#writing!!!!

"You've always liked creepy dolls. No, creepy isn't the right work. You don't think they are, at least."

A girl lies on a bed, her hands resting lightly on her stomach. She makes sure her eyes are shut tight. If you can't see something, it isn't there.

"Oh, am I scaring you?" The voice giggles. It sounds high pitched, almost child-like. "Good."

The girl tries to say something, but her voice catches in her throat.

"Back to the story, now." The girl's breathing is shaky. "When you found the doll in the thrift store, you weren't scared at all, were you?"

The girl screws her eyes shut even tighter and tries to ignore the feeling of someone watching her. It doesn't really work, because she can still feel the hair on the back of her neck stand up.

It sounds smug. "No, you weren't. You thought it was… cute, even! Big round button eyes, red stitched smile, spiky pigtails. Your friends thought you were crazy. Called it haunted." It sighs wistfully. "You just brushed them off."

The girl opens her mouth to speak, to protest against what the voice is saying, but a cold finger presses against her lips. It feels like plastic. "Ah-ah-ah," it says. "No talking yet. You'll ruin all my hard work," it adds, pouting. "Just listen to the story."

The girl's mouth snaps closed with a click. Her breathing starts to even out, and she can feel her heart slow down. It doesn't matter that the terror is still building within her.

"How long did it sit on that shelf in your room? It was watching you, you know. Two months, those button eyes staring right at you and taking in every single word you said and every single thing you did. It told me everything about you. And you-" here, it laughs, full of delight and wonder. "You seemed perfect."

The honesty in it's voice scares the girl. Not one bit of that terror shows up on her face.

"You missed the doll when it disappeared. You felt… empty without it. You wanted it back! Even I didn't expect that." It pauses for a moment. "That's when I knew it had to be you. I guessed before. Wanted. Hoped. But when you noticed the doll was missing? I knew."

She can feel plastic fingers carding through her hair, twisting the strands into two braids and lifting her head. She can't do anything to move. It shushes her softly and wipes away tears that she didn't realize were still falling. "Don't worry," it murmurs. "This will be over soon."

The comfort and reassurances in her ears are a different kind of wrong. She wants to pull herself away, but she is frozen. Trapped within herself.

The voice sighs. "I really do hope your adjustment period isn't bad. I like you." It ties off the first braid neatly, and starts on the next. "Novel thing, that. Liking people. Huh."

It leaves her to the quiet stillness of hearing her breathing continue to slow. She can't hear it breathing. Is it breathing, even? Does it need to breathe?

The hair tie of the second braid is set into place with a quiet snap. She can hear a small rustle, and her head falls against the bed, limp.

The voice is coming from a different place when it speaks again. "Now open your eyes."

The girl does, looking up at the thing in front of her. She doesn't want to. She doesn't want to do anything more than close her eyes again and pretend that none of this is real. She can't anymore, because her eyelids feel stiff now, too, and she knows that even if she tried she wouldn't be able to close them.

Her own face stares back at her. Her own smile is wide and pulling at the edges so she can see her gums, and her skin is unnaturally smooth. She knows that if she touched it, she would feel cold plastic.

This is wrong. She doesn't want to see her own face looking back at her, she wants to close her eyes again. She can't close her eyes.

She leans forward and boops herself on the nose, giggling. "Thank you!" Her smile gets even wider, somehow.

She was right; it's still cold plastic. She catches a glimpse of her reflection on it, and wants nothing more than to be able to scream.

A doll looks back at her, distorted by reflection. One with big round button eyes, a red stitched mouth, and brown hair down in two braids.