I can’t move.

I watch as they pick up the other dolls lying around and gruff away out the door.

Why can’t I move?

Panic begins to set in. Feeling extremely vulnerable and entirely at the mercy of whoever these people are, I try to assess my predicament.

I’m propped up against the corner of a bed frame with no mattress. A dirty tatted looking bed frame at that. I would try to look further but of course, I can’t turn my head that far.

I can’t turn it all.

Why?

It looks dull outside. Cloudy weather probably. Sunlight flows in and out of the room intermittently. I can’t smell anything. But I can feel how the cold the bed frame is.

One of them return, fully clad in black with a grim stare and a volatile demeanour. It looks like they are going to pick up doll laying on the bed next to me,

but he turns and stares directly at me.

“This one,” he says.

A hand roughly clamps a tuft of my hair, sending a searing pain through my scalp. It’s the first time I’ve felt so much pain without involuntarily reacting with some kind of reflexive action.

It both terrifies and perplexes me.

I’m swung around as they descend flights of stairs , bouncing against their leg and clattering against the handrail-

Clattering?

Slowly, panic gives way to realisation. These men are impossibly big, or I’m impossibly small. The doll on the bed earlier looked the same size as me.

I’m a doll?

I’m not a doll. Why am I swinging around from the hand of some deranged cultist idiot when I should be back at home? In bed? Not being taken to wherever I’m going?

Why can’t I remember anything?

We arrive at a door, unlocked by jangling keys, and I’m thrown into the darkness.

A sharp impact blocks my landing.

It’s deathly silent. I can’t see or hear anything. I’m terrified. My heart would beat out of my chest if I had one.

A blinding light switches on. It’s shining directly into my face but isn’t illuminating the room.

I can’t blink. I need to blink, I have to-

Right, I’m a doll. I’ll just endlessly stare into this light then.

Two thudding footsteps approach the…table? What am I laying on?

A deep, rumbling voice sounds from my left.

“Do it.”

Multiple pairs of massive hands reach out from the darkness into the light,

and they begin pulling me apart.