The Changeling (The Story of Id) - Part One

The Changeling (The Story of Id)

She wasn't certain about how she had come to be compressed in so tiny a space. As she had come to, she was aware of walls surrounding her.

It felt warm, abnormally so, and the compression and the warmth calmed some of the panic that filled her. As she forced herself to remain calm, she thought that she could feel a pulsing sensation ripple through the forgiving material that encased her. Small movements also gave her the impression of a thick substance – a type of mucus? - covering the walls of her chamber.

She recoiled from the feeling of the substance clinging to her, disgusted. She tried not to move, mindful of the sensation of it sticking to her.

What was she to do but wait? She felt a disinclination to move, to feel the walls press against her in protest of her movement, to feel the wetness leak onto her, disrupting the radiating warmth that soothed her.

She waited in the dark, barely keeping herself conscious, when a bright light bathed her curled-up legs, cutting through some of the darkness and her shut eyes.

It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the new source of light, but when hers did, she realized that where she was was a membranous chamber that was dripping wet.

She thrashed, hard, trying to push the flesh back and away from her, trying, in a panic, to minimize contact with the walls. As she became resigned to the fact that the walls were not retreating, and to the contrary, they seemed to contract tighter around her, she fell into forced calm, stilling her body so that the walls would not suffocate or drown her in the sticky liquid. As she stilled, and the walls began to ease up on her, and she became aware that the light that had been shining had grown in strength. It now shown brightly, so that her eyes, used the the perfect dark, had to shut for the shock of it.

She began to try to twist her body, so that she could turn around to face the direction of the light. This endeavor proved to be problematic, as she felt the tunnel grip her in a strong spasm, squeezing her more roughly with each movement. As she tried – and failed – to turn her body around, she succeeded only in feeling the walls compress themselves to a painful degree all around her. Struggle as she might like to try, the walls had tightened so that she was completely immobilized by the space.

She felt faint – awful, beaten down, frightened, and confused – and she was also vaguely aware of movement, as though the walls were contracting purposefully around her, pushing her towards her feet.

Finally her feet were freed of the tunnel, and they dangled freely. The walls contracted, nearly crushing her, and she felt herself being hurridly pushed from the tunnel, till it was only from her elbows up that she was trapped. She spilled over the edge of the hole, flopping futilily as she tried to ease the excruciating pain as it was only her neck that was trapped. She winced in pain, scrabbling at the edge of the thing, trying to force her head free from the tunnel.

The walls contracted one last time, and she fell loose from the lip of the tunnel, falling, falling, falling down.

Pinocchio (One Last Kiln Firing) - Part Five (Finale)

The old woman was rough on his scalp, as she always was when she sheared her ugly, gangly sheep. Gole was nervous, and despite how he tried to calm himself, he ended up with the wrath of the impatient shop owner, and she almost seemed to jab him in the ear and in the scalp more than once when he made the occasional, unfortunate movement.

His hair came off of his head, and was gathered with more care than Gole's haircut had been handled. He was told that they would begin to implant his locks into the doll tomorrow, and so Gole was directed back to the kiln room. He was told that tonight would mark the last firing for the doll.

Dread filled Gole's mind, and every step he made towards the back door felt as though it were filled with thick liquid. Since the night before, he had taken the doll's insistence that he go into the kiln with it more seriously. He had also reminded himself of the strange voice that he had heard from the doll when she was newly born. The voice that reminded him, somewhere deep in the darkest part of his mind, of a corpse that he had once seen in the first weeks of spring, locked in time by the ice that had a hold on it, but made material and mortal by the rising heat that had allowed maggots and decay to take it. Black, his face had had a burnt look to it, but looking back, Gole guessed that the corpse had belonged to a transient, who went through the worst of the cold winter.

That was what the voice – the doll – had begun to remind him of.

She was waiting for him, like he knew that she would be.

“Why can't you lie down, and look like a normal doll?” Gole asked it angrily.

The doll didn't answer him, and Gole didn't expect her to. He busied himself with readying all of his instruments and trying to appear annoyed with the doll, and not absolutely frightened of it. As he worked, picking up the pile of wood and putting it under the kiln, putting the furniture in the correct place, Gole was relieved that the doll hadn't optioned to talk. As he came to the understanding that he would have to pick the doll up, and as he turned to look at it, the doll finally spoke.

