Doll Parts

Plastic

I don't remember much before the second part of UNO's game, mainly because it was mostly me crying. But I'm certain you'd rather hear me venture than hear me cry. Your wish is my command!
          I awoke in the same bed, still under the blankets and turned to my right side. Darcy was in my arms. I don't remember Rory giving you to me. Sunlight snuck through the curtains, trailing across the ceiling and stopping in the middle of the door. Most of the blood that had stained the bed sheets was still glowing, and even the mess on the vanity was bright like a night light. I looked to the floor to see even more blood still there from when Dragonfish had dropped my leg.
          I heard a knock suddenly. Altyn entered the room with a smile, holding a plate of two cinnamon rolls and a glass of orange juice. About time you fed me, bitch. I sighed at her, moving back into the covers in the same position I woke up in, bringing Darcy close. I heard the wife placing the dishes on the vanity next to the bloody mess as she said to me, "Good morning, kiddo. Sleep okay?"
          I weakly replied, "Shut up..."
         Altyn made a noise before leaving the room again. I looked up to see the door still wide open. Are you serious? Quickly and angrily, I got out of the bed only to suddenly fall to the floor. I felt a bit of pain in my hips, and I looked to see my missing leg, still gone. Oh, right. I groaned, making my way to the door like an idiot to close it. But I stopped once I saw Dragonfish coming up to me.
          "What are you doing out of bed?" he asked.
          "Closing my door," I answered loudly, making a small vibration in the hallway. "By the way, when can I get my leg back?"
          "We don't know yet, but would you like to see the progress we've made thus far?"
          I raised an eyebrow at Dragonfish, confused as to why he'd be interested in letting me see his and his wife's gruesome work. "Uh, sure?"
          I was surprised when Altyn scooped me up from behind. There I was, cradled in the wing of a terrible Mother while the Father was about to show me my unfelt torture. I was just thankful that it was impossible to feel your detached body parts because concerning what I was about to see, I would never have been able to fall asleep in that trance. For such a traumatized little creature, I was lucky enough to not have any irrational fears, though I was still disgusted at the sight of my leg.
          "What the fuck did you do to it?" I shouted, my stomach churning at the modification done to the flesh of the leg. It looked like a family of wasps had called it home, a family of a thousand paper wasps. You could see for miles looking into just one of those tiny holes as they were overcasted by their own shadows. I had a hard time understanding why they weren't emitting a glow or how the couple was able to commit this procedure with ease. The leg seemed to be completely empty of blood. In fact, there were buckets of blood surrounding the table it lay on. The flesh itself looked rotten, kind of like the gore you see in zombie apocalypse movies, and there were black scars traveling down the thigh and up through the fur.
          I looked away, absolutely nauseated by the sight of my leg's destruction. Dragonfish explained, "We had a hard time harvesting the cartilage, so we had to drill through each little area of the muscle to get the fluids to pour out. The damage may look irreversible, but your leg will be perfectly functional once we fill those holes with the leftovers."
          "Leftovers?" I questioned, peeking back fearfully.
          "We're going to use the fluid to craft artificial cotton," Dragonfish continued. "Since robot blood contains the ingredient 'sucrose', it'll be a perfect compound to use in the making of cotton. Now, we won't have to go out and buy carbohydrates from the marketplace anymore, thanks to you."
          Tears formed in my eyes again. "Just take me back to the room!" I growled. "I can't stand being in the same room as that hideous thing anymore!"
"Thing"? I've never called myself that before.
          For the rest of the morning after I ate, I hid under the blankets, trying to forget about my leg. I promise you, I'm not trypophobic; I just don't like seeing such things, specifically in organic or robotic flesh. Beehives and wasp nests, I'm okay with, but I want absolutely nothing to do with bodily puncturings. Piercings don't count, oddly enough.
          Rory eventually entered the room, closing the door behind her. I unveiled my head from the blankets, and immediately, the maid noticed the vomit dripping from my jaw down to my chest. She hurried over to the bed without saying a word, removing the stained pillow and replacing it with a clean one that was sitting in the closet nearby. "Are you okay?" she asked.
