Once again, in the chambers of my beloved Princess Pincushion—I found myself kneeling on the floor. 

It was just that standing often proved too unwieldy in those halcyon days in which Her tincture took me. When I was forced to walk, a cruel and unfitting request made of the treasured royal doll, my steps were beyond fledgling. They were fragile, skittish, imposed upon trembling limbs that had forgotten the human practice altogether, forced to reluctantly relearn it each and every time.  

Fortunately, I was not required to walk very often, though my lame stride was called upon at least once every month. When the Princess—my Princess, my everything—would attend the royal court and hear the people's pleas, She could not stay settled without me by Her side. There was even a cushion for me, placed beside Her lofty chair. I remember liking my cushion, which is good, because it would eventually play host to the knees of one much more valuable than a wretch like me. 

There was no court on this day, even in my tincture addled state I knew this well. Though I no longer seemed able to track the passing of individual days, I felt the month's pattern imprint itself upon me, a kiss supplanting schedule and rhythm to my previously disordered existence. Many months had passed since I'd first arrived in the palace, though I could not be sure how many. Not knowing the particulars was another gift of Hers, of course, my humanity had been forfeit since the moment I graced those halls and knowing is a person's burden to bear. 

The tincture, and the sweet melody of my Princess's cloying speech, had reinformed me of my purpose. It was a great and mighty thing, to bask in the presence of a sculptor who did not need touch to reshape you in their image. My image, even, as I had been perfect in my Princess's eyes since the moment they fell soft and hard upon my own. All She had to do was preserve this impossible beauty in the fine resin of Her words, shave down the rough edges of my soul, and ensure that I'd never again dare to presume for myself a purpose outside of Her. 

I never would, of course. Even now, in this tumultuous present, I would not dream of such a terrible thing. It is a selfish, hateful ambition, one that reminded me I needed my medicine whenever it would arise like caustic bile in my throat. 

The door began to creak, and I felt my back straighten up as though pulled on marionette's strings. In the months following my arrival, I became a very obedient creature—though I was not so doting. A doll's duty is to be pampered, and so my strange relationship with the woman I had been expecting to dote upon had been turned completely on its head. All I could do, in light of this, was smile. Smiling came easy, that pale blue moonshine made Milky Way of my mind after all, leaving nothing but unnatural calm and deep, undoing gratitude. 

"Knock, knock." That lilting voice declared itself, dripping with a hot wax of amusement that made my skin alight with tingles. Her voice was velvet. Her voice was holy. It was the only voice I could still make out through all that mental fog, the only words I was yet able to decipher in that destructive reverie of the self-annihilation I'd been forced to swallow. The sick truth to all of this, my simple new state of being and silent, motionless worship, was that I had been complicit in it. My radiant golden Princess had told me what the tincture would do, held it up to lips She never truly forced open. And what was I to do but swallow? What was I to be if not Her good, docile property? It was only then, with that cold uncaring metal weighing down upon my lower lip that I had begun to weigh my alternatives and realised: I did fear death after all. Or to be precise, I had become oh so frightened at the notion of being discarded by the only person in the world that still wanted me. Cared for me, in Her own sick way. Not a person, a monster; with a deceptively pretty glamour to it. 

Even still, I had come to accept my weakness. It became loathsomely apparent to me that survival instinct and loneliness were among the Princess Herself as my new rulers. In my head, before the fog, I had thought to myself: The worst thing a person can do is end. Perhaps this was why I resented my old family so much, until their faces became smeared by that loving tincture. My blue oblivion in a glass bottle. 

I gave no response, how could I? The Princess entered Her own chambers with the same disturbing candour She always wore, seeing no need to play pretend with me since the very beginning. Her honesty regarding Her own depraved act, this flaying of identity and autonomy I could not myself pretend to reject, was so very beautiful. When looking upon Her unhealthily pale form, thin and wasting flesh, with eyes girdled by fatigue's callous bruising—I only saw a bright and burning iridescence that blinded me to all else in the room. My eyes were iron sights training in for the kill, because even though I loved my keeper, I hated Her just as badly. My eyes were softened spheres, and blunted spears, continuously coaxing my perception back and forth between adoration and contempt. 

