Part 1: Character Creation / Chapter 1

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What the hell was Nancy Cameron’s mother doing in my dream?

I thought I’d put all that high school crap behind me, but apparently my subconscious disagreed. Nancy was a girl I’d dated my junior year. But our liaison had been short-lived. Her mother was British and fancy, and she’d urged Nancy to dump me—and not in private. She’d spoken right up at dinner, explaining to Nancy that I was, “a fat nerd.” But not the kind that makes millions. Just the kind that sits around all day playing Dungeons & Dragons and “infecting the lives of those around them with mediocrity.”

In short, I was the wrong kind of fat nerd for her daughter—and I had to go.

For the record, I’d been a chubby kid, but by sixteen I was more husky than fat. And I told Nancy’s mom so. Because I thought I should stand up for myself. But my display of backbone didn’t sway the jury and Nancy sent me packing shortly thereafter.

It was a savage heart-stomping and it had done a number on me, adding to a growing list of lessons that would teach me that anyone I loved, trusted, or relied on would eventually leave me in the lurch one way or another. That said, it had been a decade since said heart-stomping, and even in REM sleep, I didn’t see what lingering unfinished business I could have with Nancy, never mind her mother.

But I didn’t have long to think about it. Because the dream got way weirder from there. It became a manic slideshow comprised of hundreds of images flashing before my eyes. I saw co-workers, childhood classmates, long-lost pets, and action movie stars from the classic 80s movie marathons that formed the bedrock of my relationship with my late father. The onslaught of imagery was intermingled with a series of loading bars rocketing up to 100%, accompanied by strange messages in a language made up of a bizarre mashup up letters, punctuation, and alien emojis. And superimposed over this whole Clock Work Orange Ludovico treatment? A giant type-only logo that read: RIP: Lazarus’ Kool-Aid.

It was the weirdest thing I’d ever experienced. That is until I felt the tiny feet pressing into my rib cage and awoke to discover two black button eyes staring into mine.

A doll was perched on my chest. But not just any doll. It was a Cutie Pants doll: a jointless, fabric cherub stuffed into a pink dress, and anchored by a pair of weighted penny loafers that gave it the ballast to maintain a standing pose.

On the face of it, it was a generic doll. In fact, it was the doll’s unadorned simplicity that distinguished it in the gimmick-laden landscape of doll-dom. No, I’m not a doll expert, but I knew Cutie Pants dolls—especially the model I was looking at. Why? Because my sister had had one just like it when we were kids. She’d often snuck into my room and sat it next to my bed so I’d awaken to find it staring at me, at which point she’d deny any knowledge of how it had gotten there, and suggest that maybe it wanted to kill me. Did the thing bear any resemblance to the notorious serial killer-possessed murder doll Chucky, of Child’s Play fame? No. But my horror fan mom had screened those films far too many times for me to give any doll the benefit of the doubt.

The prank was the sole cruelty my otherwise kind-hearted sister had ever inflicted upon me. But that didn’t change the fact that many a morning I’d greeted the dawn drenched in sweat, screaming as two black button eyes bored into mine.

“Wanna be friendsies?” the speaker sewn into the doll’s head droned, catapulting me out of the past and into the present.

Holy crap. As established, Cutie Pants dolls were all retro appeal. They didn’t have any modern technology built in—no motion sensors to trigger automation or anything like that. They just had a pull-string in the back to cue the aforementioned, pre-recorded catch phrase.

And nobody had pulled that string.

The conclusion that my childhood nightmare had become a reality was not the only conclusion that could be drawn. But it wasn’t out of the running.

As I looked at the doll, I thought it was looking back at me. It was hard to tell because buttons don’t have irises or pupils. But in retrospect, I’m pretty sure it was looking at me, because it would need to do that to bite my face. Which is what it did next.

I cried out—as much in shock as in pain. Obviously, none of this could really be happening. But my face felt like it was. My face felt like it was happening pretty hard.

“Wanna be friendsies?” the thing repeated incomprehensibly through clenched teeth as it drew blood from my cheek. That’s right. The voice wasn’t coming from a speaker sewn into the thing anymore. It was coming from its mouth—a mouth it hadn’t had until the biting. I had questions. A lot of them. But they were going to have to wait.

I rolled onto my side, instinctively aiming to crush the doll, but sensing my plan, it un-chomped my face and pushed off, launching itself clear of danger as my roll carried me off the edge of the mattress. I went crashing gracelessly to the floor.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

Leaping to my feet, I found not one, not two, but three seemingly-sentient Cutie Pants dolls scattered around my studio apartment. The one with which I’d tussled had retreated to the kitchenette and was climbing up onto the counter. I had a moment to ask myself, “Is that doll going for the knife block?” before it yanked out a serrated blade, turned and leaped off the counter at me. I staggered back, barely dodging the blade as it swiped past my face, only to feel a set of razor-sharp teeth latch onto my shin. Looking down, I saw one of the other dolls going to town on my tibia like it was eating corn on the cobb.