          I shook my head. "If you haven't seen it yet, I'd recommend not looking at my leg," I spoke tiringly.
          "No, I haven't seen it yet, but I heard what happened when Dragonfish and Altyn showed you what they did. They didn't tell me you threw up though."
          "I didn't throw up until a few minutes after they left." I embraced the new pillow. "I couldn't get the sight out of my head, and I eventually decided to eat the fear away. That was, of course, a mistake. You can see the brown sugar on that pillow case."
          Rory sighed in empathy. She stroked my face with a wing, wiping away the tears on my cheeks. It made me stop thinking about the leg, thankfully, and I looked up at her. She was smiling at me kindly, like if I was a puppy biting at a running faucet. It was a pretty smile, grey in the dark and yellowish in the sunlight. It was adorable, and I couldn't help but smile back. She gasped as she saw my fangs.
          "Your teeth!" she exclaimed. "They're so white! Snow white!"
          I stopped smiling, covering my mouth. "Is that a compliment?" I asked.
          "Of course it is!" Rory giggled. "I'm so jealous! I can never get this stupid yellow tint off of my own teeth."
          I shrugged. "Not everyone's pair of teeth is the same colour. Some have perfectly white, others have ones as yellow as rays of sunlight in clouds. If you can't get your teeth to turn white at all, then yellow is your shade."
          I forgot I was sad talking to Rory. We chatted for what seemed like hours without getting bored. I actually laughed toward the end of our long conversation. "I mean, I knew criminals were screwed in the head!" I exclaimed. "But the fact that these two dipshits used a permanent marker instead of buying a real mask blows my mind!" Rory and I laughed and laughed and laughed. I hadn't had a conversation so entertaining and random with someone in years, and living through such a joy-worthy moment was rejuvenating at best. It was just too bad Dragonfish and Altyn had to break it up.
          "What are you still doing here with the host, Rory?" Dragonfish yelled. "Get out before I pull you by the collar!"
          "Yes, sir." Rory hurried out without saying another word. Poor girl. As Dragonfish and Altyn walked up to me, quickly changing their expressions, I looked up at them, unamused and slightly angered. I asked them darkly, "What do you want from me?"
          "What Doppelgängers are you a part of?"  Dragonfish questioned.
Answering a question with a question. How cheesy.
          "And why do you need to know?" I said with a raised eyebrow. I made sure the couple could see my lack of impressment.
          "Materials, kid, materials," the husband answered, slightly frustrated.
Aren't you going to cut me open again? What is this?
          I told Dragonfish, "Basilisk, Iktomi, and Vampire. You want venom and silk, you can have it."
          "Can you spin us some yarn with your... Iktomi magic?" Altyn asked politely. And so I did, crafting up a sheet of spider silk with my magic. I didn't know how I was able to use creative magic but not combatant magic considering the fact that I easily made that sheet for this money-hungry couple. I handed the silk to Altyn. "Here, take it. Whatever you do, don't expose it to water unless you're using that as glue. Once you get Iktomi silk stuck to you, you will never be able to get it off without my help."
          "We don't need your help, 39," Dragonfish scoffed.
          "Then in that case, don't come crying to me when you get a bald spot."
          Dragonfish slapped me across the face shouting, "Shut the hell up!" I looked back up at him, feeling the warmth of the new bruise. Out of expectation, I bursted into laughter. I didn't know why I was laughing after I had just gotten slapped, but I didn't care all that much. I thought it was hilarious. The heat of the bruise took over the sting as I started tearing up from laughing so hard. Just then, I felt a heavy pressure pushing into my chest, and that made me finally stop laughing since it was hurting me and preventing me from breathing. With my mouth wide open, I stared at Dragonfish, who was pushing the top of a sledgehammer against my ribcage. He was extremely angry.
          "You're probably wondering where I got this," he said. "But just know that the next time you act up like that, your bones will be turned into dust. And trust me; you'll regret it. We've seen the reactions of people who've gotten their bones destroyed by this exact hammer."