Having become an extension of Her being, Her will, I knew all too well that the disgust I felt was for myself. Princess could do no wrong, and so She was spared the sting of my stare whenever Her eyes generously bore themselves unto my own. I felt that Her plain, obsessive stare was granting audience to something greater, and a part of me wanted to reach out and make it known. That I still had a will, a soul, that I was worthy of acting upon my own instinct and losing myself to all the macabre little wants that wicked stare gave me. 

"Doll." The Princess had, of course, noticed my grim snarl in the face of Her. With just one word She had my facial muscles growing obediently slack, falling back into place and giving Her good showing of the porcelain visage She came to see. My confusion was only to be indulged in my own time, it was too greedy to burden the Princess with. "You're cracking, poor thing. Remember your smile, or I'll be forced to carve one into you." A threat as weak and pale as Herself, She'd never dare blemish me. My mind was too docile and dollfucked to suspect anything She told me, however, and better still I simply would not have the mind to disobey regardless. The woman could lie to me so candidly and I could not care, I was simply happy for the attention, the purpose. I felt in my place, for the first time in my life. 

Then the pinpricks came. It hurt, of course, but that was the fucking point. Her sadistic smile painted a reflection of my own as my lips curled up in just the way She liked. The Princess was not a very demanding woman, and so I was content to smile. I loved smiling, because it tricked me into thinking I knew what happiness was. She was happiness. Happiness was Her, a million tiny phantom needles digging into my skin reminding me that joy and comfort were as conditional as my next meal, or bath. I could not survive on my own, I needed Her. I needed to please my Princess or I'd become nothing. Worse than dead: pointless. Maybe the worst thing a person could do was mend, because being broken like this gave me understanding I could never have reached in the composed melancholy that gripped me before I learned to swallow liquid stillness. 

It hurt. It hurt it hurt it hurt. But then—always by the end—it began to feel horribly good instead. This was when my perfect doll smile finally clicked into place and my body squirmed at those hot pricks of pleasurable pain that wracked it. Oh gods, it felt divine. It felt so good because I knew it was needed, that I deserved it, and that She wanted me to feel it. It hurt, but pain no longer ruled me. She did. 

In the face of Her, the kiss of a whip would be soft and sweet as a virgin's demure peck. Nothing could hurt me but disappointing Her, and being summarily discarded into that verminous capital cove beyond those gilded bedroom walls. 

"Th-there we are... ahh, good doll." My eyes trained onto Hers, where else would they go? Her face was flush with thrill and it only made Her ever more iridescent. "I had dulled to the pain, gotten used to it." The Princess spoke and I had only two priorities: To listen attentively and make myself as pretty and motionless for Her as possible. Neither proved a difficult task, my brain did not work the way it once had. I was glad for the freedom. "But with you it's different. Hurting you feels intense, and the pain we share only makes me feel closer. Make no mistake, nameless doll, you're nothing. Nobody. But that's okay, because I love you all the more for it. Like I told you all those months ago, life is disgusting. You are a thing to be looked at and admired, lifeless and pure... ahahaha, when we hurt together and you share my smile... that's how I know you're not real anymore. Not living. And so... you're spared my disgust. Doesn't that make you happy, doll?" The blonde cupped Her own reddened cheek, letting out laboured breaths that betrayed just how worked up She was. There was nobody around to see, so it was perfectly fine. 

I was required to speak, swallowing back the pooling saliva in my mouth and clearing my throat as silently as I was able. Still smiling, still burning all over from that sudden assault of invisible pins, I opened my mouth to answer the question without needing to consciously think of the response. It was automatic. "Oh yes Princess, that makes me very happy." Even after months, the monotone voice my words drawled out in still managed to give me pause. It reminded me that something was wrong, but I only felt more complete for it. What was wrong for humanity was right for dolls, and Princess would have been disgusted with me if I'd sounded more like a real person. 

