"BOOOOOK!!!"
Her eyes snapped open.
A scream tore through her like a knife— a word not just shouted but remembered, scalding and sacred.
Her pupils shrank into tiny dots as she unnaturally bolted her spine upright, with her heart throbbing against a ribcage that felt too small to contain it.
"Book..." she whispered again, this time quieter, like it had slipped out before her mind could catch it.
Jagged flashes. Suffocating dark. Strawberry smog.
That was all she could remember.
Her voice cracked like a forgotten phonograph warming up, "W-Was I daydreaming? Did—?"
She turned her head, and the room turned with it. Her eyes darted around, wild, trying to hunt for a sign of recognition. It felt hers, but not really, it was familiar in the way a reflection in water is familiar: warped, wobbled, off.
High ceilings coiled in over-ornate carvings, wood-paneled walls seemed to absorb light rather than reflect it, dark curtains slouched in the corners like tired royalty, even the shadows were symmetrical.
Where am I?!" She breathed.
The room answered her, mimicking her voice.
"Where am I, Wheream I,WhereamI"
She tried to swallow, but her throat was strangely slick, not dry with fear, but wrong, like her body wasn't following the same rules anymore.
The bed beneath her was wrong, too. It cradled her too gently, the fabric molded itself perfectly, and the mattress was too welcoming, like sleeping atop a queenly cloud.
Heavy.
Her breathing came in short, panicked gasps, followed by phantom sweat slicking her skin... no, not skin,porcelain!!!!? Making the milky white nightgown stick uncomfortably to her tiny frame.
Hysteria mauled up to her spine.
With a crack, she shrieked, "I am a human... I AM... A human... No...? REMEMBER FOR FUCK'S SAKE!"
She clawed at her hair, yanking as if the pain might snap her back into truth.
But the texture was... soft, silky.
She saw her arms.
Fresh-white as a seam-lined river of snow in the midnight.
"THIS IS WRONG!"
She stumbled from the bed, bare feet tapping the cold marble, clumsily darting toward the full-length mirror that stood half-hidden behind a curtain.
"A mirror, I need to see my face."
Her marionette-like legs jerked forward with no grace. Her body jolted strangely due to a loss in control, her neck lurched with a dreadful *Crick-crack* noise as her head spun a full 360 degrees like a filmstrip off its reel.
Staggered and trembling, she grabbed her spinning head and shoved it back into place with an awful *Click* that rattled down her spine.
Aggressively yanking aside the curtain of the mirror—
*Stop*
A beautiful... girl...
No.
The size was too small, barely a meter or less. Her hair was pale as powdered sugar, motionless even when she moved. Her skin gleamed with a sickly perfection, and her eyes were a low, dull red.
A porcelain child, a doll, she was...
Adorable.
Like something hand-crafted and placed on a collector's shelf.
But that was the problem.
She was not a person.
She was an object.
Her lips parted, "No... no, no, no... This isn't real."
"You are high on something." The word dropped from her lips like glass marbles, echoing against unseen corners.
Her trembling fingers brushed her cold cheeks. She pressed harder, trying to feel something out of this seamlessly smooth skin.
Nothing.
No pain.
No warmth.
Then she jabbed at her right eye, covering her face in shame.
It moved.
Not the twitch of a living muscle, but a rotation, like glass in a socket.
"..."
Then pressed again.
*Whirrrrrr...*
The sound of a marble spinning on its own axis.
*DING* *DING* *DING* *DING*
"EHGHGHGHG!"
An alarm shrieked through the room. She jumped violently— her finger still lodged in her socket—popping the orb free, quickly, it tumbled, rolling beneath the bed.
She remained stupefied for a second, seeing the world from within two different angles, her normal eye, and her runaway eye, now rolling under the bed.
With a gasp, she dropped to her knees, snatching the rogue crystal ball, shoving it back into the empty socket, clicking into place with a wet squelch.
Silence.
The doll stared at her own affliction in raw and undiluted silence.
And her own affliction stared at the doll back.
"Am I truly a doll?"
The thought hit harder than any nightmare; she was searching for something— anything-to anchor herself. But all she found was a fog of helplessness.
"Ha... Ah..."
"COULDN'T YOU HAVE TURNED ME INTO A MALE DOLL?!" she screamed at the empty room.
She was trying to spur some absurdism to forget the real world, but this reminded her of something.
Who was she?
Then, like a cruel switch flipping, her brain jolted. "I... wasn't even a man. I was.." She doubled over, gripping her spinning head as a wave of vertigo slammed into her.
Memories, if they could even be called that, rushed in, a fragmented parade of nonsense.
A sunlit hallway. Claws on tile. Lecture notes. Childhood toys. Tuna. A woman's laugh. A ring. A man's crying face. Paws.
All the faces blurred together, uncatchable, like mist slipping through her fingers, then a word surfaced once more, "Book!"
She stopped, going blank, like a record player left out in the rain. "I... Book?! What does a book have to do?¡!"
The only thing she could remember clearly was a feeling, and it was tied to a book. She blinked away tears that didn't come, a knot tightening in her throat. "I'll... forget about that. My past... doesn't seem to want me anymore."
It was foggy, to be exact, the faces, because memories came in shattered glimpses. Santa wasn't real, happiness, or sadness. The sharp taste of tuna. Blurry images of long hallways, long fingernails, long silences.
All real.
All fake.
All hers.
None hers.
The only thing clear was a book. Flowing, endlessly and familiar, like a word she knew in her bones. "Text..." She didn't remember reading it, but she remembered missing it, forgetting what it felt like.
She smiled, a fragile, cracking thing. "Hiaaaaaa…" she said in a low tone, almost like just slowly exhaling.
As she looked around the grandiose room, she noticed something she hadn't before.
Too perfect.
It was unnervingly pristine. Not a book out of place, not a drawer ajar, even the firewood was neatly stacked. A painting of a forest hung on one wall, but the trees looked wrong, too symmetrical, like a copied memory.
"This doesn't feel like the book..." She pressed her palm against the wall. "This doesn't feel like home."