Chương 4: My Friend the Killer Doll

"Yes. It's me! Jesus, Nora." The doll, Tre, stared at me, face contorted with annoyed confusion.

"Why the hell did you kick me?!"

"You're holding a goddamn butcher knife!"

"I—" He looked down at his tiny hand. The blade carried a dull gleam from the early morning light.

"Oh shit." The knife clattered to the hardwood, making us both flinch.

"What the fuck is going on, Tre?!"

"You tell me!" His voice pitched higher, cracking on the last word.

"Why do you look like that?"" Me?" I gestured wildly at him.

"Why do you look like THAT?!"

"I..." Tre glanced down. His arms ended in molded hands and fingers. The soft vinyl skin perfectly matched his normal shade. He touched his face, withdrawing when his fingers scraped against vinyl cheeks.

"Oh. My. God." He hopped off the bottom step.

"Oh my God, oh my God, oh my—" He paced anxiously in the foyer, plastic shoes making rapid tap-tap-tap sounds against the wood. It was the same restless energy he'd always had when his brain was moving too fast, but now compressed into a two-foot body.

"Tre." I pushed myself up off the floor, wincing as my elbow screamed in protest.

"Tre, look at me."

"I can't be…this isn't… there's no way I'm actually—""Tre!" He stopped mid-pace, wobbling slightly. I forced my voice steady, even though my hands were still shaking.

"You need to see. Come here."

"See what?" But his voice had lost some of its edge, fear creeping in. He stood there a tiny statue of existential dread. So, I did what I'd done a thousand times before when Tre's brain was spiraling: I decided for him.

"Just..." I climbed to my feet, arm throbbing.

"Let me show you, okay?" He was heavier than he looked. Solid dense rubber, which conflicted with his vinyl appearance. And warm, which was somehow worse than if he'd been cold. He made a startled squeaking sound as I lifted him, tiny legs dangling.

"Hey! Put me down!" I carried Tre into the dining room to Mom's antique mirror and set him down in front of it. His whole body went rigid. He raised a hand and stared at his stubby fingers. When he made a fist, the hand squeezed closed with no resistance.

"That's..." His voice came out small. Broken.

"That's not me."

"I know." Tre reached for the Cabbage Patch Kid knockoff in the mirror, moving slowly as if it might grab him and pull him inside. His chubby vinyl palm pressed against the glass.

"That's not…I'm—" His mouth fell open.

"I can't feel my heartbeat." His chest rose and fell, rapidly.

"And I don't think I'm really breathing either; it's moving, but I don't feel anything happening. Also, I'm about to have a panic attack because I can move my fingers, but I can't fucking feel them." His eyes found mine in the mirror.

"Nora, I don't think I'm fully alive anymore." Then he had a category-five crash-out: shrieking, pacing, pawing at his vinyl cheeks. He smacked the mirror with both hands, bounced back, and screamed again.

"What the fuck is this?! Why do I look like a 1920s farmer?!" He tore at the striped shirt and overalls he was wearing. His wild, synthetic curls didn't so much as budge as he stomped his legs and hit the mirror again. He radiated kid-throwing-a-tantrum energy. I cracked up when he bounced off the mirror again. But the laugh died halfway, realizing I couldn't tell if he was doing a bit or not. Normally, I'd read the look on his face or the way he grinned a little sideways.

Except his toy eyes conveyed no emotions, and his molded mouth opened and closed, but there weren't any little tells left. It was like starting over, in a way. I had to relearn my best friend.

"Sorry, I don't mean to laugh, it's just.... we can't both have mental breakdowns, you know? Not at the same time, at least."

"But my body was… it's why… Jesus, Nora, I'm a fucking joke." His screams gave way to ragged breaths, the panic on his face twisting into confusion as he turned to me.

"What the hell is going on, Nora?!"

"I'm as confused as you are. I woke up from what I thought was a fucked-up nightmare, saw all this," I motioned to my new form, "And then you tried to murder me! I'm 65% convinced I'm still dreaming."

"And why am I doll, and you're a hotter version of yourself in high school?" He quickly added, "No offense."

"Some taken." I chewed the inside of my cheek, having no way to know if I'd read his last line right.

"Yeah, but…" He pointed a stubby vinyl finger at me, then down at himself.

"Look at us. Look at us. You got spawned as a sexy final girl." He spread his tiny, molded arms wide.

"I'm a two-foot-tall doll in Farmer Joe overalls."

"Yeah, it's incredibly random."