Your hair... was it cut? Goal was silent, staring at the doll, until it began to speak again. Our time together is ending, isn't it? Isn't it?

Despite his resolve not to, Gole could not help but say something to the doll who looked so beseechingly up to him. “We're going to finish this up, and this'll be the end of it.”

Gole expected a strong reaction from the doll, but instead he got silence. And then, suddenly, the doll wasn't standing anymore, and it was lying on its back, on the ground.

For awhile, all that Gole could do to not start feeling like he could yell was stare blankly at the doll. He could not fathom what, exactly, it was doing, and why it was doing it. Finally, however, he got sick of staring at it – and, secretly, a slow fear began to spread through him – and so he moved towards the doll.

He stopped walking as he stood over the doll. He waited, looking down at it, and decided to reach down and pick it up. Touching the doll, it felt cool, entirely normal and solid in his hands. He couldn't think of a reason to not have believed the doll to be normal in all ways that a doll would, but for some reason, he had expected it to have a different feel to it, a vastly different weight than it had.

He stared into the doll's face. The face was lacking in any of the livelihood that had so characterized it before, and it looked no different than any of the other dolls that were made in the shop. Gole began to shiver involuntarily, fearful of what the lack of livelihood in the doll could mean.

Gole, beginning to panic, started to shout. “Stop playing around with me – hey! Listen to me. I'm sorry, but I can't go in with you, so please... Will you please talk to me?!”

Gole continued to stare at the doll, waiting for it to react. When no reaction came, Gole sank to the floor, careless with the doll, not caring if he knocked it or dropped it. His fingers (a gift from a biological father that he would never know, a man who became a master artisan and whose elegant, long fingers showed his natural leaning for the job) wrapped around the thing loosely. He stared at everything in the room, and at nothing, seeing only himself, a great albino spider that had worked so joyously in the room for the past few days. It had been the happiest that he had ever been in his life.

Silent in the room, a silence that deeply frightened Gole, and caused him to shake more violently. He was so cold, and it only seemed logical that he should begin the process of beginning the kiln firing. To be done with the whole mess would be the next step in this necessary progression. He had to complete the doll, to finish the task he had been given.

He picked the doll up, and his fingers happened to graze the thing's smooth head. He felt his empty hand reach up to caress the equally as smooth expanse of his scalp. He bit back a tear, and was resolved to not look at the thing's face as he walked it to the kiln and placed it in its place, after shutting the heavy slab over the hole.

He gathered the wood up into its correct position under the kiln, and felt numb by the end of it. Cold, depressed, and lonesome. As he went about his work, he came about the idea that he felt more lonesome in the kiln room than he had ever felt before. He had never had a friend before, and oh, how his body ached more after he felt the acknowledgment and the encouragement arrive and then leave him, used up.

He began to weep loudly then, and he reflected on the sorrow he had experienced, as the doll had cried out for him to join her when he had before refused to. His tears were happier then than now, as he trembled, nearly so weak that he could not accomplish this act he wanted so desperately to complete.

He didn't know when, precisely, he began to cry out for the doll to talk to him, begging for it to forgive him, but he began to. He dropped to his knees and crawled over to the kiln, pressing his face against its cold belly, where it sat inside, as cool and cruel as it deserved to be with him.

As he sat, his head pressed against the kiln, Gole heard someone tell him what to do next. He was certain that it came from his mind, but he could not comfortably feel that it had not come from the kiln. He didn't care, whether it came as perfect knowledge from himself, or from somewhere else.

He nearly drooled in anticipation as he readied the fire under the kiln. He built it up proudly, wanting it to be the best that he had ever made. He wanted to do his best at everything that he could, and he stacked the firewood up as prettily as he wanted, and only then did he coddle a fire into its bosom.

He was giddy as he pushed the slab out of the way. He did not think of how he would put it back on when he was finished – it would prove to be almost impossible to pull back when he had finally settled into the kiln, but with a rushed eagerness to pull it back into place, he did it, and he crouched in the complete darkness, a happiness swelling in him so deep and so large that he thought that he would fall apart for the strength of it.

In the dark he became aware of the swelling of his penis, and he felt comfortable – proud to – pull it from out of his shabby, too-loose work pants. With his other hand he groped for the doll, and he pulled her up to him in a gripping, loving, tender embrace. He pressed her against his chest as he stroked himself, hard, rough, and eager, his mouth hanging agape as he felt immersed in the perfection of the moment.