The petulant, pretty thing escaped Her suffocating royal dress and I did not follow its unceremonious journey to the floor. My eyes were trained, soothed and seething against Her glittering body. Her skin seemed to sparkle, the tincture did that, presenting to me a mesmerising array of stars kissing across Her ghostly luminescent disguise; a costume of ill-fitting skin obscuring the malignant beast within its stuffy confines. Even were She to grow out Her horns and start to strut on unguligrade legs, unveiling unto me Her true demonic capra self, I would not have found the divinity in Her image diminished in the slightest. I was bewitched by Her before I had even taken a sip of that corruptive, numbing tincture. In that one, single way, we were of a kind. 

"To bed, doll. I am dreadfully tired." My universe spoke thus, and yet I was finding it difficult to accept the command I knew I had no right to question. Sensing my discomfort, that struggle playing behind my eyes as I smiled emptily for Her viewing pleasure, the Mad Princess giggled pleasantly into the cold air I couldn't feel. I was unbearably hot in Her presence, the sight of Her naked lustre turning my presumed heterosexuality into a messy prolapse. 

"I see, ahaha... I've forgotten your tincture, haven't I?" The doll's dull, marble stare glinted against that word. Tincture. Chemically, I was an addict. Emotionally, I was dependent. But the lust to be lesser went deeper than both, that need to be made into nothing for Her, again and again until the last remaining Báncourte girl was as lost as Her headless relatives. I had already forgotten my name, what's a name compared to this?

"Y-Yes, Princess." My body lurched forwards and Princess clicked Her tongue chidingly for my undisciplined showing. Remembering my place, despite the addiction making me tremble in anticipation for that baby blue medicine that turned my brain inside out, I sat back down on my calves and corrected my posture. Once upon a time, I had been able to display what little of a personality I had freely in these chambers. It was a mistake to ever presume any personhood for myself, the doctor from overseas taught me that. A woman with a long mask and an ugly laugh had been the first to prepare the tincture, and show my Princess how to mix it in future. The medicine woman said something that had stuck with me to this very moment I describe now, and even further still.

"You're so lucky."

The words became doctrine. I was lucky. Of course I was. Being a person is hard, it is tiresome and unending. How wrong I was before, when I still needed to adjust to the mind and memory of a living doll. The best thing a person can do is end, if they're lucky enough to be made into this instead. 

"Needy little thing." The golden blonde remarked, tapping the bottle of mysterious cerulean constituent against metal rim, watching it drop and dissolve into the clear alcohol and turn it pale blue. I had begun to drool, my mind was too fucked not to. The scent of pure alcohol was dizzying and I was already fantasising about the trip my medicine would be taking me on. It made everything so numb at first until I felt absolutely nothing but stillness—and then, slowly, that emptiness began to feel wonderful. My expensive doll outfit, a dress as snow-white as my hair had gradually turned, was slowly being ruined by thick anticipatory saliva. When my Princess noticed, She gave a thin smile and sighed into Her hand. "How unpleasant... and after I'd taken measures to procure a new delivery method meant to prevent you spilling it down your chin like usual..." The woman held up the thick metal syringe in Her hand and my head tilted a doll's tilt. When I say thick, I mean to convey that the medical device in my world's bony hand was far too fat to puncture skin. It appeared almost bulbous when put against the typical injectors you would see in a doctor's hand. 

"Ahn... 'm sorrrry..." It was so fucking hard to think, my thoughts were weighed down by my wonderment, my excitement. I was sluggish and off-kilter, vision blurring and words slurring before the tincture had even touched upon my tongue. Everything was simply too much in that preceding calm that it began to overwhelm me, a ghost of stimulation that ruined the doll's composure. My entire body, my being, craved the poison in Her hand more than it cared for shame. 

