aurinko's toybox

The tile floor felt like a series of trap doors. The black-and-white, checkered pattern made our doll uneasy - any step could be a wrong answer. It was told to pick up specific records from this store - “soundscapes”, as they were described, not strictly “music”. Low, deep drones of harsh wind flowing over Danish islands, or field recordings of insects in the Thai countryside, coupled with piano keys and harp cords. It wasn’t exactly music, but it wasn’t something else, either. Our doll inched towards one of the bins. “World Music”, “Experimental”, “Uncategorized” all felt like synonyms for a black box of understanding it could not open - none of these experiences had graced it, nor would anything bring it closer to experiencing what these sounds contextualized. The record covers didn’t help it either: photos of industrial megastructures, ASCII-like minimalist designs, and color-block geometries that offered little clue as to what the records would eventually sound like. Names of composers in Croatian, Amharic, and Japanese were as foreign as the lettering. In a dull panic, it grabbed three records; one with the most interesting cover art, the least interesting covert art, and the absolute middle record of the bunch; of exactly sixteen, it grabbed number eight. Each record cost the same, and made each record identical to the doll. It hurried out, using the same axiom to navigate as it entered: white tile, black tile, white tile, black tile, repeat. The click of its shoes rung through the shopfront with each step, almost like a cat’s bell. It counted a cracked tile as two separate entities, and stood on its toes to stay completely in the tile’s bounds. It leapt through the door in a single hop, stumbling on the concrete outside. To the doll’s horror, it stood exactly atop a rift on the sidewalk - the cracks seemingly protruding out from under its shoes.

It didn’t remember these cracks before. It wonders if, somehow, they were willed into existence while it was inside. Maybe the leap, maybe the shoes. Maybe the axiom of safety inadvertently cursed her.

It lift its left foot, hoping that it’d cleanly lift off from the ground. It was stuck. It pulled again, and again, until finally it dislodged, small specs of concrete flinging outward from those small black shoes.

"Can you see the pinwheel?" She asked. It felt like hours had passed between the request from the Tall one, later learning it's name was Requiem. Straightforward enough - replacing a part that had grown stuck, one she would do herself if she could. Requiem had smuggled in a replacement from one of the house's "visitors", unknown to all, even the witches, but our doll knew. No one else could be trusted, but our doll had nothing to lose. Our doll had nothing to gain, either, but the calculus was not against its favor, as it happened to be with the others.

"It's too dark. It feels close, but there isn't a way to tell." Our doll said. Months of tar-like black goo had entombed Requiem's inner gears, half punishment for disobeying her superiors, half neglect on behalf of Requiem herself. "We need another set of rags, something to clean out or-" "NO! No rags, you know this. You need to flood it again." she roared back. Cleaning her insides would leave too much evidence, and signs of care or repair would rouse suspicion among everyone. Suspicion bore jealousy, jealousy bore punishment, both seen and unseen. Our doll sighed, resigned. "Okay, okay. Just wait here." Two buckets - one promptly filled halfway with water, the other empty to catch all the refuse - were hurriedly carried over. Requiem, unblinking, turned her head back. "It won't happen this time, please trust me."

"Okay. Just please sit still."

"What happened before was-"

"It was not intentional, Requiem. You've said as much already."

Silence filled the room, before a wicked splashing begun cascading down the Tall one's backplate. She immediately went cold, locking into place as the goo tumbled out of her lower receivers. Bundles of detritus, from clumps of dust and pebbles to months of smog buildup, were carried like leaves through the newly formed black river. As one bucket emptied, the other nearly began to overflow with the accumulated, viscous mass.

"Requiem, if you can hear, it's done. Your gear is being put into place now. Don't move." Our doll whispered, not out of compassion but solely a perverse sense of self-preservation. It was in too deep now, and being caught as an accomplice would subject her to the same punishments from the higher dolls. All of the dolls were higher than it, at least as things stood. It could not imagine sinking even lower, but it's paranoia tried quite hard to regardless.

As the cog fit into place, our doll noticed it was stamped with an insignia eerily similar to the wrist of another doll passing it on the street weeks before. Unease turned to dread.

"Requiem, it's in. Your ignition was triggered a few moments ago, so you should be waking up slowly. Please be quiet while your rear plate is set in again."

". . . Aurinko, where is the. . ."

"In the sink. You asked for it to be kept and cleaned, so it's in the sink, to be cleaned."

". . .thank you."

"Please do not do that. This does not have a name, you know the order. You will get in worse trouble than if you were caught today."

"You deserve to have. . ." Requiem said, before trailing off. A floorboard outside the stockroom creaked, with both dolls' heads whipping around to focus on the dark outline of the door, half expecting a silhouette to appear in the gap above the floor.

"Dolls deserve what dolls receive. The cog is in the sink, and the buckets are being dealt with."

"Bread pudding?" the witch asked, incredulously. "You were sent to get bread, and you have bread pudding?" "I'm sorry. I think when I asked for bread, they must have heard 'pudding' instead of 'please." the doll replied, it's faceplate shaking a bit under pressure. "I did not know that this even exis-."

"I can believe that." the witch barked. "We will get bread tomorrow, and you'll explain what happened then. You all may keep the pastry, I have no use for it." The witch turned, and smiled for a moment - the confusion did bring a degree of unexpected amusement. What a great story it will make for later days.

Our doll nodded and apologize again, before re-wrapping the bread pudding and returning to the doll's quarters. It steadied it grip with each step, relieved to have escaped punishment. It's witch was not cruel, per say, but prone to anger when unexpected failures occurred. Errands were often a source of these failures.

