The Dollhouse Residents

By Sara Fathima

The residents of the dollhouse followed perfect order, they moved to the tick of the high clock that hung over their pretty little home, watching over them at all times. It looked so ominous, one little mistake and it seemed like the clock would grow limbs and snap their little necks.

They moved like robots, following the orders of the clock with such precision, they themselves sometimes forgot that they weren't made of bolts and steel but with flesh and bone.

Each tick brought forth a different reaction, it was engraved into their minds. They could never forget, they never dared forget, they would rather forget themselves than forget the routine.

The clock was round and enormous, but it had no numbers, it just had a long thin hand that ticked 8 times a day. It glistened everytime it ticked. 8 ticks, 8 calls.

Pen, just like all the other residents, had her whole day memorised, it wasn't hard, all their days looked the same, there were never any changes, no matter what.

With the first tick, they all woke up, no one was ever even a second late, their body reacted on its own.

If she breathed normally, she had estimated that she could take 2880 breaths between each tick. She had come to this number a long time ago, she didn't exactly remember when.

But she refrained from breathing normally on most days since she didn't want to run out of her share of breaths of the day too soon. When she was young, her father had told her that if she took breaths that were long but far in between then she wouldn't burn through her roster of breaths. It was difficult at first, she didn't know how deep to breathe or how long to wait in between, as a result she sometimes turned blue.

But it was all in the past now, she knew precisely when to stop and how long to wait. She didn't even have to think, it was all muscle memory. Most of the time she didn't feel real, her body, her mind didn't feel hers, it felt like someone else was controlling her body. She saw herself as a doll moving on the command of the strings attached to her. All days merged into one. It was all the same.

They had 2400 breaths to make their beds, shower and put on the same makeup they did everyday, they were dolls after all, and dolls were supposed to look appealing and cute with shimmery eyes, pink cheeks and bright red lips.

Before the clock could even tick, they all formed a single line and when the familiar tick sounded, they all filed out of the house and onto the street. From there, they all made their way to the grocery store, they moved in sync, adults and children alike. The day was warm and leaves from the artificial trees littered the pavement.

Everywhere they went, Maisy was there, she watched over their little world with curiosity filled eyes. She was so tall, she could smash their little house and street with her bare hands if she wanted to, she had once, in the past, when her parents refused to buy her more dolls, she stomped all over the dollhouse and laughed as she watched it all come down in bits and pieces and dolls screamed in pain and terror. After all, it was all play, none of it real, they were her dolls, their world was her dollhouse and it all belonged solely to her.

Her parents didn't do anything as they watched her smash the street, they just sent one of the maids to clean it all up and throw out the broken dolls, some were decapitated, some had their limbs broken and torn off but it was all cleared so quickly, in a matter of a few hundred breaths. Maisy got new dolls and no one ever spoke of it again.

The artificial sun made the glass of the store sparkle. They all picked up their baskets and began shopping. They still had 1700 breaths before the next tick. Maisy pressed her face against the glass and watched as they made their way around the store shopping for food they would never get to eat, because Maisy didn't like them fed, she liked when her dolls were starved and pale. And right then, Maisy poked her hands through the door and pushed everything off of the shelves. She then took most of the food out of the store and collected a small pile of what was left in the centre of the store and said with a sinister smile, "Fight for it."

No one wasted any breaths and ran for the pile, they didn't want to fight but what small injuries they would suffer fighting amongst themselves were far better than the alternative. So they fought, it wasn't anything new, this happened every other day, it was expected, it was chaotic but normal. Maisy's little scaly fingers joined them, she picked up a little doll and threw him right in the thick of the fight. Maisy waited, grinning, searching for a pause or any decrease in the brutal fight but it never came, no one stopped because it was no use, Maisy would pluck off their heads and no one wanted to die. The boy screamed and tried to protect himself from the onslaught of heavy and rapid footsteps but to no avail. Soon he stopped fighting and accepted his fate.

Then she grabbed a handful of dolls from the outer ring of the fight and snapped them in half, the distinct sound of their bones breaking in half and the sound of them falling to the ground louder than the fight. She took another little doll and smothered her face in the glass, smashing her head with minimal effort and coating the walls with flesh and blood. No one said a word, no one reacted to the red and the sliding body of the doll, even her parents kept their heads low, squeezing each other's arms. They wouldn't cry now, no, they would cry after the seventh tick.Then, just as suddenly as she'd started it all, she commanded in a calm voice, "Stop."

They all halted, and moved away from the pile of food.