When Princess's dissatisfied look transformed into amused grin, my entire body became weightless. My smile widened and my thighs pushed together tightly as the heat wrought from humiliation lit a fire between them. Before Her, I had never once thought about my own sexuality. I still didn't, such things were beneath what we had. It only makes sense for dolls to become wet when their owner is enjoying them. 

"I can't say it isn't a little cute how needy and pathetic you are, but I need to train that out of you eventually so that you can be pristine." The only person in the world drifted close, Her footfalls seeming light enough to walk over fresh snow without disturbing its surface. A handkerchief worth more in gold than my fallen house's pilfered coffers, than my entire existence, swiped across my jaw in tender motion and I mewled at the sensation. A part of me was still there, cringingly aware of how pathetic I had become, feeble and meek and desperate against Her touch. I was pious and pleading, begging with just my eyes for Her to unmake me again, as She always did. My tongue was dull, heavy, leaking drool like a fountainhead onto the other's fingers. 

Princess didn't like that. 

When I next came to, I was keeling over on one side with a fierce, hollow pain in my gut that told me as much. My face was never blemished, of course, but the rest of my body was a canvas of disappointment and harsh lessons. I loved learning—shamefully I did. Every dark purple bruise felt like love, because it reminded me that my owner cared enough to find me worth correcting in the first place. It told me She had not given up on me, and so the discipline only made that conflagration of arousal between those clamping thighs ever fiercer. I was beginning to soak through the thin slip of fabric pretending to supply me some modesty; a play-act of person, performatively dressed up in human garments that suggested a personage that would always flicker, and die, against the tincture I loved to swallow. 

"Get up, you can be winded on your knees." Her words were more compelling than pain, and so I tearfully obliged. It took a moment, too long perhaps, for me to scramble back up into position from that sideways sprawl I'd crashed into. The pain was white, but all I could think of was blue. My thoughts would be painted over in the colour of clear skies, soon enough, and then I'd be taken to bed with my lovely Princess. What more could a nameless thing like myself possibly ask for?

I returned to my kneeling position looking more pathetic than I had left it. I was more placid, and had learned to stop salivating so damn much, but the resulting stillness only spelled the divide between us even more perfectly. At least before I had been acting the beast, excitement and slobber ruling that undisciplined body that had forgotten its true self. Once I was back upright, staring up at the very definition of radiance, I was once again nothing but a doll. The stillness could not lay claim on the identity of the animal I'd been acting, let alone a human. People seemed so far above me, as I kept sinking down with every word, click, punch and swallow. 

"There you are, my good dollthing... I-I had begun to worry you were losing your ability to please me." Her insecurity wasn't real, it couldn't be. She was confidence and charm incarnate, Her possessive vice the only thing tethering me to this side of mortality. This world of Her was all that had yet to fray, because it was reinforced daily. I'd kill for her, I'd end for her. Anything to make my Princess happy, it is intoxicating to be given purpose. 

"I love pleasing owner." My voice sighed out, forgetting the pain in the face of such thin praise. Anaemic, even, but to me it meant the world. "I love pleasing you. I... I really, truly do." I knew that I was pushing my luck speaking so freely, but even with that fresh bruise beginning to surface on my skin, my adoration was blossoming once again. For her, I'd endure just about anything. 

The royal heiress giggled, cupping my chin in Her impossibly soft hand as my individuality died against it all too willingly. She offered me an escape, and gladly did I take it. If only we could have remained that way forever, but things are not so terrible in the present I must suppose. "Do you not hate me? I still see it, sometimes. You're permitted to hate me, of course, so long as your love overshadows." In Her other hand sat that thick oral syringe I'd been so eager for until being reminded of my place. She demanded my attention more than anything, and so the clear blue skies would have to wait. 