"No. I don't think it is," he said, voice dropping to sound strategic instead of freaked out.

"I think whatever this is, it has already decided what we are. You're the muscle. I'm…" He trailed off, looking down at his tiny, toy hands.

"I'm a toy." Don't need to read his face to know that wasn't. Tre started pacing again, like a stiff-jointed action figure in the throes of a panic attack. Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation. It was hard to focus on Tre's meltdown with the throbbing drums of pain in my skull. I reached up gingerly, and my fingers found the spot where I'd bounced off the stairs. They came away sticky and dark.

"Shit." Tre's screaming cut off mid-wail.

"Are you bleeding?"

"I'm fine. Mostly dried." I wasn't fine. There was a throbbing ache spreading across my scalp.

"You... keep freaking out. BRB." Mom's room upstairs was basically a mini hospital. Bandages, gauze, and antiseptic were still tucked in her bathroom cabinet under thirteen years' worth of prescription bottles I'd never thrown away. But the stairs felt impossibly far away right now, and my head was doing that swimmy thing that suggested climbing them was a bad idea. I hurried into the kitchen instead, leaving Tre to his existential crisis in the dining room.

His pacing resumed immediately; a feverish wind-up toy making a frantic tap-tap-tap sound when he moved. I grabbed the faded floral dish towel off the oven door and pressed it against my head. Then opened the freezer, hoping to grab something cold to slow the swelling. But the freezer was empty. Weird. I stared at the bare shelves for a moment. There should have been, at least, a bag of peas in there, probably been there since 2010. I checked the fridge. It was also empty. My leftovers from Tuesday were gone.

So was the box of baking soda I always kept in the back. The dish towel was here, but the peas weren't. I wasn't sure what that meant, if anything. I headed back to the dining room.

"This isn't a dream?" Tre was talking to himself, pacing in loops.

"No. I mean… how would that even work?" I was about to share what I'd found in the kitchen and thought better of it. He wasn't ready for new information yet. Tre threw his tiny arms in the air.

"Nora, I'm freaking out!"

"I can tell."

"We need to figure out what's happening so we can undo it!" He stopped abruptly.

"Wait. What's the last thing you remember? Was it those not-maggot things?" I stared at the doll that was and wasn't Tre.

"The freezer is empty," I said.

"Totally empty. So is the fridge. And I put leftovers in there on Tuesday!" Tre blinked.

"…what… what does that even mean?"

"I don't know," I said.

"We were at the café. Then the Sears Tower—""Fell into the ground! Then all those not-maggots appeared," he interjected, finishing my sentence.

"So, where are we now?"

"I'm not sure what this is." Tre gasped, a different kind of panic.

"Oh my God, Nora! Biggie Smalls is back in his enclosure. Who will feed him his crickets?!"

"Do you think…" He didn't finish, but I knew where his mind went because I went there too. If whatever happened to Chicago happened everywhere, to everyone, did that include animals? Did the maggot things distinguish between species? I didn't share any of those thoughts with Tre. He was already under maximum stress from the whole "killer doll" transformation, and now he was worried about a pet he adored.

"Biggie's a resilient, tenacious tarantula, Tre. He'll be fine." I had no idea if that was true. But what else am I supposed to say? Sorry that little fucker's dead in a week." I hate this place!" He glowered at me, crossing his arms in a full sulk.

"Being trapped as a doll is literally my worst nightmare."

"Is it?"

"It is now!" he yelled.

"Oh my God, Nora!" Tre's voice spiked. It made me jolt upright.

"What? What is it?!" He was patting himself down, turning in frantic circles.

"I don't have my cell phone!" I burst out laughing. I didn't mean to. It just happened. The absurdity of the situation was too much.

"It's not funny!"

"I know, I know," I wheezed, still laughing.

"What type of hell is this?" Tre demanded.

"A doll body is one thing, but now my beloved Biggie Smalls will die of starvation, and I don't get a phone?! Not even a tiny one." His voice rose with every word, climbing until it came out as a high-pitched squeal.

"Also… where are my clothes? And why am I dressed like Farmer fucking Joe?" Instinct made me pat my back pocket. My hand found only the thin cotton of my underwear, the phone long gone from my waistband. I headed back to the foyer and scanned the floor. It was lying face down next to the front door. As soon as I scooped it up, Tre indignantly stomped a foot.