          He released the hammer from my chest. I gasped for air, replying with, "But then what will you do when you kill me? You'll have to go hunting for red meat again now that this blue meat has expired from your carelessness."
          "Okay, that's it!" Dragonfish shouted. He barged out of the room as Altyn watched him. She turned to me with a worried face. I said, "What?"
          "He's going to harvest the plastic for the dolls," she told me. "This means we'll need the anesthetics. You won't be able to sleep properly without them."
          "What do you mean by 'plastic'?"
          Dragonfish returned with a kit, smaller than the one filled with the saws. This kit was filled with dental and surgical tools. He took out some forceps and scissors, his face still shaped in frustration. He turned to Altyn saying, "Hold him down, honey."
           Altyn did as she was told, securing my limbs with her wings. Recalling the previous harvest, I grew anxious. "Where are the drugs?" Altyn asked.
          "In the bathroom!" Dragonfish answered aggressively. "I'll get them after I'm done with this, alright? Just hold the horse, God damn it!"
          The husband moved the hair that was covering my right eye out of my face. "We'll do this one since no one sees it anyway," he said to Altyn.
          "W-what?" I stuttered. "So, you make doll eyes out of real eyes?"
          "That's right," Altyn affirmed. "They're the closest thing to glass in an organism, so it works out perfectly. But we only need one, so don't worry. You'll still be able to see out of your other eye."
          "Oh, God!" I started to cry again.
          "Perfect," Dragonfish said. "The tears will help loosen the eye from the crevice when we extract it. Although, it might get a little slimy due to the viscosity of them. We might need another pair of forceps if they get in the way of the vessels."
          "I can help with that," Altyn offered. "Just hand me a pair now so that we don't have to take up as much time."
          Dragonfish took out another pair of forceps, handing them to Altyn while she was still holding me down. He remained silent as the wife told me, "This is going to feel very uncomfortable since you're not used to the sensation of an empty eye socket, but once we get what we need from your eye, you'll get it back. And while it heals, we'll use your other eye if we need it, just like your legs."
          "Do you plan to use my arms too?" I asked, shaking.
          "Not yours in particular. You're not built like the other hosts. You're-"
          "Skinny?" I glared at her. "Just say it; I'm skinny."
          "Well, that would be rude. I was about to say that you're made up of less flesh than others. The flesh that makes up your arms is mostly gemstone cartilage, which is difficult to cut as you saw in your harvested leg." As Altyn kept explaining, Dragonfish readied the forceps around my right eye. "There's just no point in harvesting your arms if we can't get as much as we need compared to your legs, which appear to be the meatiest parts of your entire body. Well, your thighs anyway."
          "I'm a SPRINTER," I replied, suspiring at the motion of the forceps. "We have the power to run forever, so the nebular form of our legs is natural."
          "The Nebula is an extremely intelligent force," Alytn sighed happily.
          I suddenly felt the forceps grasping onto my eye, taking a perfect hold as it began to slip through my eyelid. It didn't hurt as much as I imagined it would at the start, but I already knew things were going to escalate. Wincing, I pushed myself against the bed, failing to resist the ticklish pain as tears escaped quickly through my right socket due to the pressure.
          Altyn rubbed my left arm as she continued, "The ancient Julians did such a wonderful job building the Dream World, creating all of these realms and whatnot. This realm, in particular, is probably their best work before CandyLand."
          "What realm do you think this is?" I asked, unable to control my right eye anymore.
          Altyn answered, "Fever Dream, of course."
No... No, this is Abstract Thought. These two don't realize that they don't actually exist.
          Dragonfish had successfully removed my right eye from my skull, lifting it away from the empty socket. Now the pain was great as the vessels were being tugged. I opened my remaining eye to see what it looked like since I could no longer see out of the one being pulled out. I regretted it immediately as I saw the watery surface of the luminous sphere melt away in the forceps squishing it. The vessels had droplets of blood traveling down, WHICH I COULD FEEL, and reentering my skull.
          "I need to throw up," I moaned.
          "We're almost done," Dragonfish reminded me. "Once we cut these vessels, you can just bend over the bed and vomit on the floor."