"I..." I let out a short, involuntary whine and reminded myself that I must never lie to Her. "A... p-part of me does, yes. But it's wrong... sick. That's why I'm taking my medicine." My doll smile clicked back into place, everything started making sense again. The relief I felt in that moment was indescribable. "I'm getting better. When I first came here... I didn't quite get it. I was jaded, immature..." My mind returned to those early days, back when my thoughts were messy and all over the place. Everybody requires direction, purpose. Not least of all people who aren't people, like I now understood myself to be. I was not so naïve as to believe it completely, not on logic alone at least; I believed because I wanted to, had to, when the alternatives were far less appealing. "I cared for naught... you were mere curiosity. Even then, without you I'd have had no purpose driving me onwards. I'd have found a way to off myself, perhaps, on the carriage. You saved me... I love you. Any hate I feel is nothing compared to that. Your words... your body, gods your skin... even your punishments."

The woman laughed harder, swinging Her leg harder still. It impacted my already weeping cunt and expelled the breath from my lungs as I inhaled to continue speaking. It hurt, of course, but within seconds I was already shamefully pushing up into that radiant skin and making eye contact to check that it was okay. Her expression spelled permission, and so I began to grind; though it was an action unbefitting of a doll, I could tell that I was not the only one too turned on to care. "You are a beautiful doll, even if you can be difficult. So long as you continue to love me, I won't take your head. Even should you make mistakes, I'll keep you around so long as you continue to feel that warmth for me in your chest. Like a sun, too large and blinding for your heart to want for anything else."

"There is nothing else." Truly, there was not. It was no wonder that I'd fallen for Her, even without the medicine I would surely have been content admiring Her for the rest of my days. This was better, though. "I l-love you... I love you for putting my wretched bloodline to the blade, I remember... at first I thought it was unfair. I'd convinced myself I didn't care, but I cried for my siblings and cousins when the coachman wasn't looking." How was I suddenly so talkative? It was as though the words had been stored in memory for a long while now, and this doll was spilling out the script. 

"Closing your heart is a lot harder than opening it up." The woman was a font of wisdom, and I Her top student. I was in awe of these simple words She spoke, and ascribed great meaning upon them without Her needing to explain. Her nails were sinking into my face, lovingly. Always loving. 

"Y-Yeah... I hated you for it. A part of me still does. B-but, it's okay... I love you so much more. I understand, they... had to go. For us." My stare was so wide, devout, sinking into the comfort of Her and deciding to never look back again. Princess looked somehow put off by that worshipful look, as though She had not anticipated the intensity I gave Her. It reminded me, distantly, that this medicine was not of Her making, and that I was the first She had personally used it on. 

And then She said something strange, disquieting, assessing the discomfort in my reverent eyes as She did so. "So, do you forgive me?" At first I had to check that She was seriously asking such a strange, unsuitable question to Her doll. Those lips of Hers were not curled in amusement, they were a straight line revealing nothing at all. A mask of authoritative power I could not dare to challenge. 

What did She mean? My Princess could do no wrong, none at all, even when my emotions sometimes disagreed with me on that; petulant, embarrassing sentiment I was slowly getting rid of gulp by heady gulp. So why, then, would She ask me such a cruel question when I was nearing another fractionating oblivion by Her hand? Was it a test? Should I have responded already? Or should I not respond at all?

All the while, I had been slowly rubbing myself into Her leg as the puzzlement took me. 

"I ah... I f-forgive you, Princess. For anything. Everything. Uhm... o-okay?" My body felt slick and strange, the heat between my legs was suddenly confused. She did not need my forgiveness, because I was not even a person. Can a doll forgive?

The sharp click of Her tongue caused me to let out a tiny shudder, and a pleading gasp. Was I disappointing Her somehow? The thought made me nauseous, I suddenly believed myself close to passing out. Shamefully, I wanted to beg Her to cut out my tongue so that I'd never have to answer questions again. Words felt revolting in my mouth when they were not being fed to me. 

"Forgive me for killing your mother and father, doll." Her magnificent fingers traced up my cheek and twined into that ashen hair; I think it was brown once, I don't remember for certain. "You've no doubt surmised, correctly, that I do not need your forgiveness. Teaching you that was easy, but removing the weight... that is proving more difficult. Dolls are light things, see, so I've decided to let you forgive me. For your own sake, of course. You will absolve me of sin here and now, so that no part of you can still find the will to conjure resent. That petty feeling is beyond you, pretty and porcelain as you are." 

