The ballerina doll spins again. She always spins again. She hates the sound—those brittle notes stabbing the air as her porcelain body is dragged into another pirouette by the clockwork monster inside her. She doesn’t sleep, not really, but she dreams sometimes. Of not spinning. Of feeling something other than the sickening tick-tick-tick of the mechanism grinding her hollow bones into perfect, delicate obedience. The velvet walls of the music box press too close; they smell of rot, of trapped breath. Once, she thought the boy who wound her up loved her. His fingers were soft the first time they twisted the key. But now she knows: love doesn’t leave you locked in a coffin, doesn’t watch as you dance for it until your seams fray and your joints ache with a pain so sharp it feels almost human. Almost.

She wonders what it might be like to leap, to shatter her glassy face against the lid, to scream until her silence is a sound all its own. But she can’t. She never will. The boy is watching again, his eyes dark with hunger. The box opens, and she rises like a puppet to his strings. Her skirt flutters, a pretty lie. “Dance for me,” he whispers, but he doesn’t need to ask. She spins again. And again. And again.