your favorite plushie 🪡

My nightly visits started taking longer. I'd pull her away from her work to draw her into long conversations. She was eager to talk about herself--I got the impression few people ever asked about her. It was all the sort of mundane intimacy you talk about on first dates. During one such conversation she asked me: "If you could be any animal, what would it be?" And before I could answer, interjected: "I think dogs have it pretty good. I'd rather be a dog than a person, sometimes. They just get to sleep and eat and hang out, and dog people are crazy affectionate. Y'know?"

The second step of my plan was easy to execute. I found her manager's phone number and begin issuing complaints. Slowly at first, then a torrent. People like her already operate on such thin ice, I suspect it would have taken even less to get her fired, but it's important to always minimize your points of failure.

She was crying again the next time I came in, beautiful little tears cascading down her cheeks, failing to muffle her pathetic sobs. I let her fall into my arms again. "I think they're going to fire me," she whimpered. "I'm sure it's going to be okay. You're wonderful, who would want to get rid of you? If you worked for me, I'd never let you go."

She thanked me profusely and handed me my cigarettes without me even needing to ask for them. She'd moved the box to under the counter, so I spent more time there, and less wandering through the store looking for them. On my way out, I sent one final message to her manager, accusing her of sexually harassing me.

They fired her at the end of her shift, the parasites. Waited until they'd extracted every last dime from her and then dropped the bomb. Withheld her last paycheck, too, claiming suspicion of theft of company property. It didn't matter, of course, she wouldn't need it soon enough, but it just makes the blood boil, doesn't it? How could they mistreat something so precious?

I was sitting in my car in the parking lot, eating some wretched sandwich from a nearby early morning cafe. She staggered out of the store looking pale-faced and ghostly, her entire body a leaf in the chilly wind. She looked lost. She looked desperate. I pulled my car alongside her when she was a block away, in a secluded stretch of her route home I'd canvased previously to ensure there were no cameras nearby. "Need a ride home?"

Self preservation was never her strong suit. She climbed into the passenger seat without hesitation, and broke down sobbing. "My landlord is going to kick me out. I was barely surviving, I have nothing in savings, I'm fucked, I'm going to die," She babbled when her voice wasn't choked by tears. I comforted her with one hand while doing everything I could to suppress my smile.

She didn't notice at first that I wasn't taking her home. She didn't notice at first that the lights of the city were getting dimmer, and the roads quickly swallowed by dense forest on either side. By the time she did, it was much too late, of course. Even if she leapt from the car while it was still moving, she wouldn't make it far into the woods before I found her again.

"Where are you taking me?" She asked.

"Somewhere nice." I said. "You deserve something nice, for once."

I was used to more resistance at this point. Kicking, screaming-- I kept my taser on hand in the event I needed to quickly subdue her. This was usually the moment they broke and realized what was about to happen, after all. But she didn't start fighting. She just settled back into her seat and stared at the road ahead. "Oh. Okay."

My heart skipped a beat. She truly was perfect in every way.

Down the road. Up the driveway. Out of the car. Into the house, where it sat alone in those woods I knew so well. She did not say another word, and she had stopped crying altogether. Her eyes were wide and empty. I took her by the hand and guided her to the living room and sat her down on the couch.

"I normally don't give girls this choice," I confessed. "But you told me once you'd rather be a dog than a person. Do you still feel that way?"

She nodded slowly. I pulled the collar I'd already prepared out of my jacket--wine dark with silver inlays, and a little tag with her new name embossed onto it. Though she shook, she offered me her neck. It took everything I had to not rip into it with my teeth, and instead simply click the collar into place. The back was secured with a tiny lock. It looked so right, sitting around her neck. She was born for this.