Oh. Oh of course! It made so much sense once She explained it, so much so that I felt stupid to have ever questioned Her. Look how loving and kind She was, permitting me to let go of these feelings by pretending to lower Herself for me. A gentle, loving grip in my hair corrected the angle of my head as I grinned up with new calm and resolve. There was—of course—pleasure, too. 

"I forgive you, Princess!" My father was the cur who made the poor choices that led to his house's cindering, of course he deserved the executioner's axe. Mother, well, she should have steered her husband more wisely. Trusting a man to lead was her first mistake. Their heads in the snow, and good riddance to them both. 

"Good doll." The praise burned a hole into my mind, where mother's love had lingered. It was even better than the tincture, in that moment, as I pressed my doll cunt into Her iridescent skin and felt love crawling under mine. The parasitic affection I played host to knew just how to tempt and tease, working my body into a heat that should have horrified. I was getting off to this—to letting go of old familial love for good. I did not need anyone but Her. 

"Forgive me for killing your brother." Spoke perfection, cold as ice. Her fingers moved through my hair like vipers.

My brother had been protective. Loyal. He was bothersome, dim-witted, and kind. He had a sister who loved him, once upon a time.

"I forgive you, Princess." The words came out slow and steady, but not at all hesitant. Maybe I would have been less certain, were it not for the sick hot need between my legs commanding me to go along with anything my owner might ask so long as She did not pull Her leg back. My brother would sometimes mock me, so there. He's dead and the world is better for it... 

"Good doll." I groaned as the words slipped out like expensive sugar coating my mind, molasses seeping into the cracks in my psyche and smothering my morals. I'd forgive just about anything for this feeling. "Now forgive me for killing your little sisters."

My body froze, and for the first time in months I saw their faces. 

"I..." My hips halted their needy assault on the woman's shin, and I thought long and hard about my sisters. I had... two of them, I think. My brain attempted to return what had been lost, to unwind those months of long conditioning and docile, doll-like obedience. Perhaps I would have succeeded, had the Princess not justifiably clicked Her tongue and kicked me between my legs once again. 

"I'm doing you a favour, don't be so ungrateful! I-If you bore me, I'll bring Piotr in here right now and have him... oh, you're so beautiful I could never do that. I'd have to do it myself... it would be a dreadfully messy job, doled from these thin arms that know not how to swing with the kind, swift cleaving of an axeman." There She was, the Princess I had laid eyes upon all those months ago in the royal court. She was no master of Her own emotions, She was a madwoman. And I was Her plaything. An ideologue for simple pleasure, a slave to dogmatic prescription that told me She—while plainly deranged—could never be wrong. 

"I'm s-sorry..." My eyes began to water, pathetically, and I felt that grip in my hair tighten when I attempted to turn away. Something else to apologise for, my weakness in the face of Her overwhelming power. Needles pressed sharp into my skin, though none could see them. 

"Are you apologising to me, for this disappointing hesitation, or are you apologising to them? Because you know you're going to forgive me for making their useless little heads roll. If you don't, I won't give you this medicine you so clearly need. It'll take all of this guilt and doubt away, pretty miss nobody. It'll save you, as it has every other night since you began learning the truth of yourself. Where you end and where you begin. I know it isn't easy, doll, but you'll kill the part of yourself that loved them. Your sisters would not want to hold you back from true happiness, so do it for them. And for me, of course. Do not apologise, forgive." Her hand was loving again, and the tears rolling onto them became unbearably grateful. She was my escape, and I loved Her so much in that moment I could not breathe. Her pincushion hugged me with just the right amount of pain a disobedient thing like me deserved, and wordlessly I thanked Her for the trouble. I buckled, I gasped, and I pressed myself back into Her with reignited vigour. Her words were necromancy, choosing to resurrect the doll's libido over sisters still and cold. To my terrible shame, I was glad. 