“Arrraahhh!” I screamed and started flailing my doll-laden leg around, desperately trying to shake the thing loose. But it wouldn’t let go. I cranked up the vigor, kicking so violently and spastically that I must have looked like an epileptic trying to boot a hundred-yard field goal. Meanwhile, at that precise moment, the third doll was galloping toward me on all fours and as fate would have it, I inadvertently punted doll number two into doll number three. They both went flying, crashing into the kitchenette cabinets with enough force to shatter the doors. As the two dolls slapped down on the linoleum in a daze, glass shards showered down upon them, treating them both to assorted lacerations.

They squealed as blood sprayed out all over the place. Yes, blood. Why did dolls have blood? Another question to add to the tab. But it wasn’t the most pressing question. The most pressing question was: where was doll number one?

Frantically searching the room, I spotted the thing creeping up behind me. I side-stepped in an arc and it mirrored my movement, meeting my eyes as we circled one another. It bared its teeth. I hadn’t actually gotten a good look at those yet. They were a hideous modification to the doll’s original design, swapping a braided thread-embroidered smile for the gaping maw of a piranha.

“Wanna be friendsies?” the horror show asked again, as it flipped the knife into the air and caught it, switching seamlessly from a forward grip to a reverse grip like a frigging Navy seal.

“Listen,” I said. “Let’s just put the knife down and talk about this.” Because why not try to reason with the homicidal stuffy? By way of reply, the thing just bared its teeth more ferociously and let out a gurgling growl—possibly the only sound of which it was capable, aside from its incongruous invitation to become friendsies. But I took its meaning: there would be no peaceful resolution here.

However, as I wasn’t actually being bitten, slashed, or stabbed at this particular moment, I suppose my brain thought it had time for a surreal revelation. And you know that feeling when you sense that you’re exactly three-thirteenths dead?

Of course you don’t. Neither did I, until that moment.

Suddenly, I was intuitively aware that my life was comprised of thirteen equal units and three of them had gone missing. At the same time, I was aware that the second and third dolls were both two-thirds dead. I couldn’t make sense of the feeling. But one thing was for sure. Three-thirteenths dead was as dead as I wanted to get.

My reverie was rudely interrupted as my current adversary charged and catapulted itself toward my face. I’d circled in front of my bed and, acting on pure instinct, I dropped onto my butt and rolled backward over my mattress, yanking up my heavy comforter to shield my face. The tiny monstrosity collided with the blanket as I closed the excess fabric around its body. But the knife broke through the fabric, passing within an inch of my right eye. I felt the blade graze my temple, carving a shallow ditch that sliced through my sideburn.

The doll thrashed around and my makeshift snare swung wildly through the air as I tried to keep my grip. It wouldn’t be long before the thing cut itself free. To make matters worse, as I stumbled around, I spotted doll number two lunging at me—seemingly ignoring the shard of glass protruding from a gushing wound in its back. The only thing I could think to do was to perry its attack with the writhing, growling bundle in my hands. I swung the whole mess up and around, then brought it down in front of me.

I heard a crunching, squishing sound suggesting my gambit had been more effective than expected. As I dragged the bundle back, I saw the knife sticking out of the comforter had stabbed all the way through doll number two, snuffing it out and pinning its corpse to the floor. The motionless lump of goose feather bedding and my newly acquired sixth sense told me doll number one had fared no better. I was starting to feel the weight of the unfathomable atrocity I’d just been forced to perpetrate. But that was a luxury I couldn’t afford, as doll number three landed on my back. It sunk its teeth into my shoulder and I staggered around my kitchenette screaming and clawing at the little hellion. After bashing into a wall or two and getting ahold of it by its scruff, I managed to yank it up and over my head, hurling it across the room. It bashed into the dishrack and landed in the sink, splashing down in the soapy water in which I’d been soaking a stubborn lasagna casserole. But the tiny stuffed varmint barely missed a beat before sloshing back up and lunging at me again.

“Wanna be friendsies?” it crooned as a fight or flight-fueled surge of adrenaline took over and I pinned it back down in the sink. Before I knew what I was doing, I was holding the thing under the sudsy water, its little hands clawing the crap out of my wrists as I screamed, “No! I do not! Want to be! Friendsies!”

After a minute or so of that, the doll was super dead. And I was pretty spent. I slid down the sink-front and plopped onto the floor, my chest heaving, my pajamas covered in the dolls’ blood as well as my own. But as my pulse pounded in my head, and I struggled to comprehend any part of what had just happened, I heard . . .

Ding dong!

The doorbell. At 7 a.m.? It had to be a neighbor, wondering about the racket. I looked around my place. Goose feather stuffing was still floating in the air. The floor was littered with shattered glass and smeared with blood. A broken and battered doll lay impaled on the floor to my right, all-too-real intestines inexplicably leaking out of its knife wound. The crimson-soaked comforter concealed my second victim, but the third one was on full display, floating lifelessly in the sink above me, its little doll lungs full of dish water and its face frozen in a horrific grimace.

But what are you gonna do? After all, I reminded myself, none of this was really happening because it couldn’t be happening.

I staggered to my feet and limped to the door, opening it without even asking who it was. I guessed it was old Mr. Crawley, from across the hall. But as the door swung open, Mr. Crawley was nowhere in sight. Instead, I found myself staring out at . . . Nancy Cameron’s mother.