He took longer to orgasm than he ever had before, and he was grateful for that. It was to be his finale, his last defining moment, and why shouldn't it end in such a manner?

In the near-silence of the too-small, too-dark chamber, he heard the wet sound as he hit the ground between his splayed knees mingle with the sound of the fire building under the floor of the kiln. A grateful smile flew across his thin lips, and he sank so that he lied flat on the ground of the kiln, his arms wrapped around her.

She still didn't speak to him, but he could sense her spirit during the last act. It was good enough for him, and he knew then that it had always meant to be all that he would deserve. He ignored the feeling of the sticky wet spot on the ground as it stuck to his shirt, figuring that it would dry, and then warm, shortly.

Pinocchio (One Last Kiln Firing) - Part Four

That night was Gole's night to clean his hair. Water was boiled, a special soap mixture was prepared, and Gole was made to lean into the bucket of boiling water and harmful soap mixture so that all of his hair could soak. He tried to minimize the closeness of his skin to the searing heat and to the caustic chemicals, so he ended up leaning over the edge of the bucket, pitched forward so that he had nothing to look at but the unsettlingly crystalline blue water that his hair was in.

He stayed in that position for a while, until his bones ached, and he had to turn over. Carefully maneuvring, Gole flipped onto his side, wincing as his sore neck protested to the awful added weight of his wet, long hair and to the feeling of the bucket pressing against it.

Gole contented himself with staring into space – looking blankly at the blank expressions on the store's dolls that surrounded him. He recalled how he had felt the first time he was propositioned to work in the boutique.

Dolls? When he started working, he had no particular fondness for the extravagant little creatures, and up until he met the doll, he had started to loathe them all. Truth be told, he was frankly more than a little unsettled by their eternally youthful little faces, and seeing the spinsters of the store – the ones who were unlikely to ever find a little girl to belong to – he found their spider-webbed little bodies disturbing. It somehow made it so much worse, when he took into consideration that the black-haired ones had his own essence in them.

Thinking about the doll's dark little collection of his own cuttings only succeeded in worrying him in the near-dark of the abandoned shop, so he tried to glance around a little more, trying to find something pleasing to rest his gaze on.

From their different positions, the dolls, stared idily at Gole, mocking him in their hand-made little dresses, perfectly pale skin, and overlarge, angelic eyes. Gole scanned over them, until he had to turn over onto his other side, his neck becoming too sore. Turning, he nearly missed the sight of the naked, partially made doll that stood next to the normal dolls.

A strong reaction seized Gole then, as he felt a liking so powerful for the imperfect little doll that he could very well have believed it to be his first exposure to love. They both stared at each other, until Gole goth the courage up to speak to the doll.

“What do you want?” Gole challenged, trying to put off an air of bravery, despite the awful stutter that his heart had.

I was just watching to see what you were doing. The doll said softly. Maybe it was the near-dark of the shop making it appear so, but her eyes seemed to glisten, so like those of a real girl's.

“You could've said something.” Despite his best efforts, Gole's voice came out sounding defensive, childish.

“Your hair will be taken?

“...Yes. It'll be woven into your head, once you're finished.”

The doll was so silent for so long that Gole thought that it had fallen asleep, or whatever it is that the doll did as a way of sleep. Finally, though, it spoke back up. Will I be put into the kiln again?

Gole was silent then, at a loss for what was the right thing to say.

The doll began to climb down the table, and it began to walk awkwardly over to him, looking far too real, and at the same time, unreal. It walked over to the bucket and rested its hands against the bucket's outside wall. I'll be lonely again. Will you come with me this time?

Gole looked away, breaking his gaze into her eyes. “I'll be burned alive, if I do that. You care about me, like how I care about you, right?”

Gole was surprised at the strength of the doll's tantrum. And with its strength, as it nearly ripped the bucket of rapidly cooling water and lye up, if not for Gole's grip on the bucket. It howled in rage, throwing itself to the ground, and refused Gole's hands as he tried to comfort it.

The doll cried for a long while, and Gole was left to wonder – and hope for – an end to the tantrum. His ears and his heart ached as he heard it carry on, but the only thing he could do was to occasionally look over at the doll, and feel lucky that it had no real lungs in its body, as its endless weeping worried Gole that the doll would run herself out of breath.