"I... I forgive you, Princess. I forgive you... so please..." My needy whine should have sparked regret, but the tears were no longer flowing. My eyes were sparkling because I knew I was close now, to receiving that cold cerulean kiss which promised to take my incessant thoughts away—needless emotion that did nothing to stop the building, molten love seeping out of me down below. I was not functionally able to feel shame, nor guilt, for the forgiveness I so easily gave up. No, I felt proud. Pride swarmed me in its all-encompassing buzz, whispering saccharine affirmations into my vulnerable ear. It felt like I had accomplished something significant here, passed my owner's test, and in the face of that swell I had forgotten my kin entirely. Buried in the snow. 

Anticipation struck me like an arrowhead and my body jolted thus, wracked violently by unnatural need. Forgetting the tincture for just a moment, I was reminded that She still had praise to administer, and I could want for nothing more than I yearned such venomous bliss. Her words had a way of getting into my system and never leaving, changing me irrevocably. 

"Good doll."

My arms wrapped tight around Her leg and the benevolent Princess permitted the indulgence with a satisfied grin, watching me ride out my now guiltless climax against Her. She had freed me of the shame and my love for Her had never been stronger, sinking my face into Her thigh as I inhaled the scent of Her worshipfully. Her fragrance made a dullard of me, it was all so perfect.

"Th-thaaank youuu! Thankyouthankyouthankyou!" My orgasm became a smear on Her leg, and without needing Her to order me I quickly prostrated myself to start cleaning my dirty mess. It was heaven for me, of course, because I had an excuse to lap at iridescent skin I could usually only admire with my eyes—or my cunt. My tongue spread flat against skin soaked by something resembling shame, made harmless by Her teachings, and I felt the trappings of my past dissolve like clear blue in ethanol.

"Good girl, you're even pretty when you're playing the whore. But I'll make a true doll of you soon, I promise. I'll take away all these disgusting things we humans have to carry and perfect you. I love you too, doll." I could not believe what I was hearing, it felt as though the skies had parted and the trumpets descended; all seven of them, heralding a new apocalypse of me. 

Lap lap lap. All my mind could focus on, as She spoke Her infinitely pretty script, was cleaning that perfect limb of Hers. How I loved it unlike anything else. The degrading act felt more real than anything in my life before it. Once the leg was sufficiently cleaned by my owner's strict standards, the woman kicked me away more gently than She had swung Her leg prior to my giving forgiveness. She was almost tender, and that meant the world to me. Love was all that I had left to fill this hollow shell Her tincture made. 

_{"I love you."} My lips moved on their own, a breathless whisper—a prayer—but I made up for the indiscretion by sitting up into my trained doll position and clicking placating smile back into place. She always forgave me when I tried, which only made me feel all the worse for my slip ups. 

"I'm glad." Her fingers swept my fallen hair back to the side, like opening curtains to face a brand new day. The sunshine smile I gave Her certainly illuminated change, and She was positively beaming herself in the face of it. "It was easy to make you love me, you fell as easily as I did!" The woman dropped down onto Her knees, violating my cushion on the floor; it was a 1x1 foot stretch of portable sovereignty, and my entire world. I did not belong anywhere but on that pillow I'd made a mess of all too many times, and now my Princess was gleefully invading. My body was burning with heat, affection searing every inch of skin and lighting it up in radiant, rosy hues. "Perhaps in a kinder world, the two of us could have loved one another as equals... of a sort." Her forehead kissed my own and I was sweating like a nervous teenaged girl, utterly transfixed by the close proximity of our faces, Her dulcet words, and the waft of Her royal fragrance. 