As it shut the door to the doll's bedroom, aptly annotated by a large "BR" above the door, our doll was greeted by the rest of it's cohort. Nearly a dozen dolls - in felt, metal, plastic, and combinations therein - gathered to see it home. "What was your punishment?" One asked. "Is it true that there was bread in the pudding?" The first of three combat dolls asked, with a second chiming in: "No, it was told that there was pudding in the bread."

"How could there be pudding in any bread?" the third bellowed. It was the strongest of the three, or of any of the dolls for that matter. Leaning down towards our doll, a bright smile contrasting with the plexiglass and transparent, synthetic plastic showing her inner gears, it seemed to know what happened before our doll did. "She let you keep it, didn't she? Did you bring it back?" Nodding, our doll motioned to the communal kitchen. The other dolls chirped excitedly, cramming themselves through the narrow door to see this "bread pudding" with their own eyes.

"It got lucky." said our doll, the Tall One staying back with it. "No punishment. At least, not for now."

dolls aren't allowed to control or manipulate any "thing" larger than themselves.

our doll took trains often. a city as big as this one, many errands forced it to spend time navigating the labyrinth of transportation maps afforded to it. after a while, the most common errands became second nature, as did the metro rides that facilitated them: down the stairs, swipe at the turnstile, wait at the platform, board, wait, de-board, exit at the turnstile, up the stairs, and onward.

spending time on the train was a gentle respite for our doll. it saw a world, vast and colorful, it wished to explore someday. strange buildings and rolling hills, signs pointing to a million different lives possible for the city's other inhabitants. an urge to jump out wherever she pleased to explore, even for a few minutes or an hour if it felt brave, had to be latently suppressed each trip.

it's stop had arrived. out of the metro car, down the stairs our doll went - crisscrossing other travelers on their way out of the platform. this was one of it's usual trips - an errand to obtain a new chess set, a pair of French candles, a half-dozen package of tinned fish, a luxury notebook with a proprietary typeface - to a familiar vendor. the shop's owner recognized the doll, sometimes slipping a thank-you note alongside homemade chocolate samples after ringing up it's shopping list.

the bag was heavy on the doll. before stepping back towards the platform, it hesitated: the weather was unusually sunny, gentle rays of light shining down on a park designed alongside the multi-story row of shops that felt like a third or fourth home to our doll. and so it spent a few minutes sitting down on the grassy knoll, enjoying the chocolate and stuffing the shopkeeper's note into it's blouse pocket. a row of orange colored bikes stood in a rack at the park's entrance, free to use with a deposit refunded when the bike was returned from use. it sighed, gazing out further into the horizon to acres of park yet to be explored.

it's dress had a stain on it.

ignoring it for days, the doll kept on about her tasks. the others traded glances, more as the days wore on. they started whispering about the stain's longevity, otherwise unremarkable, was approaching a week.

it dreaded doing laundry. it had only one dress, a hand-me-down from another doll long forgotten before her. however well kept - and it was well kept, with expert stitching from one of the witch's workers that came by occasionally - the dress felt unseemly on the doll. embroidered initials gave the doll an unanswered question to it's original owner, one that kept the doll in a state of unease.

the doll preferred to wear the blouse and skirt that was made for it, but after an errand gone awry, neither were presentable. "Go buy some bread" the doll was told, and in the process, was nearly hit by a falling brick that missed the two-foot gap in the scaffolding above it.

it wondered if the brick was some kind of sign.

alas, after some prodding, our doll was given time and privacy to wash its dress. however disconcerting the dress felt to wear, being without clothes felt multitudes worse. it's disjointed parts, sometimes melted or bolted together when joints didn't fit together, embarrassed our doll. chips upon it's torso, missing fragments down it's legs - small imperfections that added up and weighed upon it.

it's parts were not made for our doll, but they were made to fit together, by any means necessary.

back and forth along the washboard it's dress went.

back and forth

back and forth

back and forth

back and forth along it's arms did the candle burn.

back and forth along it's torso did the sandpaper bruise.

our doll stopped. the stain was gone, finally.

this doll did not know its parts. joints unfamiliar, face plates sourced anonymously, with disparate markings for each component that comprised "her". it recognized some numbers, but none of the acronyms; lettering and characters from other languages, and other numerical arrangements interspersed that it could never decipher. it never named them, and barely recognized them as its own.

another doll passed in the street, among the witches and workers bustling about during the night. if only for a second, our doll recognized part of itself in the other - a distinct, brightly colored stamp on the wrist. the red outline burned crimson into its eyes, and for a moment, our doll sensed part of itself in another. it had never felt such a feeling before. but just as the moment arrived, it was over. the other doll disappeared into the crowd, its other parts unrecognized and uncategorized to our doll.

the doll never liked the word; it did not mind tasks, but errands were a source of fear. it fixated on an assumed etymology of the word, with -er as a prefix, "to make a mistake". errands were opportunities for failure.

"Go buy some bread." A witch might ask. What kind of bread? How much is 'some'? What bread is the witch's favorite? How do I know what 'good' bread is? These were errands.

"Can you help me with something?" An angel asked. A task, more palatable, easier to understand. "What should I do?" The doll could say, in turn. The gratification of being told, and not having the opportunity to fail, was immense.

impossible.

dolls can't have dolls of their own. you cannot craft a toybox small enough; a vessel that tiny cannot hold sufficient magic.

but this doll seemed to find a way, for a time. she knew not what she did, nor what would become of her. hidden away from an already small world, an escape of her own.

her flimsy attempts to mimic emotions she only learned from mimicking others became grotesque in this doll. a smile became a shrewd grin, laughter morphed into grotesque howling. more and more, the doll grew uneasy with the secret hidden away.