Eventually, the doll stopped, right around the time that the water in the bucket had grown unbearably cold. It made a very feminine sniffle, and when it lifted its head up to look up at Gole's, he was shocked to see a return of the reddened, raw face that he had first seen when the doll had broken through its first “face”. Its eyes had lost their luster, instead looking then like ugly, beady black spots.

You must come with me. She said to him, with a surprising amount of authority.

“I'm a human, I'll burn and die in the kiln.”

It was silent, staring up at him with its awful, uncertain features, until it made its way back to the back room.

Pinocchio (One Last Kiln Firing) - Part Three

It murmured a calm, sweet response, and it reached one of its cold, hard hands out to touch the hand that Gole was holding the hammer in. It stared deeply into Gole's eyes, and Gole felt as though he were unsure of what it was that he was looking at. Was it truly a horrible monstrosity, or was it, no matter what it looked like, simply a scared creature?

The answer, no matter what it was, left a sick feeling in the pit of Gole's stomach. If it was a monster, it would no doubt continue its masquerade, even as Gole beat the unholy life from out of it. And if he didn't murder it, then what could it later grow, and what would its plan for him be?

He raised the hammer, thinking like the child that he still was, despite how his deformed body made him appear. He wanted it dead, the source of his disgust and stress.

Be gentle, please, Gole.

Looking down at the thing's eyes was a mistake, be it a good one or not. Looking down at its face, he became aware that, grotesque or not, its eyes held a humanity that made him suck in all of the air that was in his lungs in horror of what he had planned to do to it.

Gole took a more gentler grip onto the hammer and in a low voice, asked it where it wanted him to strike.

The old man had been surprised- even outwardly impressed - by the handiwork that Gole presented him with. The doll was only in its second stage, but it already looked so close to being done that the man was wondering if Gole had attempted to impress him by going forward with another firing without telling him.

Deciding that, either way, Gole had managed to make a good doll, the old man gave it back to the tall boy and left him to finish the doll by the end of the week. Although it would normally be barely enough time to complete a spartan-style doll, with cheap paint work and faux-hair, the old man was surprised to believe that the boy that was considered the dumbest of all of the children was making something that could very well be a spectacular piece of work.

Gole didn't care about the praise that had slipped out of the man's mouth in a rush of awe; his approval meant that he could stay with the doll for as long as it took for it to be complete.

The doll was quickly becoming the one thing that Gole was looking forward to when he got time to himself. Alone, he could talk to it; the doll was much too sweet and one-of-a-kind to talk to just anybody, so Gole was more than pleased to be its sole friend.

He often kept to himself in the kiln room, sleeping in there and away from the other children. He wanted to stay with the doll, even if it meant sleeping o the cold floor of the room. It had been three days since he had revealed its face from under the fragile bisque, and although he had not made any mention of the inevitable, when the doll would be taken away from him, he had managed to make her understand that there was a dead line in which it would be finished.

On the third night, while they were alone in the kiln room, it began to ask him how they would go about changing how it looked.

At first Gole tried to get away from the question, talking about the pretty dress that the old woman had made specially for the doll to wear, and that it would have wonderful hand-made shoes which it could wear, but the doll would not stop relentlessly asking him. Eventually, Gole cleared his throat of the sour taste that was in his mouth, and said, "We're going tp have to put you in the kiln one last time, this time for a shorter time and at a lower heat..."

The small thing screamed, throwing a tantrum so loud that Gole had to cover its mouth and restrain it. Finally, when the doll was calmed enough to settle still, he let go of its mouth, and it said, I don't want to, Gole, I don't want to.

Slowly, Gole said, "You were alright when you came out of it the first time. And you were so brave..."

In a voice that Gole could scarcely believe was its, the doll said, I love you,Gole, but if you make me go, I won't like you anymore.

Gole had no choice other than to ignore what it said. It was capable of amazing things, but the doll needed to reach the correct consistency of pale color and hardness before they could allow her to be sold. Gole could not imagine being allowed to keep her, even if she became what was considered an "unsellable doll". They would throw her out, after breaking her, to punish him failing to create a doll with the expensive materials that they had given him.

After a while, their conversation had grown away from the business of the eventual firing, and Gole had brought up that he would get to paint her more delicate features before it would be placed into the kiln. Frankly, at the mention of the kiln, he had expected the girl-like thing to begin another tantrum, but as was the case with it, the doll surprised him.