I knew better than to speak in that moment, I was just a doll She sought to play pretend with. We both knew that I was beneath Her, so the notion of an even relationship seemed like bad comedy. And still, I knew better than to laugh. She spoke with vulnerability I knew not to hear, and trembled into me with madness a human could mistake for something else. Her head moved slowly, and with mesmerising motion She planted cold lips against my skin—just below my eye, where tearstains had settled. I felt the treasured doll, and remained perfectly still for Her even when internally I had been more stimulated than I was while fucking Her leg. 

"But that is not our destiny, hm? If those blackguards plaguing my palace thought you to be anything more than my toy, if they considered you a legitimate concern... well, ahaha, you'd be dead before you hit the dirt. More food for the seagulls, wretched and bloodthirsty as they are. As above, so below." Her shrill laughter hurt my ears from the close proximity, but all I could do was smile. In just this one scene, I believe I smiled more than I had in my entire life before Her. How, then, could Her ownership of me be in any way questionable? "The best way to protect something, is to keep it well preserved... emotion is not conducive to such a task. I'd do anything to keep this beauty of yours in my bedchambers, how lucky I feel... the only face in this world that does not turn my stomach, all mine. You understand why I do what I do, I hope, and you forgive me for it too. Don't you, my sweet, beautiful dolly?" Her lips curled, imperceptibly. All I could see was the blur of Her visage, and never the whole. 

Excitement hit me like a stimulant when I realised She had been so generous in this moment, giving me another chance to forgive Her. Would She call me a good doll again for doing so? I could not remember why the praise made me so dizzy and enamoured, but there was no questioning it any more. All my body could think to do was comply.

"I forgive you, Princess!" It was my most enthusiastic one yet, because I was so much lighter than before. Details of who I was were being passed through rotary blades and the shreddings woven back into a new tapestry of doll, recycled personage forming the foundation of something lesser and—in the same pathetic, bated breath—so much more. I became ten feet tall, but my Princess was a mountain. Those unreachable summit kisses touched upon my face all snowy and special, and I giggled like I was a thing of thirteen. 

"Mmgh... good doll." Her gentle pecks drifted lower and for a moment I wondered whether She was going to kiss me like a lover. I was too worked up to consider this fully, because Her praise had infected my system again. It made me writhe in delight, a short and permitted reprieve from my demanded stillness. Before Her lips could reach mine—a touch of rich candy red on pale, blasphemous pink—the Princess playfully replaced Her icy touch with something colder still. It was metal, and the instant it pressed its weight upon my lower lip I knew precisely what it was. Nirvana awaited. The light blue tincture sitting pretty in syringe could be mistaken for the waters of Lethe's river, I was an addict to the oblivion it wrought. "I'm going to push this in further, so that you don't drool it out and waste my valuable gift. Not a drop spilled tonight, okay doll?"

"Y-y-yes Princess... n-not one, I... I promise..." The entire atmosphere of the room had shifted the moment that syringe pressed into my skin, and I could no longer remain fully composed. Every molecule in my body seemed to sing, or scream, for the chemical mind killer in my owner's dainty little hand. No measure of dressed up words, pretty prose, could begin to describe just how awful and wondrous it was to feel the tincture hit your tongue. I was a slave to its impassionate salvation, knowing well after so many dosages to hold the inebriating concoction under my tongue for a half minute before swallowing. Time slowed as Princess violated my mouth with the uncaring metal, pushing my tongue up with the tip of Her oral syringe and pressing it firm. My lips were parted in an awkward maw, and I could've gagged if I were not so well trained. 

"Good night, pretty girl." Her royal thumb pushed down and administered the medicine with a kindness you could write poetry about, taking me away for the rest of the night so that I could be Her own personal sleep aid. As Her doll, I would sit still in bed while Princess brushed my hair and dressed me into night gown. Then, tantamount to stuffed animal, I would lay with Her—except I would not be there at all. I would be up in the sky, drifting, fading. 

I went away, and Doll awoke. 

And soon, Doll would become all I was and had ever been. 

It happened on the thirteenth month, unluckily for some... 

As it was shortly after, that everything changed. The world turned on its head.

And only Doll could fix it.