// dolls, grooming, brainwashing, CSA, witches, cults, PTSD, delusions, death, implications
You were servicing your Witch when the outer wards came down. You felt the shift in the dollhouse as every thread attached to you was suddenly drawn wire taut. A look passed from Witch to doll. You got dressed and grabbed your gun. You were a combat doll, they made you for this.
Making a combat doll is no easy task. You barely remembered your Becoming, but you knew it took significantly more work on the part of your Witches to make you compared to your brothers and sisters. You were their weapon. You were a good doll.
Your Dollhouse was well defended by layer after layer of wards and defensive sigils. Protections which the State Mages were in the process of busily dismantling. Dolls cowered in fear, Witches looked nervously to you as they gathered weapons and magic, something flickered below.
The State Mages were meticulous, careful. They cut the power and jammed your astral links first then encircled the dollhouse to block any avenues of escape. A small army of Mages and combat dolls surrounded you with weapons and armored vehicles. They weren’t messing around.
Another layer of wards collapsed as you finished grabbing as much ammunition as you could carry to the fortifications being prepared at their only accessible breach point. Your Witches had prepared you for this day. You would protect them all.
The approach was a long hall, a perfect killzone. You had clear sightlines and were well protected. They would have combat dolls of their own, not to mention magic and any number of other tricks. You had a few tricks of your own.
It was all going according to plan when the final layer of the wards collapsed. The secret escape tunnel had been opened, the dolls were being collected and the Eyes of The One Below had reported the Mages were about to breach the door you were protecting. It was perfect.
It was too perfect. A team of SWAT Mages stormed up the escape tunnel as the door was breached. One of your witches went down in a hail of spells. The world flickered and quavered uneasily as you opened fire. The Demon below roared. mages died. You whirled into action.
Your attempted front line had already collapsed. Mages were neutralizing dolls as they swept the house room by room. There was a firefight developing in the kitchen. The skilled defense was turning into a mad melee. None of that was your concern, your job was simply to kill.
You unloaded a clip into another combat doll and rolled down the hallway while reloading. You rolled upright as your reached a doorway and blasted a mage in the face. There were too ma–Your Witch tugged at you, and you went to her. You were a good doll.
Two combat dolls took cover as you laid down suppressing fire and moved towards your Witch, who was pinned down behind the stove. The dollhouse fluctuated, fractals boiling from every surface. A distraction. They shot you with something. You fell.
Space and time bubbled like warm molasses as you tumbled to the ground, alive but incapacitated. They didn’t kill you? Why?
You struggled to move, to get up. You had to help your witch! Your traitor body refused to move even as they closed in on her. Bad doll! Bad doll! Bad do
Spells were exploding everywhere. You watched your witch fall, her body riddled bullets. You saw the light leave her eyes. Your threads snapped. Inside your still body, you screech in rage and pain. The Demon howled as it slaughtered mages. You hoped it killed them all.
There was another ripple, more mages died and you thought your Master might actually win. Then the Demon fell to concentrated fire. You knew the second it happened. The damage radiated out like fracturing glass as the dollhouse gutted itself. The whole world came apart.
Your witch’s dead eyes stared into you. Concepts splintered, stories fractured, load bearing axioms were instantly crushed. The fractal bit down. The Door Opens. Reality shatters into the tinnitus shriek of a million cicadas roaring out of the television static. There’s nothing.
There’s nothing. There’s nothing, there’s nothing, there’s nothing, there’s crying. There’s nothing, there’s blood. There’s nothing, there’s a camera flash, there’s nothing, there’s nothing, there’s nothing, there’s hands feeling you up, there’s reruns on the TV, there’s nothing.
There’s nothing. There’s nothing, there’s nothing, there’s nothing. There’s a hand on your arm. There’s nothing. There’s nothing. There’s reruns on the TV again. The heart rate monitor beeps steadily. There’s nothing. There are voices. There is a Doo-
The sensation of your hand on a doorknob fades into a dull tingle as the sterile wasteland of the hospital unfolds around you, room after room kaleidoscoping into being as a window and landscape beyond suddenly manifest. You’re alive.
Why are you alive?
There were five witches, one demon, and forty two dolls in the dollhouse, including you. It wasn’t real. Your witch had personally selected you herself. It wasn’t real. Your master thought you were the most beautiful doll. It wasn’t real. None of it was real.
It wasn’t real it wasn’t real it wasn’t real it wasn–hands on your naked body, cameras, restraints, a man lau–you puke all over your sheets. You were a good doll. It wasn’t real. You did as you were told. It wasn’t real. It wasn’t real. It wasn’t fucking real.
You were a good doll. It wasn’t real. You did as you were told. It wasn’t real. You helped them hurt the oth–it. It wasn’t. It. You. It was. What did they do to you? What did they make you do? You scream and thrash so hard a nurse has to sedate you.
You still see it sometimes, out of the corner of your eye. The Door. It’s closed again now, but you know what’s waiting beyond it. It’s calling out from the dead eyes of the woman who molested you. It’s waiting for you.
All your pain.
All your memories.
And your freedom.