards him. The girl comes flying from across the room, roughly grabs Erling and picks him up, shaking him excitedly. “Pony pony pony pony pony!!! YOU. ARE. SO. BEAUTIFUL.” She cries, pumping Erling up and down to emphasize every word. He is dizzy, helpless in her hands, but kind of likes the attention.
“I will call you Mrs. Flufferson!”
Excuse me, I’m a mister, he tries to say in protest, but no words come out. What an inconvenient time to become both mute and paralyzed.
“Who wants to ride Mrs. Flufferson today?!” The young girl walks over to her toy box, wide-open, and shuffles the remaining toys around. “Beary? No… No, snakes can’t ride horses… OH STACY THE COWGIRL!” She shrieks, picking up the cowgirl that had helped Erling escape. She drops Erling to the ground, focusing all of her attention on the cowgirl, and he lands with a snap – a piece of his tail has broken. Oh well, he didn’t use it much anyway. “Ugh Stacy you are SO UGLY. Not pretty enough to ride Mrs. Flufferson,” She says, disappointed, tossing the cowgirl across her room and returning to the toy box.
“What about CERA!” She says, growling for emphasis, and picks up a thickly-built plastic Triceratops, a fair amount larger and sturdier than Erling. There was really no good reason, that Erling could see, for the dinosaur to be riding a pink pony, but who was he to judge one’s life choices?
The girl sits down cross-legged on the floor, picking up Erling – Mrs. Flufferson – and lets out a loud groan as she notices a chunk of his plastic tail missing. “HOW ARE YOU ALREADY BROKEN? UGH!” She yells, slamming Erling down on the ground in frustration. He hears another snap, but feels nothing, which seems unusual. If he were broken, he would feel it, right? This time it is only a crack on one of his front legs – nothing has broken off completely. He is less enthused about this particular form of attention.
“LET’S PLAY FIGHTING INSTEAD!” She yells excitedly, placing both Erling and the dinosaur on the ground standing up, and lying herself down to face them eye-to-eye. He was not particularly thrilled about this development. He had never been a fighter, and any fight that he would possibly get into in the distant (or, maybe not distant) future would not be pretty. Erling wasn’t built for fighting in the real world, where he did not have a broken leg, and he could not say that he was looking forward to “play fighting” with this massive dinosaur. But he was still mute and paralyzed, so, what can you do?
All he could hope for was that he would die and wake up back in the Meadow.
The girl picks up Erling and the dinosaur, one in each hand, and WHAM – in one swift motion Erling is smashed into the dinosaur, his front legs and belly colliding with the head and horns of the Triceratops. He expects it to hurt, but it doesn’t; all he feels is the pressure of the collision. The girl seems annoyed that neither toy had broken on the first hit, and with a loud, childish growl, she furiously slams Cera onto Erling’s back, repeatedly. He hears the cracks but can’t identify where they are coming from – his back? his neck? what was left of his tail?
“YOU ARE SUCH A STUPID PONY!” She yells, and for a moment Erling wonders if she would be less offended if she knew he was actually a horse, not a pony – and then he is flying through the air. He collides with the wall, and as he slides down the wall into the trash can, he can feel pieces of himself missing.
Can I wake up now? He wonders, thankful that he at least feels no pain.
Sorry for the delay. Like I think I alluded to in the first post of the round, eliminations and round 3 should be up tomorrow night. Eliminations will be posted here, odds are, and the next round in a new thread. Thank you all so much for your awesome posts! I'm really enjoying them.
Okay, you guys are fantastic. Can I just say that? Your posts were disturbing and wonderful, and I loved them all. Nice work! But once again, we’ve come to my least favorite part of this whole endeavor: the elimination. You were all fantastic, and it was really hard to decide. It came down to a few small things. Ugh, here we go, let’s just get it over with.
Shannisoran – Uuuugh, noooo, you edited! Fantastic post, brutal ending. I want so much to send you through to the next round. But you edited. I’m guessing you missed that note in the results post. Ugh, that sucks so much.
Yronwood – I feel like you didn’t take the torture far enough. It was a very good post! It just needed more viciousness to it.
Dagny – I really, really liked your post. But you went from so much lovely detail in the beginning to just quick little statements about what happened during playtime torture. I would really have liked to see those paragraphs expanded, to give them more impact. You brought in so many fantastic scenarios, but skimmed over the resulting devastation.
Erling – Your post was fun to read, and very entertaining. I guess I’m just really bloodthirsty, because the torture felt a little tame. Or more that he didn’t get hit as hard by it as he could have, I guess. I’m sorry!
Grumblesnakes will patch each of you back up and drop you back off where he found you, whole and intact and much more colorful than before. This color will fade over the next BQ year back to your original color, all except for the places where you were put back together. All your scars will stay your bright rainbow colors. I’m sorry, and thank you so much for playing. Better luck next time!
The rest of you? Stick around, I’ll have round three up shortly.