"You're young, super-hot, and you get a phone?! Why is this happening to me?" I ignored him and turned the phone over. It didn't need unlocking. The screen opened to a deep red gradient that reminded me of a cross-section of an internal organ, pulsing with dim light. Four app icons hovered against the shifting background: >Vitals: a red heart, cracked down the center. >Inventory: a little backpack. >Skills: A chrome gauntlet, split down the center to reveal a human fist inside. >Journal: a leather-bound notebook.

A wave of cold dread washed over me. Where were all my apps? My texts? My music? Even my fucking Disney World background pic was gone. That one hurt the most. Everything that made the phone mine had been wiped clean, replaced with… whatever the hell this was.

"What's the matter?" Tre asked.

"I mean, aside from everything."

"My phone is…" I trailed off, walking back into the dining room. I lowered the phone to his eye level to give him a better view.

"Look."

"What th—" He glanced at it and recoiled from the screen.

"Did you get an Android?" I rolled my eyes.

"Tre! This is serious."

"I am serious! iPhones don't breathe, Nora!"

"I don't think it's actually breathing," I said, even though the background definitely looked like it was literally breathing.

"Whatever it's doing… I hate it," he whined.

"It's disgusting." The revulsion on his face unfurled into interest. Head cocked at a slight angle, solving a problem.

"Hey. Hold it still." I lowered the phone so he could see it better. He leaned close, studying the four icons with the focused intensity of someone who'd spent a lifetime on his computer.

"Vitals. Inventory. Skills. Journal." He read each one, then let out a long, slow breath.

"Nora. This is a menu screen."

"Like in a game?"" Yes." He sounded excited.

"Just like in a video game. Whoever did this to us, whatever this is, they built an RPG interface into your phone." He looked up at me.

"Like you're a player." My throat had gone very dry.

"That's… somehow worse."

"Yeah," he agreed.

"It really is."

"Okay. Tap the heart one." I did. A crude silhouette of a human body appeared, glowing faintly. The head pulsed with angry red light, a small icon blinking at the skull: HEAD INJURY: MINOR. The body glowed steadily. The right elbow flashed yellow. Beneath it all, a single word blinked: STABLE. Below that, a bar labeled FEAR edged upward with every heartbeat.

"That's your health," Tre said, squinting at the screen.

"I'm not an idiot, Tre. I know what a health bar is."

"Sorry. Just being thorough. The red on your head is the injury from the stairs. Yellow elbow, same deal. The game's tracking your physical damage in real time." He pointed at the climbing bar.

"And that one you need to watch. Fear. In survival horror, panic is a mechanic—it'll work against you if it gets too high. You have to keep it down."

"How?" He looked up at me.

"By not freaking out."

"Great. Super easy." I flipped back to the home screen, examining it a bit closer. Not only was all my stuff gone, but so were basic phone features, like battery percentage and signal bars. Shit. It doesn't even have a clock anymore.

"Cool. Very cool," Tre said flatly.

"I'm ready to wake up now." We sat with that. Stuck in our alien bodies. Whatever forced us into these forms had to be remarkably powerful. Finally, Tre stood up.

"Okay. We have to check outside. Maybe everyone else is normal and it's just us who are fucked up. But if the whole neighborhood is messed up like we are, then the not-maggots were real and whatever happened is still happening." I tried to follow his roundabout reasoning but quickly gave up.

"Okay. Yeah, good idea." I certainly didn't have a better one. On the way out of the dining room, I checked my reflection in the mirror. A battered teenager stared back, clutching a bloody towel to her head. The sight was horrifying. I looked away and headed for the foyer. We were two steps from the front door when we stopped moving. Literally. My muscles locked, mid-stride. No matter how hard I tried, my body wouldn't, couldn't, move. Tre's tiny legs also paused mid-step.

The air in front of me wavered prismatically. A foul, acrid stench of sulfur rolled in. Then came a POP, followed by a silent puff of gray-green smoke, a toxic smog that burned my lungs. When it cleared, something stood between us and the door. An imp, only a foot or so taller than Tre. Skin red as fresh blood. Horns curled back from a too-wide forehead. His jaundiced yellow eyes shrank to slits, pupils contracting to tiny ruby dots.

It was wearing a powder-blue polyester suit, with a wide collar, and rhinestones glinting across the lapels. In one hand, it held the kind of long, skinny microphone used in 1970s game shows. The creature spread its arms, and a wide, unnatural grin split its face, revealing a row of jagged, obsidian teeth.

"Weeeelcome," it boomed, voice crackling with unnatural reverb, "to The Grindhouse!"