Pen had 3 bags of cereal in her arms. Her face had deep cuts and scratches. She knew that she would never be able to eat any of what she had fought so hard for, but she wanted to please Maisy, she wanted to impress her and be on her good side in hopes that when scooping up dolls to torture and kill, Maisy would show her mercy for the show she had given her, but deep down even she knew that it was no use, that Maisy didn't care about any of her dolls but she had to try, she had to hope because there was nothing else left for her.

"Drop", they all dropped whatever bags they were holding. "Move", they all formed a single line again, stepping over broken limbs and heads without bodies. There were so many lying motionless on the floor, but it didn't matter, none of them mattered, they were dolls, they were disposable. They all knew that, by tomorrow, they'd have new dollhouse residents.

The third tick of the day sounded and they all walked back home, the artificial sun now glowed brighter. At the house they all ate their only meal of the day and started tending to the house. They scrubbed and scrubbed until the house was spotless, but then Maisy took mud from the garden and rubbed it all over the walls, so they cleaned again. They never spoke. They moved like parts of a machine, they could only speak after the 7th tick, when Maisy went to bed.

By the fourth tick, they were already out in the playground. Maisy and her 2 other friends stood in the centre, they were just kids in their world but they were giants compared to the dolls. They were slender and tall. Blue and black scales covered every inch of their body, they had two large, completely white oval eyes, two hands and two long legs. Their fingers elongated on will. They had no hair, just horns; Maisy had 2 horns whereas Nixie and Kin had one each, this meant that Maisy's family ranked higher than her friends'.

Pen had seen as many as 10 horns on someone's head once, the sight had terrified her and it still did.

"I'm so jealous Mai! You have so many dolls. Your parents really get you all that you ask for. My parents refuse to get me more."

"I told you, you just aren't being stubborn enough. Breaking a few things and throwing a tantrum always helps. See, I'll show you how it's done."

And with that, she took a handful of dolls and threw them in the lake. She knelt and forced their bodies down when they tried to come up for air, they struggled, the sound of the water splashing and the laughs of Maisy and friends made Pen sick to her stomach. She wanted to run to the lake, to tell her to stop but it would do nothing of meaning, and she didn't want to die, she didn't care that it made her seem cowardly, she didn't want to be a hero, she wanted to live. So, just like all the times before, she just watched as the splashing slowly receded and the laughter was all that could be heard.

Then all of a sudden she heard something that weakened her knees, a scream, a cry and the sound of bare feet on sand, she lifted her head with a shaky breath. She saw two adult dolls running towards the pond, their child was one of the drowned. They jumped into the water in search of their child and pulled him out of the water. He was blue and unconscious, but they tried to get him to open his eyes, to breathe. The mother doll slapped him over and over but it was too late, he was already broken. The parents weeped, their shoulders shaking uncontrollably, everyone stood frozen, they didn't dare to look away, no one had dared to go against Maisy, not since the time she obliterated their whole street and broke hundreds of dolls.

When Pen finally mustered up the courage to look at Maisy, she found that the horned child watched the sobbing parents with amusement, she was enjoying this, and that terrified Pen. Something was going to happen, something incredibly terrible.

"Mai, they disobeyed you, look at them, you don't have your dolls in control." Said Nixie with a chuckle, Maisy just snickered and said in a cheerful voice that did not match the look in her eyes, "Oh Nixie, they're my dolls, not my slaves! Let them mourn." Pen was shocked, she couldn't believe it. Maisy was showing mercy? No, that wasn't like Maisy at all. No, this was the calm before the storm, it had to be. There was no way, but she saw it, she saw Maisy letting the dolls go.

She waited for Maisy to throw them in the water too but she didn't. "You're going to let them go? Oh Maisy, come on." She didn't respond, and as the dolls joined the others, they had no choice but to believe that Maisy really had spared them.

Pen breathed a sigh of relief. And just as she did, she saw black and blue scaly tendrils slowly approaching their crowd from all sides.

Maisy and her friends laughed as they elongated their fingers. With a big grin on her face that showed off her tiny sharp teeth she said, "Hide." The playground erupted in chaos, they all ran for cover, to hide. When the sound of running died down, Pen found herself on an artificial tree with thick branches and big leaves. She felt them walking and searching, then she heard a scream, a horrific screech, she moved a branch aside and looked. She saw the mother doll from before. She watched as Maisy tore her limbs one by one with her sharp teeth, clumps of flesh and blood fell on to the sand, the doll screamed louder with each bite and rip. Then, with shortened fingers, Maisy carefully flayed her, she peeled the skin off her flesh with extreme precision and dropped her skin to the ground, it fell with a sickening plop. And as a final act of dominance and hatred towards the doll, she bit her head off, chewed and swallowed it.