I understand that you have to do this, and even though I'm scared, I want you to know that I didn't mean what I said before about you.

Gole hung his head and wanted to commend her for the bravery that she possessed that he clearly did not.

The next night was deemed the "firing" night, and before it was to be set on the drying board, Gole did the best he could to redeem himself, by painting in the doll's delicate features, imagining the most beautiful female that he could and conveying that as best he could with paint.

When he finished, he was loathed to admit it, partially because he was embarrassed by the crude work that he felt he had done for its dear, dear face, and also because he knew what would soon accompany his work. When he told it that he was done, the doll demanded that he find it a reflective surface to see itself in.

You did it beautifully! It said, its face warm with glee.

Gole had to leave her to wait for her hard shell to dry alone, as he was called for to help cleaning the area behind a doll cabinet that had its cleaning day a long time coming. Afterwards he had to help the other children clean the muck pit that was near the modified stable that they all called home, and he was shocked, when they all finished, to discover that it was well past the hour that he had thought it would take to finish the two chores. The sun had set, and all of the children were off to their sparse beds, most of which gave him a look of disdain as they passed him.

The doll greeted him in a pouting voice that, to him, seemed to barely hide the fear and sadness that it must have been truly feeling. I thought you were going to spend more time with me before I had to go in, It said, its soft eyes showing a depth of emotion that Gole could frankly not remember seeing the day before.

He murmured an apology and went over to it, picking her up and gently hugging her, stopping when he finally felt the tiny arms attempting to hold him back. He suggested that they wait a little longer to begin the process, so that the doll could feel that they had spent more time together.

No, I want to have this over with, now that I am dry and ready for it.

Gole honored her wish, adding less firewood beneath the kiln than he had the last time they had visited the large contraption.

When at last he had to pick the doll up and place her in the kiln, he had the overwhelming feeling that he was lowering it into a tomb, and it took all of his courage to lower her onto the furniture in the kiln and to shut the slab over the hole. Even though it took all of his strength to light that wood, Gole nevertheless felt cowardly, even despicable; how was the doll NOT like a girl, besides what it was made of?

How could he ask it to do something that he could not- and would not- do? By all means, if he was any kind of man, he should crawl into the kiln and calmed the doll as the heat tore through them both.

He had to shake his head a little to shove that thought from his mind, because even though he was in a disturbed state, he knew that thinking of doing something like that to himself was wrong and a sign of sickness. He had decided, when he had first taken the small hammer to the doll's face, that he was not ill, and that what he was witnessing was a phenomenon. Perhaps even a sign that he was capable of being loved.

He crept up so that his back was against the kiln and winced as he felt the searing pain of the heated cylinder pressing against the nearly bare flesh of his back. As he heard the doll begin sobbing, Gole felt his own tears and body-wracking cries. He hoped as hard as he could hope for anything that it was crying from fright and not from pain, and he pressed his back harder into the kiln's wall. As he did it, he felt a momentary reprieve from the emotions that warred in him and he threw back his head, his eyes so wide they nearly bulged out of their sockets, as he allowed his nerves to be consumed by the cruel heat.

By the time the heat died down, Gole felt giddy, drunk with the power of what he had done to the curse that was his body as well as the fact that the doll's own torment soon over with. He finally allowed himself to slump forward, his back ripping away from the surface that had nearly melded with it.

There was no longer any pain, and Gole felt, somewhere in the back of his clouded mind, grateful that there no longer was any to be had. He slowly got to his feet and turned around to look at the kiln with a skeletal grin on his face. He burned his hands as he shoved the kiln's slab as far as he could, getting a hot blast of air to his face.

He barely acknowledged that the doll was crying for him to stop, that he was going to hurt himself as he extracted it from the furniture. As he did it, he could not stop himself from wincing as he touched the doll's bare skin. It was partially immaterial, and where he held the doll - below its chest – it was closer to a liquid than a solid. He was aware, vaguely, that the doll was yelling at him to put it down, that he was ruining its skin and body.

Gole dropped it on the side table and sat down in front of the table, where he sat until he was awakened by the old woman who ran the store by a rude kick in the side.

When she asked what was wrong with him - she remarked that his back looked as though someone had branded him with what had to be a nightmarish hot poker and that his hands looked as though he had been handling hot coals - Gole mumbled something about an accident with some burning firewood, and that was that.