           Altyn used her forceps to separate the blood and the fluid from the eye and the vessels so that Dragonfish had room to cut it with the scissors. He cut the vessels quickly, at the surface of the eyeball. I cried as the remaining strings fell to the side of my face. Altyn let me go, and I brought both of my front hooves over the bleeding socket. There was an aching lump in my throat, so I swiftly bent over the bed, one hoof still on my socket, and screamed out acidic blood. It burned the inside of my throat and left a foul taste on my tongue as I left it hanging several inches out of my mouth like a dog before throwing up once more.
          "Great," Dragonfish said, rolling his eyes. "Thanks to you, this room smells of cinnamon now."
          "I kind of like it," Altyn replied with a smile.
          "Well I don't. I'm deathly allergic to cinnamon, and I don't want this kid's vomit to fool me every time I come in here."
          "Think about it, Dragonfish. Why would we ever bring cinnamon... Oh, wait."
          I raised my head to face the couple, spatting, "Yeah, the damn cinnamon rolls you gave me this morning, you dumb bitch!"
          Dragonfish shouted, "DO NOT TALK TO MY WIFE THAT WAY!"
          "I can say... what I want," I hissed furiously before returning to my crying. I buried my head in my arms, still hanging over the side of the bed as blood from my socket and mouth continued to drip.
          "WHERE ARE THOSE DRUGS!" I screamed.
          I heard Dragonfish stomping away, grunting something I couldn't hear. Altyn walked over to me, sitting on the bed and stroking my back in a massaging motion. I ignored it, sobbing hard now, with vomit still traveling up my esophagus.
          "You want to apologize?" the wife asked kindly.
          "For calling you a dumb bitch?" I responded with a bloody cough. "I don't regret that one bit, so no."
          I was expecting Altyn to stop petting me, but she didn't. She kept going, listening to me cry. I blurted out, "I want to die." Then I continued sobbing.
          Dragonfish finally returned with the anesthetics in his wings. They were all in a tray (of course, why wouldn't they be), unorganized and shrouded in dust. "You don't use those drugs a lot, do you?" I asked.
          Taking a blue and white bottle out of the tray, Dragonfish answered, "Yeah, no, we don't. We only use them for surgical bandaging, but that's the rarest procedure after a harvest, especially when it comes to eyes. It's a requirement to use anesthetics during surgical bandaging. If you squirm during the procedure, we might accidentally stab you in the brain, and we don't want that."
          Altyn picked me up, flipping me so that I lay on my back, but she didn't put me back down on the bed right away. She held me like a baby, looking at my bleeding face and smiling in awe. I could tell she adored what she was seeing. I had seen the same sparkle in that damn UNO's eyes. She held my chin up with her free wing, kissing the tip of my nose gently. "My child," she whispered.
          "Alright, put him back down, Altyn," Dragonfish said. Altyn put me down to the bed, ensuring my head was comfortable on the pillow. I covered my eye socket again. My hooves were stained with blood, and the vessels that were once connected to my right eye were still dangling out of my skull.
          "Okay, 39," Dragonfish said to me. "Sit up real quick." I sat up. "Here's a dose." He handed me four small pills. "These are club drugs frozen into little tablets. Swallow them with water quickly because they don't taste very good."
          "I'll just use my own blood to swallow," I sighed, taking the pills. I ate them, and surely, I swallowed them with blood. I was lucky to not catch their taste before they started to turn into powder. I fell back down to the bed, groaning as the impact triggered the stinging in my socket. With an arm over my stitches, I looked to the vanity to see my eye sitting beside the kit as Dragonfish straightened the tools.
          "Just close your eyelids, 39," Altyn said to me. "You'll be awake again in a couple hours. By then, your eye socket will be all bandaged up."
          "I have a feeling the pain will still be there," I replied.
          "It will, but it won't be nearly as bad as it is now."
          "When can I have my eye back?"
          "Next week, as for your leg. It takes eight days to make a doll."
          I nodded, looking away from the wife. I could still see the saliva stains on the ceiling from the last harvest. Soon, they began to multiply and blur away. I sighed, closing my eyes and waited for the darkness to take me...