Then she threw her decapitated, skinless, torso to the ground and resumed her search. She pulled out doll after doll and threw them to her friends when she realised that they weren't who she was searching for. Her friends tore through the dolls' bodies like hungry animals, they swung them in the air repeatedly and tore open their stomachs and ate their insides, they snapped them in half, smothered them and stomped on them repeatedly. They chewed their dead bodies, the sound of bones being cut into small pieces and of flesh being minced was all that was heard, the sight of blood trickling down their chins was all that was seen. After they were done chewing, they spit the remains on to the sand in a pile that kept growing with each breath Pen took.

Then at last, Maisy found who she was looking for. She raised her hand to signal for her friends to stop. All was silent again. The doll's breathing so loud she could hear it or maybe it was her own, Pen didn't know. She couldn't tell.

Maisy held him up so they could face each other and with a sadistic smile that made her eyes widen, she forced 3 of her tendrils into his mouth. The doll looked so small in her hands. The tendrils tore open his mouth as they forced themselves in, he gagged and kicked his feet into the air but her grip only tightened. Then the tendrils burst through his groin with so much force that blood and tissue splattered all over Maisy's face and body, she licked it all with her fat, yellow tongue. Then the tendrils wrapped over him, cocooned him completely and then crushed him. His chopped up body was the last addition to the pile of flesh, bone and saliva.

"Come out", the remaining dolls came out of their hiding spots, only a handful remained. Gesturing to the pile of death, "Eat", she whispered. They all fell to their knees and shoved handfuls of their friends and family into their mouths. No one dared to protest, no one dared to cry. The meat of the dolls tasted good, so good, or maybe Pen was so starved that it tasted good, so she ate as much as she could.

"Halt." They all stopped and stood, made a single line and the 5th tick came. They all walked home without a second glance over their shoulders. Leaving behind the dead and unfortunate.

On their walk home, Pen noticed that the clouds had darkened. It was going to rain soon.

"Let's play a game! What do you say, my dolls?"

She made it sound like they had a choice, but they all knew that they didn't. Dolls belonged to their owners, they didn't have a choice, their lives didn't matter. So, they nodded with rehearsed, small smiles plastered on their faces.

Some dolls fell to the ground, they had run out of breaths. Pen still had a couple thousand left so she wasn't worried. No one paid much attention to the fallen ones as they were hauled off to the backhouse where they'd be buried or burned. You simply had to try your hardest to not run out of breaths.

"Okay! Now for the rules of the game. As you can see it is about to rain soon and we'll play in the rain, well, you'll play in the rain to be more precise. You'll have to stop when I tell you to stop and run when I tell you to start. Is that clear?"

They nodded again. "But! There's a catch", she said. Pen could suddenly feel sweat pooling under her arms and on her forehead. She was scared, more so than usual.

"You see, this won't be normal rain, there are two types today. One is normal water and the other is acid. And no one knows which is which, it'll switch randomly from water to acid." They didn't stop smiling, but she saw the terror in their eyes.

"Okay then, you'll hear my voice from the speakers! Loud and clear! And, whoever moves even the slightest bit before the order to move, will be sent to the dungeons and whoever stops when I've commanded you to run will also be sent to the dungeons, and we all know, no one wants to go to the dungeons." Pen didn't know much about the dungeons but she had heard over and over that misbehaving dolls were imprisoned and tortured there.

"And whoever makes it to the house alive will be the winners!"

"It can't possibly be worse than what Maisy puts us through", she had said to her father while they were discussing the dungeons, but he just shook his head and refused to say anything more.

Maisy and her friends walked out of the playroom and soon a voice came, "Start." The rain came down, they all started running, the house was still far away.

"Stop" they halted, the rain suddenly burned Pen's skin. It was switched.

"Start" they ran once more, it seemed like they were all gonna make it. No one was screaming or crying.

"Stop" the rain switched once more, the feel of normal water on burned skin hurt. Someone screamed, and right away a maid took the still screaming doll away.

One breath.

Two breaths.

Another doll fell, it was a child. She cried out for her parents to help her but no one came, she begged for someone to help her as she was dragged out of the room.

"Start" another doll pulled out. "Stop" the rain was once again acid. So many fell to their knees and Pen could see their skin all melted and disgusting. It was a horrific scene.