That day he had to keep away from the doll, working in the front of the shop, because there was a festival that was taking place that day in that part of the city. Gole could only muster a slight amount of surprise at the fact that he had utterly forgotten about the large festival that everyone else had been planning for. When the festival had drawn in enough people and their children for people not to notice his departure, Gole slunk into the back room and sat down with the doll in his lap.

“I've been missing you, since I woke up this morning...”

Gole waited, listening carefully so as to discern the difference from the doll's voice and the loud noise outside from the shop, and grew agitated when he heard no sound coming from the doll.

Taking in shuddery breaths, Gole imagined what it would mean if the voice he had heard from the doll were no more real than his own good looks.

Although he did not want to do it, he was trapped in the awful thought that he had imagined everything leading up to that moment with the doll, as the doll refused to answer any of Gole's questions. At some point, up until he was roused, guiltily, out of it by a loud rap on the door, Gole began to cry and he rocked the doll in his arms as he, himself, rocked back and forth on the dirt floor.

Pinocchio (One Last Kiln Firing) - Part Two

Gole was tempted to shove the slab as far back as he could from the kiln and to peer into the pit to see what was talking. What frightened him most was the thought that what was in the structure was a small child, perhaps one that was only playing a prank on him with some of the others. He couldn't afford to kill a child; where would he go, if he went through with their prank and ended up burning what they wanted to make him think was some sort of abomination?

He had to of imagined the doll, still somewhat pliant, despite the drying process that it had undergone, squirming worm-like in his hand, like a creature trying to escape his grasp. He had to of imagined that; it was unthinkable otherwise.

Are we playing a game, Gole-y? You're not going to light it on fire, are you? I'm scared. Where are you?

Gole located the flint despite the panic that rose in his stomach. He turned to face the kiln like it was an enemy. The small voice returned, and Gole felt rage and fear build up inside of him, until he screamed out, "Shut up, shut up! If you're trying to trick me, you'd better stop it now, damn it. I'm going to light the fire, so if you're just trying to trick me, you had better make some sort of noise or say something before I light it!"

Gole crouched at the feet of the kiln and readied the flint, waiting first for any sort of sign from whatever was in the vessel. A voice came through the kiln, sounding all the more scared and sad than it had before.

Please, please, if I have to do this, please come in with me!

Gole shouted out, "Last chance! Knock on the lid if you don't want to burn!"

Nothing came, and Gole readied to light the fire on the stack of wood. As he stretched his arm out to light the center of the stack of wood on fire, he had been expecting a change in the voice in the kiln. He was correct to expect a change in voice, but it was nevertheless one that he wouldn't have ever wanted to hear.

A strange, distorted voice arose from the kiln, this time in a frighteningly clear tone, free of any of the bizarre distortion that reminded him of a well, filled with water.

Come in the kiln with me, Gentrrryy... the voice faded out on the sound of the name that Gole hadn't been called in a year, then it picked up, the strange voice dropping in lieu of the voice of the scared girl who sounded as though she was speaking from a far-away place.

I love you Gole, I want to be with you. Don't you want to be with me?

The sound of her crying broke Gole, and he shakingly lit the fire wood under the kiln, shutting his eyes when he heard the screaming from inside of the kiln. For a moment, during the screaming, Gole was certain that he had heard a difference in the child-like voice as it screamed wordlessly; it was a voice that, for as short a period as it rang through the small back room of the shop, made Gole think of something horrible and ageless. Something rotten.

After a few minutes, which Gole spent rocking back and forth on the hot dirt floor, his arms wrapped tight around his legs, the screaming stopped, giving away to the gentle hush of the fire beating against the floor of the kiln.

Gole awoke the next morning when the old woman who owned the shop jabbed him repeatedly in the side and asked him why the kiln was still warm if he had actually doused the fire when he was supposed to the night before. Gole removed the lid of the kiln, fearing what would be inside. He was relieved, and shocked, when he saw that the bisque doll had baked perfectly, despite the fact that, for the kiln to still be warm, the doll should have been burnt to a mess.

Once the thing cooled down, Gole removed the doll, and was only too happy when the old woman wrenched it from him, telling him that she would never allow him to be a part of the process of making dolls, and that he would do well to go to his own bed and sleep until one of the other children would come for him.

Gole was later surprised to be awakened by the small child who leaned over him, shaking his shoulders to wake him. He couldn't believe that he had actually fallen asleep, remembering the voices that had earlier come from the kiln.

He went into the store and was told by the old man that despite what the old owner of the shop had said, they were too behind with doll orders for man to take care of the doll himself. Despite this assertion, the old man seemed suspicious of Gole and acted as though he did not want to give control of the making of the doll back to Gole.

Gole seized onto this fact, and, remembering the night before, asked the old man if he could possibly work on another doll instead. When the man told him to not be superstitious, Gole asked why he was the only one of the children who was assisting with the making of dolls. The man was incensed by this question, and told Gole that he was the oldest of the children, and had lately been frightening customers when he worked in the shop itself. If he wanted to stay - and be fed - he would stop acting as though he wasn't a worker.

Gole accepted it, as he was always wont to, but he took it with a deep feeling of fear and dark resignation. He was brought to the kiln room and was left with the doll and the tools he would use to paint the first part of her features.

As the door shut, allowing the owners, customers, and the children to be in the shop without the truly gloomy kiln room to be seen by passers-by, Gole wondered if the events from the night before would come back to haunt him.

He clutched the thin-bristled paint brush and nestled the vague doll-shaped form in his lap, reclining it back so that he could get a good look at where its face was to be.

Dabbing paint on the bristles, he looked back at the doll, and realized that the head was turning of its own accord, moving in a manner that sickly reminded Gole of the way a blind creature attempts to get a bead on an object of interest.

The voice came, as Gole somehow knew it would, sounding, as it had before, somehow like a parody of a frightened little girl. I can't see you, Gole, where are my eyes, I can't see.

Gole bit his bottom lip and tightened one of his hands around the thing's head to steady it. The voice disappeared, and was replaced by the sound of panicked breathing. Gole, what are you doooiiinnnnnnggg-

Although he had clutched the head as hard as he could without breaking the near-brittle bisque, the thing managed to squirm as he tried to draw a delicate set of lips on the doll's face. The paint ended up smeared on the doll's cheek, and Godel clutched the doll's head harder, causing the the thing to shriek shrilly. He found an old work cloth and began to rub furiously at the paint, and was only partially relieved when all of the paint came off the blank face.

Gole, let go, let go, don't squeeze so hard... My face is under this bisque, if you let me show you it, will that make you stop? Please, Gole-y, let me have something with a small, heavy end to it.

Gole wanted the thing to just shut up, so he laid the doll against the bench and handed the outstretched hand of the blank doll to do what it wanted with his heavy knife. Slowly, the thing turned the knife around so that the blunt end of the knife was facing it. It stood in its legs and Gole as unable to look away from the doll as it moved, slowly, trying not to wobble as it pulled the blunt end away from its face and then abruptly smashed the end of the knife against its face.

What emerged from under the smashed bisque was something that was reminiscent of an aborted fetus, its eyes not seeming to be fully developed beyond small rolling pin pricks. Gole launched himself backwards, finally falling out from the thrall that the thing had had him in. He bit his hand to keep from screaming, afraid of what would happen if the thing were to turn around and to look at him with those under-developed eyes.

It dropped the knife and looked over at Gole, extending its arms up and towards him.

Can you clean me up? I need some help, cracking this shell around me...

Gole fell on his back as he felt himself lose control of his legs. He wanted desperately to run... but what would be waiting for him, if he decided to run and talk about the creature that looked so earnestly at him, as though it wanted him to come to it and hold it?

Looking back at the door, Gole imagined the reaction he would receive, bursting into the shop, panting. Would they even listen to him, such a sight he would be to whoever was unfortunate enough to be the one he could hear then, talking beyond the door as he fell into the room? No; it was more than likely that he would be thrown out on the street on sight, even before they had a chance to see the horrible creature for themselves.

He looked at the doll, where it remained, waiting for him with its little arms extended towards him. He had to kill it, he realized instinctively. He could not allow a thing like it to continue, in whatever existence it had.

He located the small box of tools that sat near the bench, where in it lied the ball peen hammer that he would use to ruin its body, which did not have any right to exist, as nightmarish as it was.

"I'll help..." Gole vaguely thought that he murmured as he readied the hammer and crawled over to the bench. Although it was grotesque, and he could not be altogether sure, Gole believed that he could see a look of relief pass on the thing's face.