When the call came to run once more, she glanced at her own hands and almost screamed. At the sight of her skin all burned and the terrible smell of melting flesh and deep, ugly scars, the pain came rushing and she wobbled, but didn't let herself fall.

By the time she was on the porch of the big white dollhouse, she didn't think there was even an inch of her skin that wasn't burnt. Her hair came off in clumps with skin still attached. She didn't want to look in the mirror, she was sure she'd die but was that really bad, dying? All her life she'd lived like this, the same day but with new horrors. Maisy looked for new ways to torture them, to kill them. She was afraid of not being alive. The known horror is better than the unknown, she had told herself over and over. She wasn't afraid of death, she realised, she was afraid of not being there, and dying with no real memories or a good life.

She wondered why no one killed themselves in the dollhouse. She had heard that the maids were always watching and didn't let anyone die but they survived Maisy for so long, surely they could break free and jump off the roof.

The sixth tick came and whoever was still out on the street was taken. Including Pen, there were only 10 survivors.

Despite the gruesome burns and scars, they were all smiling and with their heads low and their spine straight, they walked back into the house and went about their usual routine, they cleaned up the whole house, the task taking longer than it had in the morning due to the decrease in the dollhouse's population. They showered with their screams muffled, put on makeup, but now it made them look hideous and terrifying rather than beautiful and friendly. All of them gathered in the bedroom tower which had multiple beds on each floor with nothing but curtains separating them.

A sudden knock came at one of the windows. There was Maisy, looking tired. "Hope you enjoyed the game! You'll meet your new housemates tomorrow." She said with a lazy smile and walked out of the room.

Pen couldn't hear the seventh tick clearly, she just knew that it had happened when everyone started screaming and crying. Pen didn't even realise that she was doing the same, they screamed and sobbed together, clutching their chests. All of them fell to the floor, curled up and just cried, they cried out names, banged their heads against the floor. They hugged each other, their scars and wounds fitting perfectly together as if intricately carved by the same hands, to fit into one big puzzle. They chanted names of all the people who had died. They shared stories and let each other howl at the ceiling.

When it seemed like there were no more screams left and all the tears dried up, they sat huddled together in the centre of the main floor, watching the unnatural moon and stars twinkle.

"I want to see the real moon", announced Glenny. No one responded so he continued.

"And the real trees and the real skies and the real sun", Pen chuckled at that, not because she found it funny, but because it was so absurd and impossible.

They all looked at her. "Do you really believe in all that?", she asked.

"Don't you?" Asked Mala. "I mean, it seems real, no? That there once existed a world that belonged to us and where we weren't treated like this."

"Imagine a world where there was no Maisy and her stupid horns and nasty tendrils."

"That sounds like the world from my dreams!", declared Aary.

"Guys, I'm serious. I've heard the stories about what it used to be like for us before Maisy and her people captured us and brought us here. My grandma used to talk about lush forests and animals. Do you think it still exists? What if they don't know that we're trapped here?"

"Even if it did–does exist, there's no way we could ever go back."

"Yeah you're right. But it hurts to know that there was once a world where we could do whatever we wanted and never be punished for it. Guess we have the worst luck."

They all sat in silence after that, wondering and dreaming and wishing.

"So what if we can't go back. We can still do whatever we want. We can escape."

Said Vin.

"What?", they all collectively asked.

"We can escape, we can jump." Uneasy glances passed amongst the group.

"I'm in", said Pen.

"Wait, what?"

"I said I'm gonna jump. It doesn't matter anymore does it? It never mattered. We're gonna get replaced one day, we all know that. So why can't it be our choice? To die, to leave it all behind?"

She got up and walked up to the window. "We survived an acid shower, we can get past the maids." She opened the window and peered down. The height didn't terrify her like she had thought it would. She felt at peace when she thought of jumping. Next to her, Vin opened another window. Soon all 10 of them were standing in front of open windows.

With a grin Glenny said, "Let's jump on the count of three. 1….2….3"

And they all jumped, they didn't know how they'd manage to fall if the maids came but they all had different things in mind to get through them. Their hearts ached, it was a familiar pain, but it gave them happiness, the pain of freedom, the thought of dying. As they flew down with their eyes closed, they all thought of one thing, imagined the same place: A home. A home full of lush forests and vast seas and pink skies, a home that they would never get to see, a home that they loved with all their charred skin and broken bones and timid hearts, a home that they hoped waited for them when their breaths halted and their eyes forever shut. It seemed silly, but they had to hope because without hope, there was nothing else left for them.

By Sara Fathima